Forest resources: Making Iwan Chai

The other day I came across some beautiful rosebay Willowherb/fireweed , Chamaenerion Angustifolium, in German: Weidenröschen, and decided to make some Iwan-Chai from it.  

Legend has it that Tsar Iwan the terrible was really fond of black tea, but supplies being scarce, was looking for an alternative, and decided to use a known folk remedy.  Or rather, have such a resource used.  Hence the name.  

Fireweed does have several beneficial medicinal properties, being anti-inflammatory and antibiotic. It was traditionally used for intestinal problems and gum infections. In Experimental  clinical studies it has been proven to be beneficial against beningn prostata enlargement and several other maladies (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5045895/). 

Iwan-Chai is reputed to strengthen the immune system. 

Side effect is a higher risk of blood clotting. If you have a predisposition for thrombocytosis you might want to obstain from using it excessively or in high concentration. Please consult your doctor beforehand if you have. 

I harvested the young shoots. They were left to wilt a bit overnight.  

Then I thoroughly kneaded them: 

After that, they were left to ferment two days and first dried for several hours at 50°C, then lightly roasted at 80°C for another hour.  

I put the dried tea into a clean jar.  

The Iwan-Chai has a lovely black-teaish aroma, really mild, with flowery notes and a hint of caramel.  I can enjoy it pure.  But it is also great with a bit of cream and honey. 

A really great alternative to black tea, and healthy as they come. 

Have a cuppa, and take good care! 

 

Yet another fun little carving project: Whittle a hobo clothespin

This is another beginner-friendly crafts project.  All you need is a Swiss Army knife again.  For wood, I choose hazel, because it is easy to carve when fresh and dries out to be tough and resilient, due to the long, dense grain.  You want to take a piece that is as straight as possible and with no twigs or branches.  At a right angle, drill a hole with the awl of the SAK.  Widen the hole with your little blade or by using the saw. 

I made a little Video about it on the YouTube channel: 

The hole acts as a stress relief hole. 

Using your little blade, carve a recession, Equalizer on both sides, towards the end of stick. Use the big blade to split the wood towards the relief hole. Do not forget to lock your elbows to your sides. Lightly work the blade into the end grain.  As soon as you feel the resistance of the wood go down, your stick is split.  

Now carve a tear-shaped hole towards the end of the stick. Be careful not to remove too much material from the end. 

With a scooping cut, remove the thickness at the middle of the clamp. What this does is reducing the spring resistance of the clamp. 

Add a V- or stop cut for decoration or for fixing the pin to the washing line with twine. Add another at the end to cut the clothespin from the branch. 

And just like that, you have a little helper that can also come in handy for re-closing packages. You can carve these as a beginner in just half an hour. 

 With more experience, however, you can carve one in less than ten minutes.  

For me, that is a quick and satisfying project, especially when you have little time.  

So, I hope that was halfway helpful.  Thanks for dropping by, and take good care! 

Forest resources-making wild garlic and chicken of the woods salt

The other day I went foraging for wild garlic and chicken of the woods, so I figured I should preserve them with salt. Actually having stuff like that in the larder often is the difference between having a halfway decent meal and nothing at all, so it is not just a little cottagecore hobby for me, but a necessity.  

I just covered the wild garlic with salt and mixed until oozy, and dried it at 50°C for two hours (until you could easily crush it)..

Also got myself some chicken of the woods.  Look here for a Video: 

I finely cut up the mushroom and diced it as finely as would go.  

I covered with turmeric, allspice, paprica, coriander, cayenne, cumin, salt and pepper.

Dried it at 50°Celsius for two hours. 

Covered with salt. I actually vacuumized the glasses, too, just to be sure. If you use it, take good care to boil it into the stew, curry or soup.  It is actually delicious and has a rich Umami flavour and literally tastes like chicken.  Enjoy!😉

 

Another mythological knife-from junk

This is a knife I forged quite some time ago at a really lovely friend's place. It is exclusively made from material I found in the woods.  The blade is made from a three-layer laminate from a really old file and 150 year old leaf spring. The leaf spring had a carbon content of about 0.7 %. 

That file, though...

With the first blows from the hammer, it crumbled like old cake, so I had it checked. It has a carbon content of about 1,5% and a weird dendritic structure.  So, grinding away all the rust marks and structure, and gently tapping at a relatively low temperature with a really small temperature window it was. Used a wooden mallet for that. It took me two days to get it to move at all, and a break of three month to recover from the inflammation in my elbow to weld it in between the leaf spring sandwich construction. And at first it didn't want to weld. Drove me fecking mad.  But it eventually worked out, after I messed up the first piece. Forged some kind of animal head to the handle. 

