Last week I did a 4 day trek from Dunkeld to Blair Atholl, supervising a Duke of Edinburgh’s Award expedition group. On the way I set myself the challenge of making a woven coiled basket. This type of basket involves threading coils of plant material together in a spiral. It leads to a basket that …
Category: Bushcraft
Tree Bud Photo Guide
In March, trees in Scotland start to come back into leaf. Now's a good time to study tree buds as they get bigger and begin to open up. Hawthorn and elder are amongst the first and oak and ash among the last to come into leaf. All of these photos were taken in Mugdock Country …
Snowy Bushcraft Course
Arriving at Wiston Lodge on Saturday morning there was a lot of snow, about 40cm of deep, powdery, fluffy snow. This was snowshoe conditions! It was cold too, perfectly still and the sky cloudless. Me and Isaac had turned up early to set up for a bushcraft course for a family from Edinburgh, mum - …
Weaving a Grass Mat
A fun bushcraft project to try in the winter is to make a grass mat using a weaving loom made from hazel. Here’s how you do it... The first step is to make the loom. Look for a hazel tree and collect several long straight branches of dead standing wood about a thumb thickness in …
Making a Kishie
A kishie is a traditional Shetland basket made from plant materials. Up in Shetland there aren't many willow trees that are so useful in basket-making. That meant, in the past, Shetlanders had to craft baskets and creels from other materials like oat straw, soft rushes, docken, marram grass and even heather. This summer I was …
Weave while you walk – how to make baskets!
Just back from a walk on Kerrera and whilst exploring the island I gathered the materials for and made a wee basket. You can weave a baskets with lots of different materials, this one is made from stuff you can find on most walks in Scotland: willow and soft rushes. Here’s how. 1) Gather seven …
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Flax Cordage
Flax Phormium tenax is a plant from New Zealand that is pretty common in gardens and public spaces in Scotland. I learnt about the plant from Simon and Carol West, on a recent About Argyll Walking Holidays tour to Orkney in July 2017. The Maori name for flax is harakeke and is used for making …
