Beltane Festival

I set up my bow making equipment at the Celtic Harmony Camp, Beltane Festival.
It was great fun but rather tiring.
The archery club had also set up a 'have a go' with a 3D rubber Centurion and Wild boar as two of the targets. The centurion got a right pasting as you can imagine!
A group of young lads seemed to adopt me and my bowmaking, they were very well behaved if a tad boisterous, asking questions with such rapidity that I couldn't get the answers out in time.
They were sensible enough to be allowed to try the drawknife and spokeshave (their parents were close at hand) and they seemed to really enjoy using the tools.
I'd taken the runty little bit of Hazel (cut in August, pic on this blog if you really want to see it) to demostrate some of the processes and it exploded spectacularly on the tiller at 35 pounds draw weight!
A real crowd pleaser, this showed that despite simplicty of the process it can go wrong with a bang. I was crouched down winding the winch when it blew and thus avoided getting a whack on the head
The weather was glorious and I manged to stroll around and have a look at some of the other activities, drumming, clay pot making, pony rides, face painting and all sorts of stuff. Owls were flown too which is always a great crowd pleaser.
The animals at the camp had young too, there were lambs and some really cute goslings which my wife was threatening to kidnap and take home.
I didn't get much real work done other than de-barking a couple of staves, but it was fun to show off my craft.