During the next few days, I finished a knife by stripping and wrapping tree bark around the hilt. I also added a knob of fallen oak as soft hammer to put a finer edge onto a blade. Helen received the arrowhead with an absentminded thanks and put it into her pocket.
Knife in hand, my crafting branched out from stones to weaving once I was able to cut away some serviceberry and willow branches to store the stone tools and a few chicken feathers I kept from cleaning the Archers' coop.
The first knife was functional, but was still crude. I wanted to make a better one, but I also needed a better work space than the outcropping beside the road. To do that, I would need a workspace. Ideally, it would be sheltered from the wind. I found just the place near some white birch that my father coppiced. There was a time worn stone that kept the outline of its angular shape and had splotches of deep red over the surface. More importantly to me, it had the hardness and the mass to serve as an anvil.
There were rough rocks at the outcropping that could be used to sharpen my tools against. As I wondered how to move them, Helen approached me with a bow and arrow in hand. At the tip of the arrow was the flint arrowhead that I had shaped.
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