The first stage to lino printing is to find inspiration. Christmas is a great time to try this craft as it can be used in Christmas cards or for printing your own wrapping paper. It's important to bear in mind that shapes are paramount with lino cutting and printing, so it's a good idea to look for distinctive shapes with clear edges. You can add in shading or marks after printing if you choose.    Winter is a great time to look for inspiration. I like to look in the woods. While walking, I look for leaf shapes or dried seed heads are my favourite. You can also draw from imagination if you prefer. Leaves like holly are fairly easy to draw with their clear defined points.   

When I've collected some specimens I need to transfer them to paper so I can trace the shapes on to the lino. I'm not the best artist so after a few disappointing sketches I came up with another plan. I photocopied the leaves and seedheads by placing them on the glass of the copier and covering them with a sheet of white paper.   Bingo! They came out really well.

Seed head

The hemlock seed heads looked a little cluttered which is tricky to create on the lino so I stripped the seeds and tried again. Important to remember some seeds, leaves etc are toxic so you need to be sensible handing them.

Tracing the leaves

Once I have the copied shapes or drawn the images I trace them onto tracing paper then flip the tracing paper and rub the back to transfer the image on to the lino.

If it's not completely clear you can re draw it or draw directly on to the lino. When you have an image that you're happy with it's time to cut.   So, what will you need ?

Cutter with various nibs, plus a roller.

Lino.  This comes in different levels of density and lots of different sizes. You can purchase a selection to find out which you prefer. I buy from Etsy but there are many other available sources.

Tools.  Cutting tools are small, shaped blades that fit into a handle. It takes some trial and error to find out what works for a design so good to have a spare square of lino for making practice cuts.

Cutting a flower shape

I cut my design or outline into the lino square - remember - what ever you remove will be white on the final print - and cut any detail I want with different blades. This may be trial and error and you can always come back and cut more but, obviously, cannot fill back in.

Ink roller.  A small plastic or rubber coated roller, like a mini paint roller. This is the fun bit. Choose your ink colour and put a little ink on a smooth surface. I have an ink tray but you could use an old tile or similar. Roll the roller in the ink then over the design making sure it's well covered them press the lino piece onto paper or card or the other way around - pressing the paper on to the lino and run your fingers over the back to transfer the ink. 

Place ink in the tray and spread

Evenly spread the ink on the roller and roll over the shape on the Lino

Inks   These come in every colour and shade and are water based so you can get proper messy and it all washes off.

Rolling tray and different colours of ink

It's entirely possible your creation doesn't look exactly how you wanted it to first time. It's a process where you will tailor how you draw, cut and print to get to what you want to achieve.   If you want you can add to a print with another ink colour and fill in different shape with another link cut or overlap a design or colour.

There is lots of inspiration on the internet.  Designs can be simple or complicated depending on who is creating.   My daughter enjoyed making a toadstool print which was a simple shape and cut and now plans to make some Christmas cards.

Place lino onto card to print image and allow to dry.

Woodlands.co.uk is 'republishing' this blog, as contact details for the Jones family are now available and several people have expressed an interest in having a walking stick 'custom made'.  The blog originally appeared in 2014. Contact email address is pj451324(at)gmail.com

Peter Jones and his sons make walking sticks on a serious scale using sticks they come across in the woods, where they do their forestry work.  They use chestnut, silver birch, oak and hazel.  But they avoid using willow, as it goes brittle once it's aged.  Apart from finding the right stick to work on they need a steamer for bending the tops of the walking sticks and a good supply of sealant and varnish for protecting the finished sticks.

"Honeysuckle makes the best twist sticks" advises out Peter Jones, who comes across a lot of twisted stems in Kent and East Sussex.  As a result, he is able to trade these with fellow stick makers in more northern English areas - they give him carved tops for walking sticks in exchange for good twisted shanks.  But even among twisted sticks there is variety: the slower growing trees such as holly and oak twist more slowly whilst the fast-growing chestnut twists quickly.  Though he also corrected me pointing out that the maker of walking sticks should really be called a "stick dresser"

Peter's first experience of walking sticks was 30 years ago when he was using sticks for "beating".  He and the other beaters used sticks to get pheasants to fly up for the "guns" to shoot.  For that exercise, he first started creating walking sticks and hasn't really stopped since.  But he has become more sophisticated.

