Kolrosing a Mora 120

Kolrosing is a decorative handicraft from Scandinavia, the basic process is as simple as you like but the results are great. A bushcrafty friend of mine showed me the Kolrosing that he'd done on his mora woodcarving knife and I really liked how it improved the knife. Mora 120's are superb little knives, the blades shape really suits the kind of woodcarving that I do and it takes and holds a nice sharp edge, and the handle shape is lovely and comfortable right out of the box. The price is pretty good too, I think I paid £12 for mine (I've seen them even cheaper since), and, as with any good quality knife I fully expect it to last longer than I do. The only real downsides to the mora 120 are that the sheath that comes with it is more or less useless and the knife itself is the plainest most boring thing you could ever cast eyes upon. 

standard mora 120
(image courtesy of www.knifereviews.co.uk)

Anyway, I decided that seeing as how this is a Scandinavian knife a little Kolrosing on the handle would be just the thing to pretty it up a little. I went for a couple of fairly simple knotwork designs as it's easy to build up composite designs with knots, so the overall effect looks a lot more involved and complicated than it actually is. These knots are usually known as celtic knots but there's no real reason for that, yes the celts did use knotwork designs in things such as jewellery but then so has just about every culture on the planet, especially those with northern european links. I guess "generic northern European neo pagan knotwork" just doesn't have to same ring to it. I don't think it's finished yet, there's a little bit too much space left I think, time will decide that for me. Anyway, this is what I've got so far, feel free to let me know what you think.

Bye for now,

Stuart