All-About-Me Page For mazedasastoat [+12]
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Location
Kingsbridge, Devon, United Kingdom
Listings Running 0
Account Status PLATINUM
eBid Buddy Points 0.402
eBid Member Since 02 Oct 2008
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Some Information About mazedasastoat
Giving you a little more insight into the seller.
I post every week day and I try to dispatch all items the day after I recieve payment. Sometimes it will even be the same day! Items for the UK are sent by Royal Mail First Class as a large letter or packet, or by Royal Mail Standard Parcels if it's a staff. Items for anywhere outside the UK are sent by Royal Mail Airmail as a small packet. The only way I can send a staff out of the UK is via a courier service such as DHL or FedEx and it is very expensive! If the overseas shipping rate is not on the item page and you would like me to find out how much it would cost for your chosen item please email me for the price BEFORE bidding as it is very likely to make you change your mind!
All items are securely packaged and the vast majority of my packaging materials are recycled in order to minimise the footprint I leave on our Mother Earth.
I would prefer everyone to pay via Google Checkout, but UK buyers can use Google Checkout, PPPay, PayPal, Nochex, personal cheque or postal order. Non UK buyers please pay by Google Checkout or PayPal ONLY - thank you!
I live in the very far South of Devon, surrounded by rolling farmland and close to the coast, with my partner Andrew with whom I’ve enjoyed over 24 years of unmarried bliss! I’ve always lived in this area, we live in a hamlet 4 miles from the village I was brought up in and I’ve never lived more than 9 miles from there. We live in the last house in the village, which is exactly where a witch ought to live! We have an acre of garden, which had been part of a disused and neglected orchard until we arrived 12 years ago, and our bit only had two trees left. I have no idea how long it had been an orchard, but we have a map dated 1894, and it’s clearly marked as an orchard on that. On one side we have a single track lane that leads to the beach, on another we have the garden of our next door neighbour, and the other two sides are next to the rest of the old orchard. There are quite a few Apple trees left in there, mostly cider apples, but it mainly gets used for grazing sheep or bullocks nowadays and nobody bothers with the apples. It’s been in the same family for at least 4 generations, and the oldest surviving family member assures me it’s never been sprayed, so I think it definitely counts as organic! There are trees on all sides of the garden, as well as a few scattered about inside, and these provide almost all the wood I use. Wood from the varieties of tree that I don’t have I usually scrounge from my friends’ gardens, although I have been known to screech to a halt by the side of the road to pick up a fallen branch of something I wouldn’t have otherwise! It means I never know what I’m going to have available, or how long it will be before I get some more after I’ve used it all up. I don’t think it’s right to cut trees for wood to sell, unless they’re the sort of trees that are grown like crops and regularly coppiced or pollarded anyway, like Hazel and Willow in some parts of the country. I don’t think it matters how many offerings are made to the tree, it’s not going to like you hacking off great lumps simply in order to line your pockets! In any case, the traditions surrounding the ceremonial gathering of materials for magical purposes were really designed for people collecting what they needed for their own personal use, and one person cutting one small branch for a wand or staff isn’t going to do a tree a lot of harm. Not to mention the fact that most of these traditions are very old, they come down to us from a time when the population was a lot smaller and there was a lot more countryside than we have left today. Probably 90% of the wood I use comes from my own trees, and the same percentage is lost by “natural wastage”, which is usually winter gales, but includes tractors and too-wide trailers, and my delightful grey squirrels! Don’t get me wrong, I thoroughly approve of wildlife, (except perhaps when it’s released indoors by one of the cats in the middle of the night!) but I do wish the squirrels didn’t strip the bark off the trees because it kills quite large branches that are capable of causing a lot of damage when they fall. The rest is what needs to be cut back, usually because it’s blocking access to somewhere or has become unsafe for some reason. I tend not to use regular prunings for wands, staffs or runes as I don’t feel the wood has quite the same energy. I try to stay as close as possible to the traditional way of working with the wood, I refuse to use power tools of any kind on magical items and every bit of the work is done by my own muscle power! For bringing out the natural beauty of the wood and providing a protective finish I use organic, vegetable derived oil, but you can choose to have pure bees wax polish if you prefer on commissioned items.