Few and far between

Nice picture there of Tuesdays classroom, more about that in the next post. It was a bit nippy tho, not sure what the temperature was, but it hasn't been much warmer than -20 for the last few weeks. Still not much snow about, but the weather man said its gonna start coming down proper next week.

Its been busy recently so I've had no time to write these posts. The old dears been moaning at I so I'm gonna put a bit of time aside to get them going again.

Since being back in Kuru after the holidays there has been a lot of classroom business so not too many pictures to show. Lots of trip planning for my professional examination in the spring and started on my business plan, but it's a long way off yet. There was a fish identification test today. I'm pretty confident that I passed, I'll be surprised if I got more than one wrong.

I stayed at the school last weekend and practised a little handy crafts. I whittled a little butter knife out of a piece of Grey Alder. It's a soft wood so very easy to work with and a butter knife is about as simple shape as you can carve so not too difficult.

 Then I found another small block of Grey Alder so started playing around carving a spoon. Sketched it first, then went to it first with an axe for the rough shape then my knife. Oh yeah I have a new toy.

My Hultafors army axe. 15€ brand new from the army surplus shop, proper bargain. Got a few marks on him now cos I let a few trees have some the other day.

 Anyway back to the spoon. I got it down to this shape and thought it was a little chunky, there was a small knot in the handle so it could've gone a bit wrong, but I split it in half with my knife and luckily it went straight through.

I carved the spoon with my hook knife. I don't know if its called a hook knife? but that's what I call it. Finished it off with a little sanding and that's that. Not bad.

Some other things I was messing around with. That fork is the other half of the spoon I split in half.

I also spent a night outside last week to test my new sleeping bag.It was about -20 give or take. No tent or anything, just on a sleeping mat on the floor. Absolutely fine, only wore my long johns and I was totally warm all night. Face got a little cold, but I have a balaclava to where next time. I want it to get a little colder to give it a proper test before our ski trip in a few weeks. We've been told to expect temps of -35 so I need to make sure my kit is up to it.

 I got a some pics of me from when I was on my work placement in Lapland. Thanks to the photographers we took around for a week. Snowmobiling and swimming.

I'm not that keen on having my picture taken normally so I wasn't overly comfortable with having my picture taken naked either.

That's all for now folks. Laters