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 …
Category: Bushcraft
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 …
Marram Grass Cordage
I visited the Shetland museum last week and was keen to find how local plants have been used to make rope, cordage and baskets (the Shetland word for rope is simmens). As well as reeds and straw I was interested to see that marram grass was used to make rope (see photo below). Yesterday I …
Foraging for food in Orkney and Shetland
Here are some edible plants I have been munching on up in Orkney and Shetland these past two weeks. Been guiding with About Argyll Walking holidays who run week long walking tours in the northern isles. I have to say a big thanks to Dr Carol West for teaching me so much about plants last …
Practising Friction Fire
Spent the afternoon in the woods today practicing friction fire using a bow drill. All went well to start with, got a good ember and blew it into flame using a tinder nest made of purple moor grass and bracken. Unfortunately my twigs didn't catch and the fire died. Thankfully I had put some charred …
