Mrs Deers Ears! And Other Stuff

I've had a busy few days.
Emily Cat jumped onto the Deer sculpture that I made for my wife over 10 years ago, as she climbed onto the ear it fell off, as indeed did the cat!
So that was one more job taken into the garage for repair, it was interesting to look closely at the ear as it has a nice little patch of lichen growing on it to match the pale lichen growing Mrs Deer's nose.
I had to get that job done and out of the way to make way for some Yew, as I'd been put in contact with someone 30 minutes drive from me who'd cut some in the summer (thanks Luca!) It had been lying on the ground but still looked pretty good as it was at the top of a slope which was fairly well drained. Even if the sap wood had started to rot I was happy to get some decent heartwood for bamboo backed Yew bows. There was also a bigger log, which was too big to get on the car, I'll go back next week and the guy will run his chainsaw down the length to make it more manageable.
We got two decent logs strapped ont the roof rack. The longer log was about 12' long but I managed to run it through the bandsaw on my own using a roller stand to support one end as I fed it carefully through. Once it was half way I moved the roller stand to the other side and continued. I could have trimmed the length to give 8' and 4' for billets, but I thought it was better to leave it full length for now so I could get the best out of it once it's had some time to season and loose some weight. (Easier to handle then).
The shorter log was a bit knotty on one side but the other has the makings of a nice primitive. I didn't have much room on my shelves to store the logs, so I set to sorting out all my staves, I got rid of a couple of no-hopers and trimmed a few down to almost roughed out dimensions, a bit of reorganisation made room for the new stuff.
My general philosophy is to bring in good stuff and throw out the bad, that way my stash of timber slowly inproves in quality, whilst maintaining a reasonably constant quantity. Mind, I'm still using some timber that other people would consider too iffy for bows, but I enjoy the challenge.

Whilst shooting in the 45# @ 30" bow (which has now been collected) I noticed the arrows pretty much going straight through the boss. The pics show it braced and unbraced, where you can see it has retained some reflex, nice!
Time to invest £95 in a new boss, it's rather a lot, but considering the last one was made of glued up packing foam from the council rubbish tip, and had lasted about 10 years, I felt I could justify it. It should arrive tommorrow.
Talking of the rubbish tip, I've just come back from taking the old target and scrap timber there. Whilst I was unloading I saw a guy unloading a leather sofa, Another tip user lent me his knife and I cut out two nice squares of leather, it's a pale greeny beigey turquoise (I expect ladies have a fancy name for this colour rather than "snot" which is how my son described it). Anyhow, you can't have too much leather as it doesn't take up much room, unlike logs!