I've been asked to write articles for a well established website by a friend of mine. I've just started and due almost entirely to my lack of practice in writing in a semi formal capacity, it's at a whole "oh my god!" level of difficulty. Getting the words out and getting them out in the right order, is much more of a challenge than it used to be at school. Either that or I don't remember school correctly which is also entirely likely.
Anyway, I've been asked to write short articles on katana and freestyle cutting. This is a fantastic challenge for me and hopefully will allow me to develop as a person as well as writing on a subject I am the most passionate about. Writing on this broad subject matter is awesome in a handful of ways and the way that I've obviously noticed the most, is that once again I'm reminded that I don't know nearly as much as I should.
This is good, because I love to learn ;)
This has made my Christmas,
wish me luck.
S
Someone I met on Facebook was nice enough to send me some leather. It's rough and unprepared at the moment and will require work to get it all the same width all the way along but I have a purpose for it. I recently fell in love with one particular type of katate maki and have seen it used exclusively on tensho style tsuka which as far as I can tell are usually of the rikko or hourglass shape.
This leather has the right dimensions to be used on a full same wrap in the katate style. It's not a very popular style but you may have seen it before. Here is a picture of a particularly nice katate style..
It's been a slow ride this one but I'm trying my best to change a sword, in particular a heavy cutter that people have described as thuggish, ugly, pickaxe handled and even 'cheaty' because of the steel used, into something graceful and pretty. I have no idea if I'm going to be able to pull this off but I'm giving it my best shot so I'm taking my time.