The steamer, for example, boils water in a kettle-like chamber and the water vapour fills a second chamber where  as many as 15-20 sticks at a time can be steamed, ready for him to bend over their tops.  It takes about half an hour to steam a batch and Peter uses a novel device for doing the bending.   Once the sticks are bent over, they have to be sealed quite soon so the they don't unbend themselves.

Peter Jones says that his industry is shrinking in size but not because the stick-dressing skills are dying out but because demand for wooden walking sticks has reduced.  Maybe that's because people use aluminium walking sticks or maybe, as Peter laments, "the problem is that there is this myth that you have to be old to have a stick."

The steamer

Bending of the stick

All types of stick

Along with my wife Marie, we purchased a 3 ½ acre semi ancient woodland in South Wales from woodlands.co.uk in April 2020.   The site has a gentle slope from a country lane down to the river Rhymney, we have 2 springs, a stream, a wide variety of broadleaf trees, shrubs and a small amount of pine.   Much of the site had been neglected for many years and so with help and advice from others and a great deal of hard graft by Marie and I we are bringing the site back to a sustainable future.

It is a delightful place to be, family and friends all enjoy spending time there and I don’t think I have ever been to the woodland without seeing or discovering something new.   We made a decision early on that an open area next to the river would be a good place to grow willow but we also wanted to utilise some willow for basketry. We had experience of neither.   The river can breach its banks and wash over the area occasionally although this is generally very short lived. 

Although the rest of the woodland will be maintained with native species, the willow area is an experiment and we decided to plant a variety of species for basketry, some of these are non-native.

We read a great deal about varieties, planting and harvesting and decided on the varieties we wanted to grow.   A very useful book titled Willow by Jenny Crisp gave us a lot of helpful information and ideas.  We based our choices around colour, they range from golden brown to yellow, red, green and black. Each variety will grow to different lengths in the same year once established, some as much as 17 feet.

We searched on the internet for suppliers of cuttings for planting and were very fortunate to find a supplier, https://hattonwillow.co.uk/ based only a few miles away in Caerphilly.   Hatton Willow is run by a Sarah Hatton*, she has a plantation with 1000’s of willows and supplies cuttings for planting and basketry, runs basketry classes and makes various commissions as well as the odd appearance on 'The Repair Shop' and 'Country File'.

The plants are supplied as rootless cuttings, about 12 inches long in the winter and need to be planted between November and March.  You are advised to lay weed suppressant material and to push the cuttings through this into the ground. If like us you are growing for harvesting, each row is planted 60cm apart and the cuttings 30cm to 60cm apart depending on the variety. This close planting ensures that the sticks grow straight and long and can be easily harvested the following year.

We ordered 100 cuttings, 10 of each variety so the area taken up is relatively small. 100 plants won’t give us enough willow to go into production but supplemented with some bought sticks will give enough eventually to make some items for our own use.

Once the leaves have dropped, we will cut this years growth back, some of which will become cuttings for new plants and over the years as the plants produce more sticks, we will have more to work with.

The above image shows the growth on a few of this year’s saplings. Not as vigorous as we had hoped but next year they may establish better.  With our willows in the ground, we booked a course at Hatton Willow and used some of the £300 funding provided by woodlands.co.uk as part of our purchase to fund the course.  The  session taught us how to make a trug, the courses just span a day, all materials and tools are supplied and at the end of the day you come away having

• learnt enough of a new skill to repeat the work, 
• an understanding of the material and 
• expanded your knowledge  and
• created your own hand-made basket.

What Next for us?  The options are endless, willow hurdles for our allotment, Christmas wreaths, nesters for birds, green willow sculpture, who knows, we’ll keep you posted.

Marie and Marcus Beard.

* Sarah runs her courses at the Nantgarw China Works, a venue worth a visit in it’s own right.

Osier : Willows, also called sallows and osiers, from the genus Salix,  found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere.

I grew up in the woods in New England. My parents were South Africans who replanted themselves several times, first in Zimbabwe, then London (where I was born), and finally, and quite accidentally, Connecticut. We didn’t really fit in there, and people often treated us as strange and exotic. 

