 Hi, my name is Danny and welcome to Esoteric Moment! Today I wanted to share a bit about my process for making a crane bag. In Druidry, a crane bag is used as a pouch or a sacred place that you can either keep ritual tools or specific offerings from the natural world that aids you in your magical journey. In Obad, the Ovate Journey War 6 talks about preparing this crane bag. So that was what started my process, was kind of the research presented there, and also just recently getting my sewing machine finally fixed this year, so I actually have the means to do something a little bit more elaborate. I've looked online for other people's personal journey on making a crane bag, and there's not a lot published. It is a very private thing, so I get why there wouldn't be tons of blog posts or other videos, but I hope that this video kind of inspires someone else or encourages folks to share more about their journey. Druid's Garden is a blog that I love, lots of permaculture details too, and she has this really in-depth post about her crane bag, so I took a lot of inspiration from that post. One of the things she mentioned is making sure that it's ready and easy to use for ritual or for going outside, since druidry is such an experiential path, and you are outdoors quite a bit. It makes sense for your crane bag to facilitate that part of your path. For me, the largest item that I would take with me when I do ritual outside is my bow. This is my Irish drum that I'm still very much a newbie on learning, but it is sizable, narrow, but sizable, so my crane bag has to double as a drum case. I first went to Joanne's fabric to pick out some cotton material that would work for it, and I chose two. The outside of my crane bag looks pretty simple. It's just brown with little yellow spots, but when you look closer, you can see that there are little spirals in the brown kind of pattern. Spiral is such a powerful symbol in my path, so this really calms me. Inside fabric is bright yellow. It looks a little like a batik, but it's just fake that way. It does have a dragonfly detail all along it, though. I also picked up some batting material that's used for making oven mitts or outdoor coats. It has a little bit metallic lining to it to help reduce heat transfer, which would be useful when carrying a drum, because drums react to the temperature and humidity around them, so you want to reduce that extreme temperature change when you're stepping outside during the winter or the summer. You want a more gradual process. When I actually started making my crane bag, I didn't do much to create sacred space. Sewing takes up a fair amount of space in my apartment when I get to it, so I didn't want to limit where I was moving around or have to worry about that. I did, however, light a candle and used peppermint essential oil and set my attention at that time right at the beginning about what I wanted to imbue my crane bag with and how I wanted to approach the process in general. This was something that I was making my own pattern for, so there are some things that I would do differently the second time around, just because I understand the pattern a little bit more and there's less futzing I would have to do with the material. I basically measured the drum out on the fabric and then created kind of a U-shape to hold that drum. There are two pockets in my crane bag. One is just big and insulated with that batting material, and it's just for the drum. On the outside of that is a second pocket, and this has smaller areas for the striker, a pocket knife, candle, essential oils, things that I would use in ritual outdoors. It also has hooks for two other items, which includes my O-M bag, so I have some O-M fuse, and they stay in this bag. And then a smaller pouch that I made that's a more typical crane bag. So this can stay on my altar if I'm at home or travel with me in my crane bag. The second pouch also has space for my book of shadows and any gorsi that I might be using or other books for reference, like a tree guide or something like that. I is huge when completed, but I really like the way that it turned out, and I can't wait to use it for outdoor ritual or even just carry my drum around. I think it fits my personality really well but also doesn't call too much attention to what it might be. That allows me to walk to the city parks a little bit easier without drawing questions, and just makes me feel more comfortable in transporting things. My crane bag is exciting and useful for me because it allows me to do outdoor ritual better and holds sacred items in a more sophisticated way, I guess. I am sure that it will change and adapt depending on what my practice does in the future, so I wanted to document what it's like here at the beginning so I can look back at it and see how it's changed. If there are any pagans out there specifically druids who have a crane bag, I'd love to hear how you chose your bag, did you make it, what sort of items were important to you in the process. Thanks for watching and as always, may you find peace in the sacred grove.