Riveted Flower Keychain

I'm not ready for the long weekend to be over yet! I can't believe it's September. D and I took advantage of all the labour day festivities in Columbus...stopped by the Greek Festival for dinner on Sunday, saw the final performance of Cyrano de Bergerac in Schiller Park, and ate pulled pork sandwiches at a mid-day hog roast in Worthington. Yum.

This will just a quick post - more crafts to blog about shortly, but here's something to show you in the meantime! More practice with rivets, I think this one worked out the best of the bunch.

So, after I took this picture, I promptly lost it. It is somewhere in my living room. Maybe Gatsby will find it for me.

Shiny Nickel Cuff Bracelet

This was probably one of my favourite projects to make, and I like how it turned out. The whole process was pretty simple, involving annealing the nickel and texturizing it, then filing down the edges to get a smooth finish, and hammering it into shape.

Actually, trying to get it shaped around my wrist was the hardest part and required a surprising lot of direction from the teacher on how to position the metal on the anvil-thingy so that I wouldn't be creating a wonky curve (and taking my fingers off).

Pretty...shiny...ooh

And when I was done with all the fussing, I got to use the tumbler for the first time, yay! It's a little tub filled with metal shot and soapy water that rolls around on a very basic-looking machine, and once you put your jewelry piece in it, it polishes your metal to a nice shine! I was feeling nice so I included it in a PIF gift to z. knits as part of her PIF gift.

Jewelry class finished a couple weeks ago, and I'm still undecided about signing up for another one at this point...between pottery and my two bakery jobs, I haven't been doing as much crafting at home as I'd like. We'll see. Next up, I finally finished my PIF gifts and more or less delivered them, so I can show you what I made!

Rivets

After many weeks of procrastinating, I finally practiced making rivets (there they are, on the bottom two corners). Now I can join things together!

A cute, fat red bird to brighten your day

The birdie is a nice shade of bright red formica, which is really easy to cut and can be sanded easily. I have yet to decide what to do with this little guy. Lots of little keychains and tags are piling up in my bin, with various cut-outs and things in them. Soon, though, I think I will start a ring project - another student in my class is making the prettiest ring and I want to make one too! She also had a beautifully shiny copper bracelet, which is baffling because I could never get my copper so shiny. I'll have to ask her about it...

This weekend is Rib and Jazz fest down on the waterfront, featuring something like two dozen award-winning rib teams. One of them from our home town of Toronto! I think I know what dinner's gonna be for the next couple of days :)

Latest Project: Keychains!

A line from a Simpson's episode that amused D to no end.

I've finally got something to show you from jewelry class!! Yes, I'm still enrolled in it, though you wouldn't know it from reading my posts from this past month. I missed about 40% of classes last session, so I really am continuing on with the basics. After the tab-slot bracelet project, the next one is to learn how to use rivets. Rivets are a method of cold joining two pieces of metal (or other material) by drilling a hole through the two pieces and hammering a little piece of wire through both so that both ends get pressed flat, like a nail head, thus creating the connection. If you're clever and good at it, you can use rivets decoratively so that it contributes to the overall look of your piece. Let's just say I'm not there yet.

So. Where are the rivets, you ask? Well...there aren't any. Yet. I decided that my little keychains they looked better without being sandwiched against something else, so I'm still saving the riveting for the next one (although I said that 3 keychains ago). I did, however, continue practicing my sawing skills, this time with an even finer saw blade, without causing any bleeding injuries. The initials were a bit of a pain to cut out, and I couldn't get them filed and sanded down as much as I'd like. The bird, on the other hand, was much easier to cut. I'm mailing it to my graphic design friend Margot in Toronto, who will hopefully be amused by it. There is a third one that is blanked out with primitive Paint techniques, but it's a surprise for a friend later this summer. I think he'll get a kick out of it. The words were printed using little letter stamp/chasing tools - the possibilities are endless, especially if you are good with coming up with one-liners! Unfortunately I am not so good in that department. I've commissioned D to help me think of more clever things to stamp. They're all made with nickel, by the way.