However, amongst the trees that surrounded our house, there was no judgment or expectation. There was no need to explain myself. The woods offered the joy of exploration, the comfort of sheltering branches, and a sense of having entered into another, quite separate, self-sufficient world. I’d dam tiny streams, spy on wildlife, discover endangered flowers, find out which trees were prone to caterpillar infestation and which had bark that tasted like spearmint that was good to chew. And I always felt that I was amongst friends. I was very lucky.

A Shropshire oak eyes me skeptically.

I was also a voracious reader, devouring books at a monumental rate. Reading gave me a similar feeling to being in the woods: escape from an uncomfortable reality, discovery of complex and beautiful worlds that were open and accessible to me whenever I needed them. Many years later, after several other careers, I began to write fiction. And I knew that one day I would write a book for children set in a wood. 

That moment arrived in 2019.   After publishing poetry and two medieval novels set in the Welsh Marches, I had an idea for an adventure set in a scrap of  woodland near Much Wenlock in Shropshire. The wood is on a limestone ridge and therefore thick with fossils. It has a peculiar, other-worldly atmosphere. The trees are rather neglected, but the signs are all there. It’s a little pocket of ancient woodland, preserved because of the steep slope on which it grows. I’ve spent many hours walking it with my dogs, and I adore it. 

The wood on the limestone ridge that inspired ‘Greencoats’, with our dog in the foreground

I began researching the folklore and mythology of Northern European forests, and the world within the wood began to take shape in my mind. Having trained originally as an archaeologist, I’m really only interested in the past, so this story was set in 1940, during the Birmingham Blitz. The story emerged quickly – a chapter a day – and, each evening, I’d read the chapter to my thirteen year old son. The book became known as Greencoats, referring to some of the more sinister inhabitants of the woods. 

Greencoats developed into an historical fantasy, bringing nature, myth, and history together in a cathartic adventure. When the first bombs fall on Birmingham, ten-year-old Gwen is sent to stay with her eccentric aunt in a woodland cottage. As Gwen explores the depths of the ancient forest, she inadvertently conjures up the mischievous spirit of a Holly tree, along with other, more malevolent, creatures. When her aunt’s dog is stolen by elves, Gwen needs all her courage and cunning to get him back.

Sycamore, Holly and Hawthorn in Coed y Haearn, October 2020

The publication of Greencoats this year happened to coincide with the purchase of the wood-of-our-dreams through Woodlands.co.uk.  (My husband, Michael, loves trees as much as I do). It is a slope of restored ancient woodland in Pembrokeshire, named ‘Coed y Haearn’, or ‘Iron Wood’, as it is close to Castell Henllys – a reconstructed Iron Age fort. Nearby is the Nature Reserve of Pengelli Forest, part of the largest block of ancient oak forest in West Wales. Clear felling of the trees in this area took place from 1914, to supply the WWI trenches with timber. On the other side of the A487 is Pentre Ifan – a Neolithic burial chamber. Very recently it was discovered that the original circle of Stonehenge bluestones stood a few kilometers away.

Bluebells in Coed y Haearn - Photo by John Innes

When we received the keys to the gate, we were able to enjoy clusters of violets in April and glades of bluebells in May. We began surveying the trees and discovered many important folkloric species – Oak, Holly, Hawthorn, Ash. We were also excited to identify a Wych Elm near the camp clearing and Early Purple Orchids on the verges of the track. During our latest visit, bats treated us to aerial displays above our camping table. We hope to find out what species they are and encourage more wildlife with bat, owl and bird boxes. Our sons are keen on the promise of the power tools to come, and the dogs are enjoying the endless supply of sticks to chase.

Delphi waiting for the next stick - photo by John Innes

We are absolutely delighted with our wood and look forward to making more discoveries, learning the skills we need to look after this rare and special place, and getting to know its character and inhabitants (hopefully all benevolent!).

I expect there might be a sequel to Greencoats – and I know that I’ll find lots of inspiration in Coed y Haearn – for prose and poetry for many years to come. 

Kate Innes

Greencoats is aimed at readers aged 8 and above. It is available in paperback and ebook format.

