Pre-Christmas Rush

Oh, the weather outside is delightful, and the outlook is 40% for snow on Christmas Day. I'm sleepy and tired today. I'm stressing out wondering if I'm going to finish Greg's bowl for Christmas. I make jewelry for my girls and Lou every Christmas. It's a lot of fun and they seem to like it.

Greg doesn't wear much jewelry and I would be afraid to make him something in case he wouldn't like it. I haven't made him anything. This summer I took a raising class. That sounds funny because I already "raised" him. I decided to make him a bowl for Christmas.

Raising is taking a flat piece of metal and hammering it on metal stakes until it curves and forms a bowl. There is a lot of hammering, blood (as in hammering your digits), sweat and tears (as when you poke a hole in your bowl). I tend to hammer so much I thin the metal and I get small tears in them. I try to mend them by soldering the tear closed. If I just left the bowl plain that generally works but I took another class by the same teacher and he teaches how to chase on vessels. It's impossible to chase when you have a hole in the vessel. You have to fill the vessel with a microcrystalline wax so that the vessel will have the strength to hold up to the hammering with chasing tools. So if you have a hole, the hot wax will dribble out the hole. I know, because it happened to me. Not fun...

Chasing is done by using small tools and hammering on the bowls that are filled with wax. You make indentations that look like areas are recessed and other areas are higher. Then you texture them. Or you can make "pictures" such as olive branches or ivy. Again, I go over areas so much that I thin the metal and I punch a hole through the metal, then I cry which is what I did on the first vessel I did for Greg. In order to save time I purchased a spun vessel. It is amazing what machines can do. It's all magic to me. You will hear that word a lot from me. If I don't do it or understand it, it is magic. There are machines that take flat pieces of metal that spin until they form bowls. I then chased on that bowl so I feel I kind of cheated on Greg's. Here is the state his bowl is in three days from Christmas:

This picture shows the impression seen from the inside. The bowl is made from copper. I will be using liver of sulfur (nasty, bad smelling stuff) to patina the outside to a dark brown, darker brown than this photo looks.

This is one of the sides. It doesn't show the levels of heights. There is texture covering the outside of the vessel. I now need to straighten out the top, the wavy lines (which are caused by my chasing), solder on a silver wire, patina the outside, and shine up the copper on the inside, and cover in paste wax. So, I have several hours of work left. The thing I am worrying about is soldering on the silver wire. That will be hard. All told I will have put in 12 - 15 hours of work. Just a guesstimate. I really, really hope he likes it. I will take some good pics of it when it is finished and post it on my blog and on Facebook.

Connecticut Thoughts

I emailed my cousin Joanna recently and she said I should start blogging. I thought, what do I have to write about? Who cares if anyone reads it. Sometimes its just satisfying to put one's thoughts down on paper, so to speak. Plus I have to worry about bad grammar and I know I write like I speak, grammatically poor. So there. Don't look at my grammar.

I would never put anything political or religious on Facebook, but I suppose I could on my blog. There is always the possibility of 100 people or so that could read a political posting (let's not kid, 90% of my "friends" block my posts) so maybe only 15 people.

If I'm going to talk about the awful shootings in Connecticut my thoughts are leaning towards the political. I was in Connecticut last week attending a chasing class. I have been wondering if any of the people in my class have been connected to any of the victim's families.

There is an old boyfriend of mine who I am friends with on FB. He is now very, very religious (Catholic) and conservative. I got sick of his anti-Obama blastings during the election but I felt I needed to read it to hear the other side. I wanted to be Fair and Balanced. He is a detective in the Edmond Police Department. Back when Obama was first elected President he was scared of Obama taking away his right to guns. Yesterday he posted a picture that was really, really offensive to me. He posted a picture of the inside of a gun show showing rows and rows of guns and assault rifles. He posted, "You won't see any mass killers here". I thought that was so tasteless.

I'm not sure how I feel about guns. I think the pendulum has swung a little too far when it comes to the right to bear arms and the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights. I don't feel we need assault weapons to do so. I feel we need some controls. The Second Amendment is now a sacred cow that needs to be harnessed and trained.