primitive containers

okay, so remember when i took a class in primitive cooking, and then survival skills, and then blacksmithing? well, the teen and i went back to tim macwelch of earth connections to learn how to make primitive containers.

super nice weather, considering it's august, and pleasant company. tim is just great and so are his other students.

we started with ceramics - finding natural clay and crushing gravel for temper.

 

 

first we added splashes of water to the clumpy, dried clay to make it into a malleable substance, then combined 1/3 part crushed quartz gravel temper, finally shaping it into a pinch pot of sorts.

these will need to dry completely for several months before we fire them in our fire pit, slowly bringing their temperature up until they are covered in a roaring fire to reach well over 1000 degrees. artemis' has fewer cracks than mine. i suspect neither will fare well in the firing process.

we made additional pinch pots using store-bought clay which was much smoother and more pleasant to work with just to have the comparison experience. we mixed in temper with those, too, and made them with rounded bottoms (to enable self-stirring) and textured exteriors (to increase surface temperature for heat retention). i rolled mine around a tree trunk to get the natural looking impressions; tim showed us how to wrap twine or rope around a wooden paddle to hit the clay and leave a classic pattern.

next up was basketweaving, a much better use of vines than wreath making, according to tim (he has a vendetta against wreaths). tim had cut, cleaned, and dried wisteria vines from his parents' place for us to use; he also took us to check out other useful vines like green briar (you need to pull the nasty little thorns off), honeysuckle (peel off the white papery bark to keep it supple and workable), and grapevine (thick and woody but has a tendency to become brittle).

we started with four over four as the warp, wound the weft over the top ones and under the bottom ones four times to anchor, then stuck in another warp "spoke" so we could do proper over and under weaving with an odd number (even wouldn't allow us to alternate). spreading out the warp as we wove and pulling the weft vine tightly created the shape of the basket.

artemis' turned out quite nicely. he liked the color on the inside; i admired the pattern on the outside.

finally, we talked about hollowing out split logs by burning depressions into them with hot embers. we didn't get to do much more than start them, but we have a good enough idea that we can probably fashion them into crude bowls.

random fun - a beaver ball made of wood

monarch haven

i counted eighteen monarch caterpillars and two chrysalises this morning. i also saw the empty shell of a chrysalis, telling me that a butterfly had likely emerged to complete the life cycle. i'm pleased.

 

there were some sleepy bees and sami, the yellow garden orb-weaving spider.

 

the caterpillars have come

all my milkweed is bringing them to my yard ;)

for the longest time, it seemed, i would not have any monarch caterpillars. there was one, a few weeks ago, and then it was gone.

i saw a flash of orange butterfly wings the other day and went outside to investigate - and found five caterpillars on various milkweed plants! now i've been checking on them multiple times per day, especially after the strong rainstorms (and hail!) we've been having. their little sticky feet let them hug the stems and leaves, so i think they are ok, or they've moved on to another stage.

today i found an actual monarch butterfly and a few more baby caterpillars. no sign of any chrysalises, but i bet they are hiding somewhere. circle of life and all.