Greencoats is available in paperback from https://www.kateinneswriter.com/shop/.

Available in paperback and ebook format from Amazon https://amzn.to/3yZ6Awe

"In Greencoats the magic feels real and the reality magical. Tense, compassionate and lyrical, I devoured it in a weekend. Highly recommended."  Caroline Lawrence - author of 'The Roman Mysteries'

Get your competitive juices flowing and you could win a prize! Or nominate a worthy winner and they could be surprised with a prize – and recognition!

The Woodlands Awards (sponsored by Woodlands.co.uk) are back for the fifth consecutive year, and are open for entries now. Certainly don’t delay too long: the deadline for all entries is 31 July 2021.

There are 14 categories of Awards for 2021 – with a few changes from previous years (see the full list below). This year we are introducing two new categories: Best Makers in Wood Award (designed to celebrate the best of woodland-related craft work: furniture, turning, jewellery, sculpture, spoons, toys, ornaments and more), and Best Woodland Toilets (the focus of much thought and endeavour!)

A guiding principle of the Awards has always been that they should be easy to enter. And the overarching intention: to spotlight and celebrate the hard work, artistry, knowledge and enterprise invested in British woodlands.

Every category can have multiple winners (there were 40 winners in 2020). All winning entries are considered to be of equally high merit (i.e. they are not “podiumed” into First, Second, Third etc).

What can you win? Well, the prizes vary according to the category: all winners receive a certificate, and many winners also receive a selected woodland book (one of the winning Woodland Books of the Year) and a woodland hand tool and/or piece of equipment (in 2020 this included a Classic Stanley Bottle (vacuum flask) and Spear & Jackson Ratchet Secateurs and sharpener).

“Happy New Year!” declared one delighted winner of a 2020 Award. “And what a happy start to the year – your parcel has arrived. Thank you so much for the wonderful selection of gifts, including a couple of things that were on my wish list, which I didn't get for Christmas, and thought I would have to save up to buy myself.”

And another: “I’ve now received a box of prizes and a certificate. Sometimes these kinds of things are token gestures, but in this case they are generous and genuinely useful.”

And another: “Wow, what an amazing honour! Thank you so much for the recognition. I am delighted… Prizes received with thanks. I really appreciate it and am feeling quite pleased with myself.”

Full details about the Awards, the prizes, and how to enter, can be found on the website page: www.woodlands.co.uk/woodlands-awards 

For details of past winners, 2017–2020, with brief descriptions of their achievements, go to the Woodlands.co.uk home page, click on the “Resources” tab, and the select “Awards”.

Great Spotted Woodpecker, by Sam Auger-Forbes, 2020 Woodland Photography Award winner

A note to past winners: the competition rules say that winners cannot win an award in the same category for a second time, but there is nothing to stop you entering (or being entered) in another category.

If you have any queries, please email antony@woodlands.co.uk.

Woodlands Awards 2021: the categories

Awards for individuals

• Small Woodland Websites
• Woodland Photography
• Woodland Instagrams
• Makers in Wood 
• Woodland Tool Recommendations
• Woodland Huts
• Woodland Toilets 

Awards for enterprises

• Woodland Contractors
• Woodland Tree-Planting Projects
• Forest Schools
• Woodland Courses
• Community Woods
• Woodland Books of the Year
• Regional and National Woodland Organisations

]]> https://www.woodlands.co.uk/blog/reviews-puzzles/christmas-quiz-with-prize-for-the-first-40-valid-entries/ Mon, 09 Dec 2019 09:54:12 +0000 https://www.woodlands.co.uk/?p=32311

Christmas is a good time to go for a woodland walk .... and for presents.

For children, there's nothing better as a motivator than a quiz.

So we are offering to send entrants a prize of a woodlands notebook and tree poster which we will post to you as soon as we get your entry if it's valid - maximum 40 prizes.