The handle is wrapped with some rawhide of a rotting fox cadaver I took with permission and which was salted and smoked and wet-wrapped after soaking in a concoction of soda and denatured alcohol, then heat-treated with resin, beeswax, mastix, mistle berries, dragon's blood resin in denatured alcohol. 

  

The grind is a high convex bevel to almost zero. Almost flat, to be precise, and polished in the edge. The blade is really resilient, and selectively triple-tempered. The edge is really hard, I estimate it at some 62HRC, the middle is soft, the spine is also tempered to an estimated 52HRC. It throws sparks off a flint and a ferrocerium rod.  It is rather thin at 2.8 mm, but can be bent to almost 50 degrees. 

Length is some 102mm, the CoB is on the index finger. 

The fascinating thing is that I learned a lot in the process (and as I said, I failed first), and that it is a bit of a playing with undereutectoid and eutectoid steels. It does look like any old ren fair knife, but it is not.  

There actually was a huge learning curve involved. Also, the knife is a part of my own story. I intimately knew that fox relative, I found the steel in nocturnal woods under a sickle moon, and I bled and suffered for the knife. I made my sacrifices for it.  

It is the sharpest knife I ever made, and you guys know that I am my own worst critic normally.  I am almost a bit scared of it, even though one can always do better.  That is not my point.  It is not perfect, it is not better than my Casström.  Well, maybe it is far more slicey. 

But it is a myth in itself. A piece of magic, maybe.  

As a kid, I wanted to find the magic sword, as a lot of kids do. And as an adult, I asked the forest.  I have shown you some of its answers on the blog over the years. It has been a weird, but interesting journey, and about some of its answers I would not talk.  No offence meant, but most people simply could not understand.  

Thing is, the magic sword will no longer smite the dragon.  The symbol of the time is not a symbol of chivalry or heroism.  The symbols of our time are the tank, the whip, the Credit Card- and the extermination robot.  All introduced by the dragons of our world, cursing mankind every single day. 

The forests are dwindling. Wildfires rage. 

But deep below, from the mycelium, magic sprouts.  It lingers eternal. It is patient and alien. It sometimes looks really profane.  Like a harsh, hard truth, sometimes. 

But never forget: It is invincible, because it is infathomeable, because it is indomiteable.  

I will die sooner or later. I will rot.  But I am a part of the magic.  

I am indomiteable.  

Become magic.  

Another simple carving project: Carving a comfort bird

Recently I stumbled across a really great tutorial on YouTube, by The Maker Experience (Awesome guy, go check him out!) 

And of course I tried it out! It worked a cinch, although I did some of the steps in a different order.  

I made some in hazel and some in cherry, hoping to add a bit of my own flavour to the idea. 

Projects like this are really awesome.  You can accomplish them with a simple Swiss Army knife. 

Have a cuppa, sit in the woods, listen to the birds and whittle away.  

It doesn't need a lot of your time, just a half of an hour is enough for some nice results. 

 You can always do better, as you can see in the picture, and you will make some good progress relatively fast.  

And there is a punchline, of course.  Because, while not on a primary level, making pretty and good things is political. 

Why that, you ask? 

Woodcarving and greenwood work is scientifically proven to be beneficial for your mental health (https://www.churchilltrust.com.au/project/to-investigate-the-mental-health-benefits-of-green-woodworking-in-therapeutic-settings-for-veterans et al). It offers a sense of calm, of self-empowerment, and of achievement.  In a world that floods the zone with horror and bullshit in order to keep you in a state of learned helplessness in order to steal your sovereignity, your dignity and human rights from you, everything that enables your resilience is resistance.  Add to that the soothing effect of being in nature, and it can really help you heal. Try it, you won't regret it. It certainly helps me keep what little sanity I still have, and it never fails to soothe my soul.  

Maybe it can help you, too.  

Take good care, and thanks for dropping by, as always! 😊

Crafted a possibles pouch from woolen rags

On a recent bimble I came across some woolen rags hanging in the creek. Now the water had felted the wool already to a good degree, and after rinsing them a bit, I decided I wanted to make something from it. Taking care not to put them anywhere near any food, I took them home, put them into detergent overnight, washed them, boiled them with Chaga, Mugwort, decon tablets, Iron(III)chloride, more detergent, rinsed with Sagrotan and washed with Lanoline soap, thoroughly rinsed, and was left with some material for a pouch.  

Sewed it together with some twine. 

Then I quickly carved a button from boxwood someone disposed of, sewed it on, and, hey presto, possibles pouch.  

I really enjoy projects like that. It really feels empowering to be able to create something from utter crap, with next to no provisions. Actually I find, that this is a political thing.  There is a wealth for the poor, if we own our poverty. We should not, but this is a way to reclaim sovereignity. To reclaim life.  

There is hope, after all. 

Thanks for dropping in, and take good care. 

