Ice Lanterns for Winter Beauty

Here in Maine we've been making ice lanterns whether we like it or not for as long as there have been buckets. I remember punching a hole in my horse's frozen water, and sliding the hollow ice shell out of the pail, back during the Carter administration. I think Dad was the first to put a candle inside the glittering shell of winter ice, at least in our little family enclave.

Ice lantern with bittersweet, cedar, and rose hips.

Since those days I have set many a frozen shell of water, formed inside a five-gallon honey-bucket, up on a snow-drift, lit a pillar candle inside it, and let it burn for nights on end. Why did I never think to freeze pretty greenery into it, though? Recently I saw an example of this, and it was such an obvious and lovely improvement that I just had to laugh at myself. And then go and try it!

Here's how I used to do it: fill a five-gallon plastic bucket with cold water, and leave it outside for a full night of single-digit weather. Bring it inside, pour warm water over the bucket, slide out the frozen shape. The bottom will be much thinner. Punch a hole in it, pour out the still-liquid center, place it outside upside-down. Light a candle in it, and voila! A basic ice lantern! In cold weather it will last for a long time, and be beautiful.

Now, some improvements to that basic lantern. I went out and cut some cedar sprigs, some bittersweet, and some rose-hips. You could use anything that is pretty, from pine-cones to dried flowers. Then I cut the top off of a 2-liter soda bottle, just below the sloped curve, so it made a large empty pillar. I found some rocks to fill it with. Using the same five-gallon bucket, I placed the rock-filled container in the bucket, filled the bucket around that with cold water, and some ice cubes to get it started, and arranged my pretty greenery around the soda bottle. 

The candle lights the frozen greenery from within, winter magic!

Leaving it outside overnight on a below-twenty-degrees night just barely did it. The ice was thin. You might need to take two nights like that, or wait until a single-digit night is forecast. I suggest placing the bucket on lawn furniture or wooden slats, anything to get it off the ground. Surprisingly, the ground will insulate the water from below. The next morning, all you need to do is free it from the bucket by running tapwater over the outside and sliding your lantern carefully out into the sink, letting the water in the middle escape down the drain. The following evening, place a tea-light, votive, or pillar candle inside, and you've got wintry gorgeousness! However you celebrate the coldest, darkest time of the year, an ice lantern sporting your local winter color can add a special magic...

The Season of Thankfulness

Welcome to Ironwood Hollow

We all have family stories that warm our hearts, that remind us of the very best part of our heritage. Here's one of mine. It's short, but I still can't tell it without choking up. My grandfather Arnold died suddenly of a heart attack when I was a young boy. He was a formal, intimidating man to us kids, and unfortunately we never got to know him better than that. Shortly after retiring, he and my Grammy Carrie had almost all of the family, kids, cousins, etc., to their beautiful cottage on the coast of Maine, and that's when he went. It was sudden, and the family has never gotten together again as completely as we did for his funeral that weekend. Her name was the last word he spoke.

A few years ago my mother told me that Grammy Carrie, who outlived him by many years, kept his bedroom slippers under the bed until her own passing. She never loved another. That kind of devotion makes my heart swell with hope for humankind. I just can't think of another way to say it. 

Grammie's memory lives, and not just in the Fiestaware!

One of the ways Grammie Carrie lives on in our family is in our dishware, as odd as that sounds; I remember sitting at her old kitchen table when I visited them as a boy, having breakfast cereal in an original green fiesta bowl. She loved her collection of fiestaware. To this day I can't hold a green piece of fiesta without thinking of her, and a varied assortment of fiesta is what we use for everyday dishware, as well as for special occasions. That table, where Grampy used to keep his feet under the support bar so as to catch any of us kids, or our parents when they were little, who might used it as a footrest (against the rules), was laden with a feast on fiestaware for this Thanksgiving. This year our newly grown family sat around that same table, held hands, said grace, and carried the memory of my Grampy and Grammy forward into a heartwarming, wonderful, new time of our lives.