I can't even remember how the bird joke got started, or what it meant

I've been riding my bike all around town this week, which has been great. I borrowed a few cake and sugar flower books from the library and I'm getting ready to break out the gumpaste kit (after all this time!) Now, I'm off to buy some tomatoes at the Pearl Alley market, and then going to decorate cakes all afternoon, and then again tomorrow. Should be fun, and hopefully I'll learn some neat new tricks. Although, there's so much going on in Columbus this weekend, it's too bad I'll be missing out on all the fun things.

Have a good weekend!

Copper Bracelet

Zdravo!! We've made it to Opatija, Croatia, the last bit of our trip. It's beautiful, sunny and beachy here.... totally different than Milan and Venice. I'll save trip pics for after we get home. It has been a relaxing day (a very welcoming change after 3 days of hopping on and off buses and trains hoping we are on the right one). D went off to his conference today, and I spent the day wandering around town, swimming, napping and reading. And blogging! It's been harder to blog than I expected, and a lot of the little internet cafes don't let you upload things from USB ports, but at least I can keep in touch somewhat.

Surprised to see a crafting post? I uploaded these images before I left so I'd have something to blog about in case I couldn't post new pics. So, here is my mostly finished copper bracelet...looking much better than I could have ever expected!! With one class left before our trip, I was pretty determined to get a lot done in that afternoon, and it was a nice surprise to discover that that finishing steps were much quicker to complete than the sawing and filing.

After filing each piece, I sanded it and then hammered each one into a dome shape to make slightly curved, following by some hand polishing with something I can't recall the name of at the moment. I could have polished it to a higher shine but being impatient, I left it as is. Maybe I'll do a little more polishing when I get back, but as it is I'm happy with how it looks!

Yay! It doesn't look like poo!

Connected with an extra long tab

We begin our trek back to Paris on the 11th. In hindsight, it was a rather stupid decision to travel home this way, as sleeping overnight on the train in second class is not all that glamourous or comfortable. Followed by a 7'hr flight. Lots to talk about under the heading of: Things we Learned about Traveling. Have a great rest of week, and talk to you all soon!

You'd be in a tizzy too...

...if you had to deliver two birthday cakes by 12pm today, and at 9am all you had was one baked cake.

Eek, the mess. Buttercream and icing sugar everywhere. This would have been a relaxing and satisfying project had I not misread the new email request that cake bakers drop off their cakes by 12:00 noon the previous day. Usually, I'd have until 4pm to get things done. And feeling a little ambitious with my bakery ventures of late, I felt pretty sure I could do two cakes without too much difficulty.

Suddenly the week whizzed by and hadn't even baked the damn things, not to mention made the icing. One cake did not survive coming out of the pan, so I had to make a third one...grumble. This morning I got up and baked my second cake before D was even out of the shower, and I made up all the icing I'd need in a couple batches (I really need some bigger mixing bowls).

Despite the rush I was in, I was determined to take a few pictures. They're a little dark, but it was the best I could do. They are fairly traditional-looking cakes but it gave me a chance to practice piping borders and flowers again. I did one of those S scroll borders, and made the two-toned roses by putting in both yellow and pink icing into the piping bag - the consistency was a little thin, but I didn't have time to redo the bag so I kept going. I used one of those scraping tools with the teeth for the sides, which was much harder to do than I expected. I think a turning table would have made it easier. I managed to dash out of the house at 12:10 and get them there only 20 minutes late. Luckily it was not a big deal. Anyway, it's been a while since I've made any birthday cakes, and it'll be another while before I get to do more since I'll be vacationing soon.

Oh, and here's my progress from my last jewelry class. We hand-sawed out our shapes, and next week we'll file them down so they are less wonky looking and have nice smooth edges. Sawing is hard work! Between pottery and jewelry, my arms are getting a good work out.

We're going camping this weekend, so won't be posting until I get back - have a great weekend and wish us good weather!

Wednesday Crafty Update

What's this! A combo jewelry-and-knitting post, you lucky folks!

Today was our second jewelry class which was much more satisfying than the first week considering we actually got to do some real metal work (and make a huge racket while hammering our projects). Our class demo today was: Sawing. And being the safety gal I am, I wore safety glasses for fear that fine metal dust would get in my eyes (thereby preventing me from ever being able to enter an MRI scanner). Better safe than scanless. We also had a demo on operating the drill press, which was pretty much how I remembered it from Grade 8 shop class, but with a few additional steps that will keep our metals looking nice and unmangled.