 

Making pitch glue

I was looking for an alternative to e.g. fixing knife handles, and it is a bit of a recurring question over the years: How would people have set handles to their knives? As for the iron age, and even in early 20th century Finland still, knife handles might have been set into fresh wood, with as good a fitting as would possibly go, and let the wood shrink around the tang and sometimes peen or bend the protruding tang over.  But handles had been fixed with glue since the Palaeolitic age.  One method for sure is using birch tar glue with a bit of animal fat and something fibrous, such as plant fibres, or fur fibres from animal hide.  This here is a recipe inspired by a mentioning by T. Sirelius: Ethnographia Laponia. I used some fur I found in the woods and cut them short. 

I added 1 pt beeswax for 9 pts spruce resin and about two spoonfuls of wood ashes. 

Boiling the pitch is something you take good care of.  Use a small tuna can and a small amount. Most probably your concoction will catch fire. That is not desireable, but don't panic, and for chrissakes don't try to extinguish the flames with water, for it would explode. Best do it outside, keep some sort of lid handy (a small dish will work). Most of the time, you can simply blow out the flames.  It is crucial that you actually do boil the resin.  

The glue will cool to a really hard surface. You will need to heat it in order to use it.  

I hope that was helpful 😉. 

Take good care, thanks for dropping in, and until next time!

A Bushcraft and Slöjd heaven in the making

Silke had contacted me some weeks ago.  Now Silke is a really awesome human being doing a great job representing a local sustainability centre on a high professional level. She had seen me carving some wood spirits, and it turned out, that she was actually quite fond of them.  So I offered to carve one for the sustainability centre for free.  We met in the woods to discuss the topic... and ended up sitting on a stump carving things until dark.  

Several days later I dropped by the centre and went to work immediately. Silke had said:"Make it your own", and I was pretty much amazed by the amount of trust put into me, and the positively creative atmosphere and flat hierarchy. Silke is the manager after all.  I spare you the ironforge rant, but just let it be said that up to date I did never experience such an atmosphere.  That is not to say that everything is possible, but the discussion culture is a whole different thing to everything I know. We are currently trying to work out a lot of ideas for the future, but first things first.  

I am just super stoked to be welcome for a change, so much in fact that I might have been a bit overwhelming. 

Anyway, I cleared up a spot for carving sessions with kids already.  The plan is to provide an open Slöjd meetup every Friday, with some basic tools and materialbeing available for absolute beginners. This will be complemented with Workshops and tutorials.  The Slöjd meetup will be open for a little contribution, but open for absolutely everyone. We are currently trying to provide a halfway convenient access for wheelchairs also, just so you get the picture.  It will be just that I will be there every Friday after Easter, working on my own projects, but if you drop by, I will do my best to help you with your projects, or maybe even learn from you? Anyway, if you are in the vicinity, drop by and have a chat.  

That said, I also worked on said woodspirit (s), because I could not restrain my creativity.  

Prepared wood for a gate and a Lean-to.

Made a mallet for splitting wood for a bench (driving gluts and stuff) 

It was a bit fidgetty clamping the wood for the head, but the woodspirit is a good guy and was eager to help 😉. 

Also prepared a signpost for the gate. 

The drawknife I got dead cheap on a local flea market. It is around hundred years old and razor sharp after some TLC.  I don't know what I would have done without it-it really was helpful, and I love it to bits!

Another woodspirit I made. 

When I was feeling too fluffy from the big stuff, I worked on that little cup from birch burr.  

There was a group of young girl- and boyscouts staying at the centre, so I already showed them a simple try stick.  One of the little ladies pointed out a mouse coming around to have a look, and we tried out to carve a mouse together (see my older post). 

This is how it is supposed to work in the future.  Just drop by, bring your pocket or bushcraft knife and maybe a flask of tea or coffee (we are currently working that out, too, however). Sit on a log or we can build stuff together to sit on.  

Really looking forward to it, and we do have a lot of ideas still for the future.  

 

Lovely early spring cottage cheese

Went foraging the other day and thought I would share one of my favourite herbal cottage cheese recipes with you.  

With the magic troll 's herb chopper, I finely chopped: 

one small handful of wild garlic 

equal parts ground elder, lungwort, chives, onion leek, jack-by-the-hedge, stinging nettle, 

Half a medium finely chopped onion

a bit of dried thyme, Oregano, rosemary, salt and pepper 

A tablespoon of butter, 

A tablespoon of grated horse radish

250 g of cottage cheese 

80g of Gorgonzola 

One teaspoon of squash seeds oil

Mix butter and oil. Add the Gorgonzola and thoroughly mix until smooth. Add the cottage cheese, stir until smooth. Add the horse radish, spices and herbs.  Thoroughly mix.  Leave to steep in the fridge.  Awesome with rye bread or as a dip for vegs. You can also fill mushrooms with it and grill them.