Thinking With My Hands

I'm off on short side trip next weekend. I'm looking forward to helping teach a dry stone walling workshop in Ireland on May 9...

Six of us had a great time rebuilding 157 feet of wall last week. This added to the 120 feet we repaired last year. We all enj...

There are remnants of ancient stone walls all over the East Bay, and no one knows how old they are, who built them, or why. Thoug...

Who needs ' Premium   Polyurethane Construction Adhesive'? We wallers have a  Secret Bonding Agent

The first time we saw the historic walls at Balsam Lake road Maddy was ten years old. (she's now 21) We took our bikes and cycled nea...

Photo John Shaw-Rimmington 2001 I've photographed this lovely curved section of original dry stone wall on Balsam Lake Road seve...

Mark Ricard, Sean Donnelly, John Bland, Kenny Davies Exactly one year later the 'dream team' arrived again at Balsam Lake to...

While we all go through phases of light and dark, no matter what day of the month, it is always a full earth. This Earth Day, lik...

Dry stone wallers have only a few natural predators. Apart from power wielding town planners and permit officers, who make sure that ...

Many of the smaller stones I'm using inside the wall I'm building look yummy, almost good to eat, I think I'll take a break ....

A sturdy looking, well fabricated, preponderantly structural, curved dry stone wall now marks the entrance to the Northumberland Hills...

A little Sketchup video showing how to take a rounded field stone boulder and make it into more of a cube shape stone to work into a...

My dog loves archaeological digs. This one was pretty funny. A couple weeks ago, on the spring equinox, we told him we were going ou...

Dry stone walling is an ambiguous occupation: Discuss.   Well for instance, wallers talk about "  completely filling the insid...

Can you remember an occasion when you were 'taken back' in time? Maybe you were inside an old stone church or visiting a place wh...

© John Shaw-Rimmington This fall the Dry Stone Walling Association of Canada (Dry Stone Canada) will be running their third annu...

February 26th proved equally successful  ! February 27th Was Cloudy - No results John Bland was ecstatic after he record...

John Bland  is a trained mason and an excellent certified dry stone waller.  Recently he has been thinking a lot about time and space...