Sawing free-hand through brass - more difficult than you'd think

Here is my copper, all hammered with lovely little dents. I only hit my thumb once while flattening it out with a rawhide mallet (somewhere on Zarafa's blog, there is probably a picture of my hammer in motion). Next week we glue our paper template to the metal and start sawing! It doesn't seem like much for 3 hours time, but there was a lot of sitting around and waiting for the instructor to come by. While I do like the relaxed feel of the class, sometimes you can't get the direction you need quickly. It's a trade off, I guess - it's probably more enjoyable when you're a more experience student.

This weekend is the student art show at the CAC - there are some amazingly talented students displaying their projects, so stop by and check it out if you have a chance. After class, as a reward for our finger-jeopardizing work, we stopped by Pistachia Vera for a treat - lemon pine nut tart and coffee, mmm.

Knittingwise, Cherry is just one front panel short of being assembled. I finished the sleeves on the weekend and blocked the pieces last night. The pattern looks great after blocking - I'm excited to see how it looks all seamed up. Almost there...

On the work front, things are changing again. Some good and not-great news. In addition to leaving the private practice, it seems I might be leaving the bakery cafe too. My counter-help-in-exchange-for-pastry-work deal with the owner hasn't really panned out the way I'd hoped. He's had plenty of excuses, some legitimate, but none that motivate me to help him out any more than I need to.

The only pastry experience he's offered me is on weekends, so I'll be going in this Sunday to show him what I can do and see if it will be a mutually beneficial arrangement (i.e. I like it enough to give up my weekends). Apparently, if I'm any good, he says he might be able to give me a pastry shift on a week day. Honestly, how do you expect to keep your staff this way? After this weekend, it's hard to say if I'll be going back since I'm also taking a long vacation very soon.

The good news is that after I come back from vacation, I will be doing some freelance cake decorating for a lovely little bake shop on an as-needed basis. Very, very excited about that!

Bejeweled!

You read that right. One can never have too many hobbies! Zarafa and I decided to sign up for the beginner jewelry class at the Columbus Cultural Arts Center, which I am very, very excited about.

Oh the possibilities!! Do you think I'll be able to make something like this...

Or like this?

Photos borrowed from the Devil's Workshop, a Toronto-based jewelry studio

The CAC is one of the best discoveries we've made in Columbus. I absolutely love the CAC - they offer awesome classes at the most affordable rates ever. Once we move to Bethlehem, there will be no more wallet-friendly art classes (as far as I know). So, I'm trying to take advantage of it while I'm still here in Columbus. And a little break from knitting might not be a bad idea.

Here's the class description: "JEWELRY- Beginner/Intermediate students learn to create unique and complete projects in copper, brass and sterling. Projects are designed to acquaint students with college-level metal working techniques: sawing, stamping, cold joining, soldering and stone setting. A $15 Lab Fee will be collected at the first class. Bring a notebook/felt-tip pen. Advanced students may register for these classes. A minimum of 6 registered students is required"

I really have no idea what to expect since there isn't a student project gallery online. Hopefully I will end up with something wearable and not just a bunch of burns and cuts on my hands. Anyhow, happy Monday - hope your week is off to a good start. A cupcake post is coming next.

Odds & Ends

I'm starting the week by wrapping up a few things - a package for my friend J's baby on the way, inside is the cardigan and teeny socks...


Every once in a while I get the urge to pull out an entirely different hobby, so I started this necklace. When my fingers and eyes got tired, I switched back to knitting and sewing.


New stash! This is my first order from Knitpicks online (minus the grey in the top left) and I am pretty happy with the yarns I received. I purchased the color cards a while back and have just gotten around to ordering some this past week. The yellowy merino DK weight is soft and squishy and will probably be turned into some chunky socks. The Shadow laceweight is going to become a shawl of some sort, and the cream, black and grey Palette are going to become mitton projects. I'm planning on trying some fair-isle and lace knitting - it's just a question of how to priortize all these ongoing projects.

Not much news to share...I am still waiting for the sun to come out soon so I can take some better pictures already!