Old Year, New Horizons

When I first began writing many years ago, as I related around this time last year, it was with the resolve to write a meagre page a day for the entire year. The first year came and went, and although there were more than 400 pages written then, I simply was unable to write one a day, and only through expanding the size of the page I wrote on did it translate to more than the 365 I needed. The second year was close to the first, and from the start I wrote on those marginless pages and again fell short. Every year since the first has shown the same result, sometimes only one or two short, sometimes closer to a dozen.

This year, however, I for the first time reached that tantalizing 365 and wrote a few more for the closure to the story it needed. Now, as the last few days of December slip past in preparation for the new year and the next chapter of a larger story, I await the adventures to come.

In a few short hours I will be boarding a plane to London, and a few days later to Dublin, for a yet unwritten journey to wherever the lands may take me.

Until next year, happy holidays and safe travels.

Leather Tooling

Ever since seeing Jake Powning's leatherworking demonstration at Oakland this October, I have started thinking about how I can take what I learned and apply it to my own work. In the past, I always thought of leatherworking as pressing (hammering) patterns and shapes into the leather rather than carving it in a sense. As my fractured finger heals, I have had little to do in the way of blades and sheaths, so I turned to something else instead.

I decided to try tooling the front of a notebook with my chasing tools, which, I learned the hard way, was more difficult than I thought it would be (considering I had to do it with the leather dry).

First I drew the pattern, a simple take on the knotwork Tree of Life. I used this drawing, sized to the front of the notebook, as a pattern which I would then use the semi-sharp edge of a creasing tool from the chasing set to trace it into the leather.

From there, I lifted the pattern off and went over the lines again to make them deeper and crisper. Although it is not what I had in mind when I started, as I originally wanted to make the cords uniformly deep instead of the two lines for the edges, I was satisfied with the hour or so it took to do.

The effect is subtle and unfortunately difficult to capture on camera, but here is the result.

October Skies

There are, I firmly believe, those points in everyone's life however old or young, that serve as a clear defining point. In my youth, I had the unfortunate reasoning to see everything for its value in resilience.  Ignorance, I would call it now. I was fascinated with the ancient worlds that we once lived in yet inexplicably removed myself from the human aspect of it. When I travelled to Romania some years ago, I went to extraordinary efforts to take pictures that did not have people in them, whether the crumbling ruins of a fortress or a church celebrating its 1,000 year anniversary. Yet later when I was perusing them I found that they seemed hollow. How can there be culture without people? One of the photos that lingers in my mind the most is a shepherd and his flock, migrating across the countryside. I cannot say why it has had such a profound impact on me, but in the years since that singular memory has remained stronger than any others.

Nate Runals watching over the hearth 
furnace at Scott's Hammer In

In the years since, I have slowly come to an understanding with myself and how I view the world. As a craftsman, it is the process of creation that brings about the greatest satisfaction, the ability to use my hands to turn the raw, ruggedness of the earth into a tool or a representation of the wild scenes from my imagination. However, as I delved deeper into the culture of what it means to be a craftsman, I realized that it is the people that keep me there. With enough other commitments to fill two full time jobs, I find that it is difficult to get into the shop as often as I would like, yet there is a sense of camaraderie and fellowship in the spirit of craftsmen that I have found nowhere else. Sharing in the knowledge and company of such like minded people is strengthening, invigorating, instilling with a sense that what you are doing is fundamentally right.

When I first entered into the craft of bladesmithing, I had only the vast expanse of electronic knowledge to expose myself to, but it was more than simply the cold reflection of an illuminated computer screen. On the other side, there were people there who were, once, in the same place as I.  From the first days of trying to absorb everything I possibly could, I was met with warm welcome and encouragement at both my successes and failures, something that become so disparagingly rare in this age, especially when it is so easy for people to assume a mask of anonymity and shell of defence behind the gateways of the internet and social media.

