Hello everybody! Once again, I want to thank BAF for opening this forum thread for all artists and artisans!
As many of you already know, all of my plugs are very slowly hand made by myself only. I like to use 'native materials'; that is, materials that were once used by native peoples hundreds and thousands of years ago. Sometimes I search out these materials in the field myself. Such is the case with the banded slate and Ohio pipestone. Other times, I source the materials from Native American sources(if possible) such as catlinite, Utah pipestone and Canadian serpentine for example. To the best of my knowledge, nobody else has used these materials for hundreds (pipestones) of years to make ear spools and I find great joy bringing their spirit back to life today. I also use other stone materials that were not necessarily used for ear spools in the past. The banded slate is an example of this. It was used 6000 yrs ago for other implements however. More on the background of what I'm doing and the name I chose can be found on my background profile on my recently set up livejournal ( http://middlewoodland.livejournal.com/profile )
And now, to catch up on some fun posts: