more rain = studio time

There's been a lot of rain lately and, in my case, that meant staying home and experimenting in the studio. The above pendant shows yet another (mostly) cold connection technique.

The two pictures above show what I played with this morning: a new texturing hammer, cutting apart an old tin that one of those free AOL discs came in and an enameled piece from my "neat and tidy" period. I seem to have moved out of that particular period.
Wish I could get my hands on more tins with interesting print, but, these days, plastic seems to be king.

rainbows

We've had lots and lots of rain lately. There have been heavy rain, high winds, reports of tornadoes here and there, power outages and, yesterday, late afternoon, the above.
Another big storm expected late tonight into tomorrow morning.

on my bench this morning

It's raining this morning, perfect for a bit of experimentation. And experiment I did. Not all of the pieces were made this morning, but today's session was tremendous fun.


This is chocolate foil fused onto copper. On the piece on the left top, I also experimented with enamel powder, mixed success, it sort of melted the foil, but I like the effect anyway.

I obviously have a thing about windows. Here, I used decorative paper (and brushed nail polish on it for safety reasons).
Another window, this time using several colors of enamel powder.


This involves enamel and an underglaze pencil. The pencil is really meant for ceramics, but it works very nicely here, too.


Texture and enamel.


Pitted enamel - spraying the unfired enamel powder with a bit of water - very carefully. Too much and the whole thing is ruined. Guess how I know that? :-)
I seem to be an enamelist at heart, just about everything I make involves a bit of enameling.
Most of the pieces shown are components, waiting to be made into something cohesive. We'll see.

and she used to have such harmless hobbies

It all started with Lisa Claxton's 20-minute ring class, my first exposure to torching and hammering. We used a little microtorch, the little black one which is really meant for crême brulée. It was fine, but eventually I upgraded to the slightly bigger silver torch.

This one, too, is a butane torch. Nice, handy, easily controlled. Very suitable for soldering.

Last weekend, though, in Mary Hettmansperger's class we used a big torch, a propane torch. Bigger flame, hotter, faster. Of course, I had to have one. Today, I tried it for the first time at home. It works; it works very well. I didn't do much, gotta get used to it first.
Have to mention here that the blinds are down in the picture only for photography purposes, otherwise they are up as high as possible for safety reasons.
And to think that I used to have such lady-like hobbies: crocheting, knitting, sewing, quilting, embroidery, beadwork. All that changed when I moved to California. Now I go after metal with hammers and torches. And I like it.

hand dyed yarns

My daughter has been dyeing yarn for a while and just opened an online store:

http://knittyk8.bigcartel.com/

I don't quite know how she managed to do all this, she has a demanding full-time job, a husband, cat and dog and dyeing isn't the only thing she does on the side.