Back from a week off

I'm back at school this week after the holidays. I was just hanging around at home but I managed to get the 50 plant species list finished, I did it on PowerPoint and everything! Then me and Heli went to Mikkeli for a few days and popped over to Joensuu for a night to get drunk with D-Willy.

Before the holidays I took part in and completed the First Aid 2 course so apparently I am now a first aider and I've got a certificate to prove it. Unlucky everyone, pray you don't need first aid if only I'm about. Only joking I wasn't that bad.

So this week Turkka is back and he's showing us all kinds of traditional skills. We met in the classroom on Monday morning so he could describe what we were going to make that day before we headed out to search for the materials from the forest and to construct Atlatal's by the laavu.

It was pretty cold, the thermometer at the house said -8, but we're wilderness guides so it doesn't matter how cold it is. Mira is so tough she's not even wearing gloves! So first we got the materials, chopped down some Rowan tree's to make the darts or spears because it grows pretty straight, then we used Alder to carve the Atlatal which is the spear thrower. It acts as an extension of your arm to give more leverage when throwing.

That's my effort. The length for the dart is from the floor to your armpit. I stripped the bark off and removed any twigs then made a small hole in the end of it and tied some feathers to guide it in flight, but I'm not sure if they helped? I didn't weight it at the other end because it seemed to be heavy enough. As for the Atlatal, the length should be from your elbow to the tips of your fingers, it has a hole for your forefinger to go in and grip the handle, then at the other end I fixed a hook that the end of spear goes onto when throwing. I also carved a nice shape to it just for fun. After a bit of throwing practice that was about it for the day, Mondays are short days anyway.

Another cold day, the thermometer said -10. Apparently its gonna warm up a little tomorrow and towards the weekend. Today we had to make some targets to shoot at with our Atlatal's, wicker birds then.

 

Turkka showed us what to do then we were on our own. I collected twigs from birch trees a little over two feet long then started by twisting some of the twigs into a ball shape a little larger than my fist, and using wire wrapped the rest of the twigs at one end. Making space in the centre of these twigs I shoved the ball into it to form the body and wrapped the wire around to form the shape. I then folded the twigs up to from the neck and continued wrapping the wire around tightly which keeps the twigs in whatever position you want them. For the head I split the twigs into two bunches and folded them over again to create a big eye shape and beak and wrapped them up. I finished it off with the knife to shape the beak and tail a little.

I cant rotate this picture for some reason?

My target. Apparently you can use these when hunting to lure other birds in, because the birds will only look at the shape of the lure and if they're happy with it they'll want to come over to say hello. Then as long as your a good shot you have your dinner. I only used it to shoot at though.

Here he is, ready for shooting.

Everyone Else's birds and Tim's dog waiting to go home. Today we also prepared some tinder fungus for making fire lighters, made rucksack frames and nets but I'll save that for another day.

As for the rest of the Russian trip, I'll add pictures here and there with descriptions but I've got to get on with some studying, we've got a dirty test next week.

Laters.