Eli with his patternwelded saxat Fire & Brimstone

It was at Ashokan two years ago that I first met fellow craftsmen in person, not only of blades but all sorts. The amount I learned there in the span of three days was staggering compared to the previous months on my own. More than that, I for the first time began to experience the organisation of craftsmen as something more than simply a virtual network. In the following spring, I had the good fortune to catch the close of Baltimore Knife and Sword Co.'s annual Fire and Brimstone hammer in, and then a month later Scott Roushof Big Rock Forge's hammer in up in northern Wisconsin. This year  I attended Ashokan's hammer in for a second time, and through the past year of travelling I was shocked at how natural it felt to be around the men and women of similar pursuit, despite my own meagre skills.

Sign hanging outside the door to the once Mad Dwarf 

Workshop, now David's own Cedarlore Forge

Come the first weekend in October, I was afforded an opportunity to which I am extremely grateful. David DelaGardelle of Cedarlore Forge hosted a small gathering in his shop in Indiana. The country there is spectacular, and the company was the best I have shared.  Although I was unable to bring any work of my own,  watching and helping in the work of some of the great craftsmen who inspired me to stop sitting around and dreaming of smithing and actually taking up a hammer.  It was that weekend, perhaps more than any other I have lived and may live for some time yet, that spoke to me in ways beyond describing. The company, the shop, the land, the pure, good natured brotherhood left me with a profound and deepened appreciation not only for the craft, but how I viewed my own life and what I intend to become. When I wrote on the nature of possession and inspired by my work, by my tools, by the knowledge that either I put the time to craft my own steel, my own hammer or forge or bow or boots, or that someone else out there did the same. I want to be driven by my surroundings, the very walls around me, to do better, to delve deeper into the culture of my ancestors and the process they went through hundreds of years ago. And it is in the good company of the people I met at Dave's that I have come to understand that there is so much beyond the present and the self and all that there is we see and perceive.  These words likely do not convey easily the message I intend, however I left that weekend feeling enlightened in every sense of the word.

the materialistic movement this age is tending towards, I only touched on the surface of something I intend to write more on at a later time once I have deepened my own understanding of what I see in the world around. At its core, however, I see the world as it begins to lose its significance in the small details. I want to be on the other side pushing back.

It was near the end of the month when I travelled to Oakland, California for the Axe 'n Sæx hammer in hosted by Alchemy Metalworks. Since the beginning of the year I had been looking forward to his immense gathering of some of the most talented craftsmen and genuine people I have ever met. From the far corners of the world and near, a weekend devoted to the furthering and understanding of the Saxon roots of the craft in all aspects brought a long trip from one coast to the other filled with anticipation.

Host Jim Austin annealing a demo piece of koftgari

Jake Powning working on knotwork

on a sheath

I was able to meet many of the people who I knew as the kindhearted, quirky and otherwise upstanding gentlemen (and gentlewomen ) with an affinity for hot metal, meats, and mead.  From the history of the sæx, from which the Saxons received their name, the knotwork patterns and their evolution across the centuries, the retelling of the old epics, demonstrations in leatherwork and carving and forging axes and sæxes, making wootz, history and hilarity, the days were so packed with unique experiences and an understanding of the roots we all share, I still look back to that weekend in a daze of memory.

Petr Florianek carving a piece of reindeer antler

Jim Austin welding the eye of a Dane axe

Niels Provos and Ric Furrer with Niels' Serpent Sword

Again here, I look back and see the second half of the two weekends so close together that I see them as one continuation of the other, with the same reference and awe as when I returned from Indiana four weeks prior. The fellowship anew and old alike renewed, the appreciation for the skill and passion of those good men and women who, when seen together represent one of the most gracious, inspirational, and all around upstanding group of people I have ever known, I can only think that I started down this path for a reason. As I continue to grow and develop my own skills and appreciation for the world around me, I know in my heart I would still be the same naive wander I was of my youth without a regard for what truly brings meaning to life.