Our Non-Work Activities

And we are off! 

Waiting at a rest stop to start our journey to Norway. We needed the chocolate to stay up so late!

It seems crazy but it may actually be easier to blog while on the road than it has been at "home" this past month. No wifi and only a shared, excruciatingly slow computer makes blogging the last thing you want to do. A sick form of torture! Here is a bit about what we have been getting up to recently.

 Though we've certainly been pouring a lot of energy into our building projects, we've also had time for excursions and personal activities as well.

Our most frequent activity is cooking... for which Lucy serves as head chef. Adie and Greg function as unskilled labor sous-chefs. Greg especially is getting a real cooking education! Thibaud mostly keeps to himself while we are cooking (he seems to have a bit of a facebook addiction) but is happy doing dishes. A few days ago, however, he showed his true Frenchness, making crepes with homemade caramel!

Zucchini fritters and pancakes!

Next up is swimming. Because showers are few and far between because the spring that provides them with water doesn't provide enough water (in fact we ran out this week because it's so hot and dry and had to fill tubs at the community farm), we make up in other ways and at other places. We have been to the sauna at the local community farm, but mostly we go swimming. The first week we tried a few different lakes, but we have settled on a favorite. It sets itself apart because there is a long dock that you can jump off of. Jumping in is good because only the top foot or so of water is warm, and below about 3 or 4 feet, the water is frigid.

Here is Greg at our favorite swimming lake.

We also read a lot, and as a group, play cards. Like our lake preference, we have quickly settled on a favorite game, "Smashed and Out." This game has been a fixture of Mitchell family gatherings for about a decade. The game is similar to Uno, but played with two regular decks of cards. There are a lot of rules, most of them designed to be amusingly infruriating (e.g. you have to say "this is a spade" every time you play a spade!).

Finally, we are making knives! Lärkan has been making knives as a hobby for more than 20 years, although now he sells a lot of them, through friends of friends. Mostly he just makes handles and sheaths for purchased blades, but he does have a mini forge setup too, which he uses to forge blades from old metal files. During our initial tour of the farm, Marjo pointed out Lärkan's workshop, which had to be expanded into the hay loft because so many of the workawayers want to make knives. This got us excited, but unfortunately Lärkan was away on a fly fishing trip. He would be back for about 5 days, then was leaving for another fishing trip, so we wouldn't have much time with him! 

When he got back, he sorted us out with some cheap stamped steel blades he had lying around, as well as the other materials we would need for the handles. Certain things we had to get ourselves because he was out of them, like leather for sheaths. He gave us an old how to video (on a video cassette!) which unfortunately was all in Swedish. We watched it in fast forward, and it wasnt all that helpful. However, Lärkan got us started with the first few steps and was also finishing up a knife and sheath at the time, so between those three resources we (mostly Adie) felt like we ought to be able to figure it out. We did, and are both happy with what we produced as first attempts! 

Here is a quick photo series of the process.

The block of wood has been cut to size, and squared up on the sander. Pattern of handle and tang (the portion of the blade that sticks into the handle) drawn on. Holes drilled into the handle, then widened by hand to match the taper of the tang, using a jig saw blade and much patience. This one is not quite in deep enough yet.

This is a slice of buffalo horn, sanded and polished, then fit onto the tang so there are no gaps. The corresponding amount will be cut off of the wood block to allow for this thickness.

Here it is with two layers of red spacing material, which absorbs glue and means here are no gaps in the lamination. This will all get glued up with epoxy by clamping the butt end of the knife up against the blade. If you did everything right, things line up nice and square. We didn't quite manage...but it's only cosmetic. 

Once glued, the handle is shaped using various power sanders, then 40, 120, 240 and 320 grit hand sanding. Soak overnight in linseed oil, then make a sheath (which isn't a difficult process in and of itself, but it's tricky to make it the right size for the knife!

This is Lucy's, the knife she'd been looking for to complete her sailor's "rig" (as the combo of knife and marlin spike is known amongst tall ship sailors). A sheath for the spike is next!