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Among the amazing things I've learned about our cabin studio and its environs is that the Temperate Rainforest where our cabin is located has incredibly high biodiversity.  In fact, it contains more species of trees than all of Europe! When I read that fact my mind was blown.  I felt as though I'd been instantaneously schooled in the vastness of creation, and our relatively small part in it all.  The tree work we had done yielded many branches and twigs.  Among them, Paperbark Maple and River Birch.  I use an Exacto knife to sharpen my drawing pencils (a la the classical approach in which a sizable length of exposed pencil lead is preferred).  Before I continue, please know that if you're considering giving whittling a go, you are strongly advised to use knives meant for that purpose, and wear a cut-proof glove.  I did neither of these things out of a dangerous combination of experience and foolishness.

I snagged a couple of the Paperbark Maple and River Birch branches, feeling there were tools in them waiting to cut loose.  From the branches I saved I carved a set of US double point needles (birch), two cable needles (maple), and a double-ended crochet hook for bulky on one end, and super bulky on the other.  All of this completed while the wood remained green as the nature of these woods is to become quite hard upon drying, making them very difficult to whittle using my Exacto knife.

I kept the appropriate yarn nearby for testing of the tools as I carved, finding it remarkably satisfying to find vast improvement in the tools' function each time I shaved off the most minute slivers.

Keeping a small square of fine sandpaper nearby as I began knitting a hat on the DPNs made smoothing any unnoticed tiny slivers quick and efficient as I tested the needles.  Although everything was thoroughly and carefully sanded ahead of the testing, snags snuck up here and there.  A case of art imitating life, I suppose.

There is a certain poetry to making the unseen known.  To revealing the magic in things that create other magic.  And in exercising gratitude to the incredible natural world around us.

xoxo 

Ladianne and Sheri