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

Number 10

So as it turns out, the reason I couldn't find all the flags orienteering last week was because some of the flags were put in the wrong places, even in the wrong forest in some cases. Henkka owned up to it on Friday and said sorry. That leaves me wondering how some people found the flags that were totally in the wrong place's?? Anyway, we get another crack at it next week and Henkka promised the flags would be in the correct locations.

I completed the First Aid 1 course last week. Learnt how to do CPR, Heimlich manoeuvre and other good stuff. One important thing to remember is to control an unconscious patients head when moving them from say a seated position to the recovery position on the floor, and not to let go of the head half way so it bounces off the floor (sorry Irina). A bunch of paramedic students come up from Tampere to teach us how to brace broken bones, deal with concussions, sprains and strains, and different lifting/carrying techniques. Hopefully I wont need to use any of what I learned in a weeks time when we head to Russia for a 10 day expedition. We continue next month with First Aid 2.



 Russian planning group presentation

As Andy is our Russian speaker, he is kind of the main guy. Well that is if he gets his visa sorted out in the next week? He's ok to get into Russia cos he's from Belarus but his entry into Finland was slightly dodgy so he needs to make sure he can get back in after the trip.

Some info on the local area and history. Oh and by the way Andy is now a full-on carnivore. He's been eating ham and sausages all week like there's no tomorrow.

Our main route. It's only about 55km long but far from a walk in the park. No paths, just forest floor, bogs,  plenty of hills and rocky cliff faces to climb and a river crossing. That's with all our kit on our backs. Every morning we pack up camp and move out leaving little or no trace. I've been going over my kit list and trying to cut weight wherever I can but my backpack is gonna be heavy. The only good thing is that it will get lighter as the days go on when I'm eating all the food I'll be carrying. Not gonna say too much about it yet apart from I'm looking forward to it.

Here is the beggining of a spoon I'm working on, Its the first one I've done so I can only get better.
I started off by chopping a few pieces of Aspen, and selected a peice with the least knots and grain runing pretty straight. I actually started on the outside of the wood because it had a natural dip where I could form the bowl of the spoon.

I made the bowl of the spoon by placing a hot coal from the fire onto the wood to burn the main shape out as it's easier and quicker than trying to carve it out with a knive, and used a stem of Wild Angelica to use as a blow pipe to concentrate the heat on where I wanted to get the shape.

 Basic shape of the bowl, carfull not to burn through the bottom.

 Next I carved the rough shape of the spoon with an axe.

Then with my knive I carved the shape and took out the burnt wood from the bowl. I took my time, no hurry.

After a little sanding, it's still not finished but its as far as I've got, almost there tho.


This was something else I was messing around with the same day. It was supposed to be a butter knive but looks like it kind of turned out to be a butter/survival knive.

I've got a few other mini projects I've been messing around with like a wood gas stove. I'll get them on here soon but I'm hungry so I'm going to eat.

Laters