The connection that struck me in that moment is that I finally understand the devotion that she had for him. Meeting my Honey's eyes at the far end of this table, with our newly blended family connecting us along the length of the big room,  I realized that although times change, love is powerful and enduring. May we all find that one perfect other, the one whose slippers could never be taken out from under the bed. May our children and grandchildren learn from us that such a thing is possible.

Last Child in the Woods? Not Yet.

When I was about ten years old, my family moved from a small suburban home to a couple of dozen acres of freshly harvested pine forest. The land was littered with branches and huge stumps, with smaller trees leaning in to fill the empty spaces overhead left by the fallen pine giants.Even so,  I found those woods to be magical, and we were surrounded by plenty of undeveloped woods. Until then, my idea of "forest" had been an acre or so of woods tucked between our neighborhood and the nearest main road. The reality of a couple of square miles of trees, trails and streams was amazing.

I just love trees!

I learned to go deep into the woods, far enough to hear nothing but birds and rustling critters. When I wrapped my arms around the larger trees, I could feel the earth and wind through them. The rough bark on my cheek, the constant whispering of the leaves, the ankle-deep moss, soaked into me, made me a country boy in no time. Inspired by Robert Frost's poem "Birches," I climbed leggy trees until they bent to let me down. I felt that call to climb into the heights of the branches, and beyond, but also the pull of the earth below, so eloquently described by Mr. Frost nearly a hundred years ago. As he wrote, earth's the right place for love, but also, one could do worse than be a swinger of birches. 

Beeches in winter

Inspired by the Tarzan novels, I made pathways among the trees, lashing cedar logs between the upper trunks with nylon baling twine. I would run along these balance-beams, hanging onto branches, from one tree to the next, and the next, and never fell. I know that my father, who grew up with a forest too, not far away, knew the importance of giving his children such an opportunity. Those seasons among the trees impressed me deeply. Years later, when I was at last able to build my own home on that same acreage, using some of the trees that I had known as a boy, it felt like I had never left.

Among the hemlocks that I cut, peeled, and dragged out for floor framing was one that had grown around some knotted nylon baling twine about twenty feet off the ground. When I discovered it, I realized it was the only remaining trace of those treetop trails I had built. Those days of playing Tarzan came back to me in a rush, and I gave that particular log a place of honor in the house. I know exactly where it is under the floor-boards now. I think of how I've come back to a new beginning, and how a new generation is now held up by that log as they follow their own youthful, dreaming paths into the world by way of these acres of woods.

Think how those logs beneath our floor, cut from trees that I grew up climbing, are the foundation for the same kind of magic happening all over again. We're giving our kids the great gift of learning the smell of spring leaves, the feel of a tree beneath you swaying in the wind, the music of crisp leaves underfoot, and the crack of freezing bark in the middle of the coldest winter's nights. If I can borrow a phrase from a really important book, "The Last Child in the Woods" is still out there, and I would say that there are many of them, since I know of so many who are raising nature-aware kids. Not everyone can leave the cities and suburbs, but I am so glad that our kids have this chance, and encourage anyone to find ways to get their children out under some trees as often as they can.

Keeping It True

In cordwood masonry building, one of the challenges is keeping your wall vertical. The load-bearing potential of the structure is dependent upon the wall being aligned as truly up-and-down as possible. A bit of variation won't be a disaster, but letting your wall wander too much will make for weak support. It could eventually buckle, or crack your windows by shifting over a leaning support system.

The metaphor is important to me. If you have a solid foundation, and build carefully and consciously upon it, then the strength that foundation will be present throughout your structure, providing safety, security, and even beauty because you have respected its gift of strength. Don't assume anything, but rather check as you go along that you and your foundation are in sync, that you're working together. Don't stray from it; honor it, and you can trust it with your home, your shelter, your life.

The most important tool for keeping your walls true in cordwood masonry is a plumb-bob, a pendulum-like brass tool on a long string, used for millennia to line up vertical work over its center of gravity. Mine is somewhat crusted with mortar, and its string is faded by time and weather, but it holds a strong magic, in my mind at least. Except for the first row or three of cordwood pieces, it was used on every single log in my cordwood masonry walls. When I look up at my highest walls, over eighteen feet from the foundation, I remember using it, over and over and over again.