The quiz: Take a photo of any 6 (any six) of these:

• A gastropod
• A leaf with a tooth edge
• A leaf with parallel veins
• A fern frond
• A beetle
• A named conifer
• A bracket fungus
• An amphibian
• An earthworm
• A samara (winged fruit)
• A lichen
• A leaf with spines
• A named yellow flower
• A fruit or seed dispersed by an animal
• A fungal fruiting body
• A cone from a conifer
• A one-seeded fruit
• A nettle or  a dead nettle
• An oak tree
• An arachnid
• A woodlouse
• A compound leaf
• A plant gall
  

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Please post or email your photos to us at:

melanie@woodlands.co.uk Woodlands.co.uk,

19 Half Moon Lane, London SE24 9JU

Don't forget to give us your postal address!

Happy Christmas!

Don't go to Lausanne without dropping into the gardens - Lausanne's botanical gardens are free and central, and just a short walk from the train station.  Despite being by the centre of town, they extend to over 4 acres and they house hundreds of plants from around the world and from across Switzerland.

They call it a "living museum" and there are actually 4,000 species growing here by Lake Geneva - in rockeries, in the arboretum and in the large greenhouse.  Though when I was there,  the greenhouse was being used as a recording studio for a band - but that sort of thing is typical of Lausanne - arty, impromptu and using their space well.

Setting up this botanical garden immediately after the war (opened 1946) was a team effort by a botanist, Florian Cosandey, and an architect, Alphonse Laverriere. They made space for a herbarium, a large archive of botanical illustrations and a biology library with 35,000 works.  In recent years they have established a bee colony with several bee hives on a roof and they've started using outdoor art to liven up the terraces in the winter.

Art in the Gardens

I experienced the sort of friendliness which always comes as a nice surprise if you're visiting from London - people talking to me as if I were an old friend and telling me not to miss the succulents section, with some scary cacti; or the exhibition.  Also they warned me not fall into the ponds but with my poor french I wasn't quite certain whether they were more concerned for me or for the newts.

The Cacti

Although you might assume Lausanne's Botanical museum and garden aren't suitable for children they are well designed for an afternoon out and there is a big children's playground next door with some unusual play equipment: maybe this helps explain why so many Swiss children become engineers.  Talking of young people, the botanical gardens organise discovery workshops for young visitors as well as guided walks and they are actively involved in conservation programmes for rare and endangered plants.

Art displayed in the grounds

"Traditional bodgers and woodworkers would have spent the first day in a new woodland making their equipment such as a shave horse "explains Adrian Dennett a supplier of wood bodgers' kit.  These are stools where the craftsman (or woman) sits at one end of the 'horse' and uses a foot-controlled lever to hold their work in place.  It's remarkable how firmly this device holds the wood in position and allows the operator safely to shave down a piece of wood.

Shave horses are mostly used for green woodwork (using unseasoned wood) to make items such as spoons, kuksas (small bowls) or chair legs.  Typically they are used to hold rougher bits of wood which are being moulded into shape using a two-handed draw knife.  It's so-called because you draw the knife towards you in a controlled way to shave layers off your work.

Although you can make your own, a cheap alternative is this ready-made shave horse which costs £49.  Adrian told me that people buy them because they are portable and have built-in adjustments.This means you can work on a big lump of wood or adjust the shave horse to hold a thinner object such as a small spoon.  Adjustments will also be needed for holding longer pieces of wood.

More rustic versions of workbench - which come flat-packed -are also available from Adrian whose website is www.woodlandbushcraftandsurvival.co.uk.  At the Bushcraft show in Derbyshire Adrian sold all seven of his shave horses - all his stock - but he's making more of them.

Here is a photo of Dick's 'horse' as mentioned in his comment below:

Ever since neolithic times humans have been making beads.  Gareth Riseborough is copying the methods that stone age man (and woman!) would have used to make beautiful jewellery.  By studying archeological remains and by experimenting with what works he has shown that you can use stones from your woodland, or from a beach, to create fashionable ornaments.

At the 2019 Bushcraft Show in Derbyshire Gareth showed me how he makes beads from Kimmeridge Shale which he found in Dorset on the Jurassic coastline.  Collecting the shale was treacherous because of the dangerous tides.  Even armed with tide tables Gareth felt at serious risk when gathering his shale.  This gives us some idea of the length to which ancient people would have gone to get their materials - searching beaches, mountains and forests.  This shale is millions of years old but is still "alive" - if it heats up too much from modern central heating it becomes brittle, but at least it's relatively easy to work with.  Gareth creates a paste with a mixture of sharp sand and water to work the shale into rounded shapes and at the moment he's using sand which he personally collected from the Orkney Islands.

