Hello Steemit community!

This will be my profile picture, it was taken by my beautiful partner, @robyneggs.

My name is Kevin, and I have a background of working in many different trade skills, and arts. Motorcycle mechanic, carpenter, welding, sewing, photographer, and sketch art just to name a few. Currently I work as an environmental arborist. The Company I work for contracts with the federal, and state government for the purpose of providing old growth habitat in areas of regrowth. This involves a lot of driving, heavy gear, hiking, tree climbing, and camping. The hobbies I am most focused on right now are mead and leather.

This is a photo of me carving a bat flange into a larger tree with a chainsaw at about 150ft up. It was taken by a coworker in an adjacent tree.

---

---

Cherry mead

Mead

Mead is a wine that is derived from honey as its main ingredient, and it is one of my favorite drinks. When fruit is added it is also referred to as a melomel. Much of the fruit I use is hand picked from remote locations of the forests where I work. The honey comes from a local distributor and is collected from bee keepers throughout my region, but I plan to source directly from bee keepers as things progress. It is both an artisan product of the region in which I live, as well as a cultural celebration of the Nordic portion of my ancestry. I started making mead several years ago when my uncle, who was also a home brewer at the time, gifted me with a pair of 1 gallon, glass carboys and air locks. He now owns, and runs, Deep Woods Distillery in Oakridge Oregon. I am still just a hobbyist, therefore I can not sell, or make a profit from my mead, but it is my hope to eventually satisfy all of the requirements for a winery license.

The wild black raspberries add a nice color.

I like to surprise @robyneggs with a bottle from time to time. Also pictured is a bottle of Garbhain's Well, a single malt whiskey from Deep Woods Distillery.

Vikings full of mead invade fine art. I found a pair of these cute Viking wine bottles at a local thrift store. The painting is by my aunt, Anna Lee Steed.

This photo is from last years batch of black raspberry, and thimble berry mead in progress.

---

---

Leather

The history to my leather craft goes back long ago to my early ages. My mother is a talented seamstress, and as such would make me original clothing items from time to time, allowing me to take part in the process. She taught me basic hand stitching to mend my own clothing, how to work from a pattern to create clothing, and introduced me to the sewing machine. It wasn't until years later that these skills began to serve more of a purpose than basic need.

The vast majority of my leather products are hand stitched.

This work in progress will be a satchel for an old friend in Texas. It is also my first leather carving.

More

There are too many projects going on for me to cover everything in one post, so there will be much more to come. Until then, here are a couple examples of other projects I have taken on.

I made these brass frames for a friend who was in desperate need of new ones.

This was the first ever attempt at forging a knife from a piece of cable steel that I recovered from the woods. It is commonly left behind by loggers....