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The world needs more people like this. A truly inspiring film.

This film came up in my blog feed and I had to share it. It is about the traditional Japanese art of repairing broken objects.
 If you want to know more about Japanese and Korean craft then The Unknown Craftsman, an insight into Japanese beauty, is a fascinating and worthwhile read. It is always good to have our ideas and beliefs challenged.

A jointer for saws, both workshop and two person cross cut saws. This is a jointer that will joint straight panel and tenon saws as well as saws with a crown or curved edge. I have been doing a fair bit of saw sharpening recently and thought I could make a simple jig to fulfil both types of jointed edge.

Having a jig to bend the file so that a curved edge can be jointed make life so much easier. I would not be without one especially when renovating crowned cross cuts.

The sap is rising and the trees are coming into leaf. So if you have a tree or stick in the woods that the bark needs to come off it is time to begin thinking about it. The texture and shapes of skinned wood is wonderful and I often make shrink pots at this time of year so that I can, just, slip the bark off.

I am great one for making jigs. In the long run they save so much time and  enable the job to be done to a higher standard.

I met Jon last year at a show, unfortunatly life throws up all sorts of stuff that stops me from finding time to spend with others. This week I finally got around to meeting up with Jon in his workshop and had a great time talking about wood and tools. Jon has a blog http://riversjoinery.blogspot.co.uk if you want to see more of his work.

Jon has been researching and making riven oak furniture and has a beautiful joined chest in his workshop.

I had to take, and share a photo of his bench holdfast, just a bit of bent pipe.

Okay, they do not last forever, but it works.

These last few months have been a difficult and very sad time for me and my family. I have never had anyone really close to me die. My mum, Jane, died on the 4th Jan.
Jane has always been very supportive of my art and craft, and has always valued it highly when I have given something to her as a gift. I have been making for decades and have always wanted to give her something different for each birthday and for festive occasions, and so this has been an influence on my exploring and discovering new crafts.

My family home is in rural Mid Wales; an isolated traditional Welsh cottage in a field, across a ford and up a rough track to a smallholding.
The funeral  bypassed the institutions. We buried her in a simple but most wonderful way, surrounded by family and friends, on family land and overlooking the Cambrian mountains.

My brother Toby has set himself a challenge in our Mum’s memory, an epic task that I can not even begin to think about doing. A fundraising event called ‘9 events in 9 months’, which includes marathons and Iron Man events, and even a sports event competing against a horse. All money raised is going to the charity Cancer Research Wales.

If you feel like giving, even if it only a pound or dollar, please do so at:- http://www.justgiving.com/9events9months

Jane spent her last weeks in two different hospitals, and the staff of these institutions did their best for her. Our family has nothing but praise for all the professionals who looked after her. Her last weeks were spent in a small cottage hospital in Tregaron only 5 miles away from home. This meant that my dad, Glenn, could spend far more time with her than if she was in the large regional hospital, miles away in Aberystwyth. She was in that hospital initially, and I saw the physical, financial and emotional toll that it took on dad when he had to travel in daily.
I am a great supporter of the NHS. I am also very concerned that small hospitals are being closed and facilities are being moved into fewer, bigger hospitals. I am also very concerned that the NHS is being sold off very quickly to private business. This has huge bearing on peoples’ lives, more so on the poor, and those who live in rural areas where facilities and public transport are lacking or non existent.
I am afraid that in my later life that I, and my family, will not have access to the NHS that I have contributed to all my life.

Travelling in Sikkim is hard. The roads are hard, and if they were like that in the UK, parts of them would be classified as not suitable for motor vehicles. In mountain regions landslides always happen, and during the monsoon season the constant rain easily washes tarmac away.
The main way of travelling is by public jeep that you can book at the jeep and bus stands. At around 120 Rs, that is £1.20 per person, they are more expensive than the buses but are far quicker and more reliable.
The issue is just how many people they fit in. 3 rows of seats and 4 people to a row, including 3 next to the driver. Try it one day in a 4×4 and then go off roading. We often booked 3 seats instead of 2 for that extra bit of comfort, if indeed you can call a 4 hour journey bouncing up and down and being thrown side to side as the driver tries to overtake a lorry on a blind bend with a 300 foot drop next to you and no safety barrier on the road, comfort.  The average speed is 13 miles per hour.

 The kitchen is the heart around which daily life revolves. The stove is built from local clay and has 2 hotplates. Smoke rises into the roof and out through the eves and covered chimney hole on top of the roof. Most of this building has a ceiling, apart from above the stove. The slatted platform above the stove is used for drying stuff. The red meat hanging from the ceiling is mainly fat which is used for frying.

 As with the rest of the world concrete is taking over as the building material of choice. This is expensive and not environmentally friendly. I had a few talks about this with our hosts. Concrete houses cost more than traditional wooden Lepcha houses.  Another issue is earthquakes. A concrete house is destroyed and cannot be recycled or reused, a traditional house has more flexibility built into it. Centuries of design have considered material and environmental needs, and with traditional materials, if the worst happens then they can be reused to some extent.

The square holes at the bottom of this post are for tying animals to. This understorey is used for housing animals, often year round, as there are no fields on the very steep mountain sides.

 I have a very understanding wife, and how could I survive 3 weeks without any knife work? So I took a basic spoon carving kit along with me. The only thing missing was an axe but I used the local banpok. These are used widely used traditional Lepcha tools. Tshering asked  me to carve a spoon for serving rice, and I was given a very dry plank of local wood.

This post is mainly just photos. Click on the images to see them bigger so you can read the writing. I find it strange that this tree has not taken over the world. It drops aerial roots which soon thicken up once rooted in the ground. The tree that walks. As you will see, a road will not stop it. What’s more it is not really that old, compared with some of our ancient and big trees in the UK. The Botanic garden is run down, especially compared to similar places in England. Lucy and I had a great time and I would like to visit again, if the opportunity arises.

    

Sikkim is a beautiful place, it is not perfect but they have policies in place that put some western countries to shame. No public smoking, and 6 months in prison if you use plastic bags. In Mangan we where given a type of donut on the ultimate in sustainable plates.
I saw these plates in other parts of India as well as Sikkim, I also saw a lot of street food being served on fresh leaves. Being tropical, and sub tropical, plants grown so fast and in such abundance.

The plates are held together with a few thorns, they may not be, but that is what I thought they were. They are also made in huge quantities. I did a post on some wooden disposable plate a long time ago, but I think these are even more sustainable.

This sign is at the Sikkim border. The sign says ” In Sikkim use of plastic bags and littering of plastic waste and materials is an offence”. 5000 Rs is about £50. As aliens we had to get a 30 day restricted area permit, which we did in Bagdogra airport, to get through border control.