First you mix up some mortar, using sand, cement mix, lime, water, and wet sawdust, along with plenty of back and arm strength with a masonry hoe. Then you carry a bucket of that and some cedar pieces up your ladder, lay a double-bead of mortar with rubber-gloved hands, and squish a piece of cedar roughly into place. Below you is a chalk-line two inches out from the base of the wall. You pull your trusty plumb-bob from your nail apron, along with a two-inch nail for a spacer, and swing it down from the head of the nail. The point of the nail is held steady against the wood, and when you have tapped the wood back and forth into the right position, the point of the bob is true above the chalk-line, making the log true at the top of the wall. Ancient science, the tradition of countless generations of carpenters and masons working through your hands, the magic of a fine metaphor, if you will pay attention to it. 

What's the most important tool for keeping your life true? Opinions may vary, but I believe that tending to your primary relationships above all else is crucial. Always checking that you are treating your loved ones as they deserve, with honesty, care, and consideration, that communication is true, you will know of potential trouble in time to correct it. You will build on that respect for your foundation.

I'm going to loan my plumb-bob, for the duration of their home-building, to Ben and Kissy of Dragonfly Acres, who have already begun harvesting cedar, and milling hemlock, for their own cordwood masonry home not far from ours. The thought of having that ancient and solid tool carry such a metaphor to another home built by people who bring thoughtfulness, love, and care to their endeavors pleases me greatly.

Scrimshaw

http://www.etsy.com/shop/ironwoodhollow

Ganesha Earrings

One of my crafts, practiced more in the cooler months when a quiet desktop pursuit is more what I feel like doing, is scrimshaw. Not everyone knows the word; you know those pictures of ships and whales that look like pen-and-ink drawings, on bone or ivory? That's the stuff. When I was a boy I read about sailors decorating whalebone and ivory this way, scratching designs with a knife or a nail, then rubbing ink into the scratches. It made a great impression on me, partly because I have always identified strongly with the sailing heritage that runs deep in my family, and partly because it's such a romantic image, the lonely sailor whiling away his watch with a scrap of bone and a little knife. I imagined that they dreamed of home, but still drew what they could see at the time, ships, waves, sea-life. As a lover of words, I have also always liked the word "scrimshander," which is what you call a person who practices the craft; it just resonates with crusty old-timey character.

Conch earrings

I can't remember when I first tried it, or what I designed, but over the years I have come back to it many times, untrained in the arts but wanting to create something beautiful. The method is surprisingly easy, and these days I keep a supply of reclaimed piano ivories on hand, always looking for another poor, unwanted old piano to raid for more! Elephant ivory is the best material, and although there is a completely justified international ban on its trade, it is okay to use pre-ban ivory, such as that taken from retired pianos. I think of it as rescuing the beautiful material so it doesn't just disappear into landfills. All else that is needed are some tools for shaping the ivory, either small hand-tools, or high-speed rotaries, such as a Dremel, and some paint or ink, along with rags to wipe off excess color.

I like to design earring pairs that make a tiny image when they are side-by-side, like this potted flower. Some of these are sea-scapes, some of them form a message when they are together. The challenge of writing or drawing in miniature, using a tiny blade, then adding color a tiny dot at a time, is satisfying to me, maybe similar to the enjoyment that makers of dollhouse furniture experience. I'm needing to use reading glasses these days, but a sure grip and a steady hand are the key skills. I'll be putting together a tutorial on how to do it, either as a photo-essay or series of short videos.

My very best work is reserved for loved ones, and in fact my Honey has designs that I won't make again, because they are just too special and personal to share. All the rest, though, are available at my Etsy shop, and I often fill custom orders if it's something I think I can do well. Still at the height of warm season, I'm not spending any time with the ink and ivory, but I can feel autumn in the air some mornings, and the indoor crafts will call me back to the work-table soon enough!In the meantime, if you run across any ivory, set it aside so you can try scrimshaw out for yourself as soon as I post a tutorial!