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| Can us spot how many camera shy volunteers are present? |
In November we saw the return of the really popular winter woodland workshop. It was very much a Christmas themed one, as Mark took the volunteers through a number of crafting skills using green wood and other natural materials.
Mark starting the day with 5 minutes of meditation to open our senses to the natural world around our site. It was really interesting to experience actively using our other senses to ground us in the immediate environment.
Mark then took the group through four different activities to show us some of the crafts that can be made with the natural materials from woodlands. Some of these materials can be found as part of waste created from habitats conservation days, others can be sourced with permission from different land managers who are managing sites can can advise you on what can be taken and how, to avoid negative impacts on the habitats.
The first task was using buff willow to make woven festive ornaments - information on buff willow can be found in this post from 2016 when Mark showed us how to weave baskets.
We revisited an old favorite from 2015 and showed people how to make elder whistles, which resulted in an impromptu jamming session from three of the course participants. Alas, as they were camera shy, I can't share any videos of the top tapping beats they conjured up with just three home made whistles!
These images from the 2015 session show some of the steps involved in making this whistle which can be made from either elder or hazel.
Elder is ideal for creating whistles as it has a large soft pith (the white bit in the middle of the stem) which can be hollowed out and shaped. The flipple was shaped from a young hazel stem.
Following our musical mischief where one of the volunteers used charcoal from our fire to mark up their whistle, we were shown how to use simple shapes, whittling and where needed, some marker pens, to create some very cool ornaments.
We finished the day using cuttlefish bone to create molds for pewter casting. Cuttlefish bone can be collected through beach combing as well as brought commercially, as it is a bi-product from cuttlefish harvested for food. This post from 2014 mentions how we did the casting back then, this time around, we used ingots of pewter which can be brought for casting.
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| What species can you spot |
At the very end of the day, as we were taking down our cover, we had a lovely leafy surprise - it almost looks like festive wrapping paper - can you spot some of the different species in our woodland from our leaf map?
We'll be running our next woodland craft event in Spring 2020 - Saturday 4th of April. We only have 10 spaces on the course (over 16s only), so sign up directly with me by emailing biodiversity@kingston.ac.uk - bookings are on a first come first booked bases.
Til next time
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