Once the bead has been shaped it needs a hole drilled in it so it can be attached to a leather string.  For this Gareth uses a pillar drill he's made using a likely pre-historic design  - an early "cordless drill" -  which is itself like the ones used by neolithic people, as well those used by ancient Egyptians.  As a drill bit, a piece of flint or bone would have been used.  Once his bead has a hole in he uses a finer grit to smooth it and later a leather pelt to polish and finish the surface.

Together with his wife, Sally Pointer, Gareth has specialised in all sorts of historic replicas and interpretation.  For example they have studied the history of soap and perfumes as well as historic knitwear, discovering how the earliest inhabitants of Britsh Woodlands would have lived.  You can see lots of their work on www.sallypointer.com.  Sally told me that the latest fashion has always attracted people and this would have been just as true in pre-history as it is today - "novelty is never out of fashion."

"Why did you spend two days of your life and about £200 to make a paddle?" asked a friend after I got home from this weekend course in Oxford.  Obviously I'd failed to explain that this was about much more than just planing and sanding a single piece of ash wood into a nice paddle.  For me, it was more like a holiday - getting away from computer screens for two days, spending time with my grown-up son (who made his own paddle) and learning how to use edge tools properly.  It was also about meeting a group of half a dozen like-minded individuals each hungry to learn new skills in woodworking.  When I showed my beautiful paddle to my sceptical friend and told him about the people I'd met, he understood better and even said he wanted to go on the same course.

Actually it's not easy to find courses like this.  Our tutor, Colin Henwood, who has been building boats on the Thames for 40 years, only teaches paddle-making twice a year: his next course at the Wood Centre is on the weekend of Saturday 19th October 2019 and will no doubt sell out very shortly.  Colin spent every minute of our two days helping and supporting us - he demonstrated, gave us one-to-one tuition, gently coaxed us along, and continually sharpened the blades on the planes and spokeshaves.  Also he'd patiently make coffee and tea for the seven of us until we noticed that we could take short breaks to help with that.

He transformed us from novices choosing our paddle blanks to proficient paddle-makers each holding an elegant, smooth finished paddle, for taking home as a trophy to our families.  Each of us was given the whole range of tools so there was no need to share - a large plane for the long stretches like the paddle-blade, a block plane for shorter areas, and spokeshaves for the curved parts.  We also each had a pencil for sketching out areas to be shaped, a straight edge for marking, as well as a vice and jig for holding our works-in-progress.  For later stages of our paddle-making we had cork blocks for holding the sandpaper and dustmasks for lung protection.

With practical woodworking tasks most people think they are pretty good - but ash wood is unforgiving of any arrogance.  Working with is is humbling: it must be treated with respect and cut the right way.  Colin Henwood showed us what works and all of discovered for ourselves what doesn't.  What's needed are sharp blades cutting in regular smooth strokes rather than small snatched cuts.  We learnt to follow some of Colin's mantras - "follow the direction of the grain", "use your whole body" and "make sure your blade is sharp".    Murray, working on the bench next to me, works for the emergency services and had been given the course as a present from his wife.  He said he loved the contrast between his daily life and the hands-on craftsmanship of creating something useful.   As Murray pointed out to me, "making this paddle is a one-way process - once I've shaved off a piece of wood I can't stick it back on."

Making a canoe paddle comes to a climax once you get to the sandpapering stage.  Following the grain - which was a big theme of the whole project - the sanding starts to bring out the colour of the wood and its patterns.  The first type of sandpaper we used was the 100, which is the coarsest, and we went through the grades 120, 150 and eventually to the finest, the 180 grade sandpaper. Most of us had some small knots in our paddles.  These had been hard to work with but as we got to the finest sandpaper these features made the extra effort seem worthwhile.  Later we would apply Danish Oil, Teak Oil or varnish to protect the paddle and made the grain patterns stand out even more.   At the end of the weekend we felt really proud to be holding something we'd made with our own hands but we also felt a new respect for wood and for edge tools - especially those of us who'd inflicted small cuts on their hands - though the main injury was blisters!