kilted cossack

In seriatem order: Thomas Dean: Thanks for the "initial welcome aboard package"---my father's people were all over East Texas, including up around Longview, before settling in Center (which at one time stole the county seat of Shelby County from Shelbyville, but that's a different story). Thanks also for the heads up about HABA---I'd probably have found them, but it never hurts to be sure. Frosty: Thanks also! I've discovered that if you march to the beat of a different drummer, you end up . . . in different places. There have been times when I wished I'd lead a "normal life" or even a "more normal life" but mostly those times pale in comparison with having been a few interesting and odd places. Here's the wife (Natasha) and our younger daughter (Lena), and then a couple of shots of the first tweed kilt I hand sewed. The kilt is primitive and pretty rugged, I have since evened up the pleats where the stitching was coming loose, and today got some horsehair canvas in the mail, to provide reinforcements along the pleats. (Turns out there's more to making a kilt than just folding up some cloth . . . probably like there's more to Damascus/wootz steel than just folding up some steel!)

Howdy, gents (and ladies). I've been lurking for a week or two, finally signed up just so it was easier to see the fabulous pictures, and dad gum it if the "nagging" from the board's "so you've never posted, why don't you get off your butt and post" message finally got to me. I'm just like everybody else: a walking contradiction. (That's a Kris Kristofferson quote right there.) I did pretty much the expected thing right up until I graduated from law school, and then I turned around and enlisted in the USMC. I wasn't sure if I wanted to practice law, you see. Enlisted? Sure. My recruiter told me that the Corps had done its share of dumb things, but if I came in as an officer, with a law degree, the Corps was no way, no how stupid enough to send me anywhere but the Judge Advocate General Corps . . . and like I say, I wasn't sure I wanted to practice law. So I ended up studying Russian and, in my small way, trying to give something back to my country for all the advantages I'd received just as a result of having been born here. I did my time, faithful and honorable service, and just like Dickens said, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. (And this was in peacetime, I hasten to point out, and I never really went anywhere and never really did anything, and this is presented by way of background information and not boasting.) Anyway, I ended up practicing law in Kazakhstan for a couple of years and marrying the team captain for the women's rugby team of the Central Sporting Committee of the Army of the Republic of Kazakhstan, came back to the States, and along the way lost my parents and ended up with two lovely daughters. Thirty, thirty five years ago, I worked with my Dad some doing some metal working, welding up tree statues out of nails, turning a lawn mower blade into a short sword modeled on Sting from the Hobbit, nothing fancy, just "that kind of stuff." Looking back, that was some of the best times I've ever had, just me and my Dad out in the shop, arc welding and hammering and having fun. Long about the time my folks died, I started wearing kilts. I'm your basic East Texas Celtic mutt, some Scots and some Irish and a little of this and a dash of that and a peck of the other, and I decided I'd try out kilt wearing. One thing lead to another, and I eventually decided to try my hand at sewing up my own kilts, and I came up with some design modifications that I really liked. Now, I'm no tailor, and the kilts I sewed up aren't going to win any awards . . . but dang it felt good to sit down with needle and thread and a few yards of good tweed and MAKE SOMETHING WITH MY HANDS. To sit there afterwards and say, "Yeah. I did this. All by myself." That's what I'm looking for here, just the ability to say, "Yeah. I did this. All by myself." I hate to lend any credence to old Marxists like Franz Fanon, but the older I get, the more I realize how alienated we seem to be from the world. Meat comes from the grocery store, same as vegetables. Clothing comes from a clothing store. Knives come from a knife store. But what do we do? I may lose interest, I may drift away, I might get caught up in some other grand passion, but every time I think back to me and my Dad, out in the shop, welding and banging and making things with our hands, I get a warm glow down deep inside. (Maybe it's like the glow of a forge? Dunno!) I did want to throw out that, from the lurking I've done here, you guys seem like a swell bunch. A community of interest, always willing to give advice and a thoughtful ear. I'm going to do my best to fit in. I don't know much, but I'm eager to learn. Slainte!

I have to reason by analogy here, because this is my first post and also because I haven't done any blacksmithing (although, thirty years ago, I did some reasonable metalworking with my Dad). I'd say that a really good blacksmith is someone who can do just about anything with a hammer, a forge, some files and some steel. And a "Master Blacksmith" would be someone who could teach someone else to do those very same things. The late Jeff Cooper, in an entirely different context, used to say that the highest level of an art is in teaching it properly.