The Wooden Inukshuk

Before coming to live in Canada I had no idea what this was.

Living in Vancouver its hard not to come across one. A popular one stands at English Bay, and miniatures are found all over gift shops.

The Inukshuk means "to be of human shape", and they are used as markers in the Arctic territories. Sometimes guiding a path and sometimes to show where food or people are. The arms too may be used, to point in the right direction.

I decided to try and make a simple one, not made of stone, but wood; and even better, popsicle sticks.

I wanted to use popsicle sticks but I also didnt want to make it look too uniform.

So I roughly cut out the same lengths, 8 for each leg and 5 for the torso,

Before gluing them together I cut and shaved bits off each piece so that it would have a beaten up unpolished look, as the Inukshuk use stones that have not been modified.

I stacked the legs and after they dried I glued on the Torso.

The next step was to build and add arms. Like the pieces so far, I used the same method to chop bits off the individual sticks to give a rough finish.

I glued the 3 arm pieces together and stuck that to the completed parts.

Like everything so far, I cut pieces out, roughed them up a bit with my knife and glued them to make the head.

When the glue firmed a bit I stuck it to the body and waited to dry.

Put it on a shelf and remember the seinfeld episode I watched while making this