I missed June’s banner, so I thought I’d better do July a little early. You know. Before I FORGOT TO DO IT ALL MONTH.

This copper bracelet is one of the first I made, and it’s made from a very small gauge of wire. So even though it looks big up there, know that it is actually very tiny and dainty!

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If you are in the DC metro area and enjoy wearing gorgeous jewelry, you might be interested in the class I’m teaching in a month!

This is a 3 hour class from 10am-2pm on Saturday, August 1st at The Soundry, a very cool artist space in Vienna, VA. I will be teaching this class on August 1st, September 12th, and October 3rd. (All Saturdays!)

 

Many people hear “chain maille” and think medieval armor–not so anymore! With a pair
of pliers in each hand, you will learn the byzantine chain maille weave. It is a lovely, complex
and ornate looking weave, but surprisingly easy to learn! Students will finish an 8 inch sterling
silver bracelet with a toggle clasp that will be the envy of all your Tiffany-shopping friends!
Class Fee: $25, Supply Fee: $55 (may vary depending on cost of silver)
Ages: 12yrs + Experience: Beginner
Sign up now!

 
I am very excited, as this is my very first teaching class. If you’d like to sign up, just click here for the sign up form. Feel free to drop me note in the comments or email if you like as well, I would be tickled to hear from you!

-amy

Last night after we got home from a lovely birthday BBQ at our friend Liz’ house, which is always so fun, I decided to finally make another square linked bracelet, like the one I’d made in my soldering class. Here it is:

I’d been watching out for anything long and square that I could use as a mandrel (mandrel = something on which to shape / wrap wire or sheet metal) and finally decided to just wing it with my pliers.

I also realized I still had some links from my class that I hadn’t used, and a ton of already soldered jump rings, so the whole thing came together really fast.

Here is the new bracelet next to the old one (sans chainmaille).

After I snapped this, I put it in the pickle pot. The “pickle” is a highly acidic solution that removes oxidation (coloration) from precious metal. It’s usually heated to work faster My pickle pot is a little 1.5 qt crockpot.

Here it is after it came out of the pickle. It’s funny how it comes out completely white and matte, very unlike how you think of silver.

Then it was way way past bedtime. Next I need to finish it, which means sanding it down with finer & finer grit sand paper, a little polishing, and finally, a tumble with some stainless steel shot in my tumbler.

After that, I am not sure whether or not to put the same bits of chainmaille links in each square as the original, or some other element. We’ll see.

-amy

I never did follow up and post how my soldering class went. It went awesome!

Here is a photo I took with my phone halfway through the class. The bracelet is only half done, I just draped it over my wrist.

Here are is a picture I took after I got home. I plopped everything I came home with (finished and unfinished alike) into my light box and took some shots with the Canon 30D.

You can see 2 square links that have not been soldered, one that was soldered, but I didn’t need, a few little bitty clasps I made, and some balled headpins — which I strung a pretty lucite bead on to show how I plan on using them. And then of course, the bracelet I finished in class.

As you can see, when you put the torch to silver, it oxidizes the metal. The oxidation is the black and goldish colors you see in the torched pieces. In order to remove the oxidation, when you’re finished, you place it in the “pickle” a solution that removes a very fine layer of metal, including the oxidation. The finished bracelet went into the pickle at the end of class, thus it’s nice and shiny. It had not yet been tumbled, so the silver is still a kind of matte finish rather than a shiny finish. I have a tumbler at home, so I didn’t worry about tumbling it in class.

And here is my finished bracelet.

When I got home, I added (unsoldered) chainmaille pieces inside each of the square (soldered) links. I absolutely adore it – The organic asymmetrical-ness of the squares makes it looks kind of retro to me. Very mod. I am going to make another one with a little less hammering of the squares…. once I can find a square mandrel to use!! I’ve just been keeping my eyes peeled for anything but I may have to ramp up efforts, head to a hardware store and actually actively look for something.

My pyromaniac sale is over, and I sold 2 items, which in my book, is a SUCCESS! I received my torch and soldering supplies, and let me tell you – it is FUN! I’m hoping to finish some earrings this weekend to list.

Also, I may be teaching a chainmaille class August 1st! I am kind of excited! If you are in the northern VA area and are interested, let me know and I’ll keep you up to date! It will be a byzantine class, and participants will be able to finish this bracelet in class:

-amy

My silversmithing class was awesome. I loved it. I instantly came home and ordered a torch and all the supplies I needed to do my own soldering at home. Stuff called pickle and flux and also? Charcoal. Cool huh!

It’d be nice though if I had some SALES from my ETSY shop to offset my latest order… so….

Enter “PYROMANIAC” in the comments when you buy something from my shop, and I’ll refund you 20%! that’s right, a bonefied SALE! I haven’t decided how long I’ll run the sale, but probably until the weekend if not through the weekend.

Here are 2 new items I just listed. The bracelet is relisted from when it sold last month (finally made another one) and the earrings are my new absolute favorite pair ever. Hard to imagine that anything would bump the Posies from that slot, but these have done it!

Next up, I’ll give a little more detail on my soldering class, and show some pictures.

-amy loves to play with FIRE!!

I haven’t posted any kid art in a long time, but now have I got some good ones! Ethan came home from school today with this treasure tucked away in his folder. You can tell he really spent some time on it!

It is a worksheet he made for Jocelyn. The first part is a “matching” section, where she is supposed to look at the first shape and then circle the matching shape in the next 3 columns. The next is a simple counting question, complete with multiple choice (!!! multiple choice! oh god, it kills me!) And then he also has a blank for the answer (asr). I almost flipped when I saw this.

Next up we have some beautiful ladies drawn by Jocelyn, in fancy upturned dresses. I asked her if they were doing the splits or something, but no, those are their DRESSES. I absolutely ADORE the first girlie’s face. I don’t know if you can really tell in this picture but it is just the sweetiest little face EVER! I have had the urge to sew something lately and this little gem is pushing it over the edge – I simply have GOT to make a little dollie with that face!

Oh man. I can’t even tell you how much these feel me with GLEE! I just love them and HAD to share!

-amy

What? what’s that? You want to know how Week 1 of Project Skinny went?

You mean… you aren’t on Twitter? Because I told the twitterazzi already, and .. oh fine, I’ll BLAAAAWWWWG ABOUT IT TOO.

I am down 3 lbs. It was actually 3.something but I forgot the Important Weight Watchers book that they put your official sticker in with weight + loss and as a result, I just remmeber the important “3” part of the 3.something.

I’m pretty happy! I was hoping for like, you know, to be ultra skinny after only 1 week, but you know, it works. OK, not really, but I was thinking I could do 5 lbs easy, so there was a teeny tinge of disappointment until I mentally smacked myself and said, “HELLO, THREE POUNDS IS AWESOME” and then was happy.

So yeah, there you go. and now, at home, I’m out of vodka, so that can only be good for the whole week progression.

In other news, things are just going swimmingly. I haven’t updated about Ethan in a long time, and trust me, that’s a good thing. The reason this blog has seen all this ethan action and no Jocelyn action is because I write when things are PLAGUEING MY BRAIN and so blog-silence usually means EVERYTHING IS JUST SWIMMINGLY LOVELY!

I neglected to update on this when it happened, but Ethan is now on ADHD medication. And I could kick myself for waiting as long as we did. James was ready probably a long time ago, but was OK with the waiting. It’s like we have our awesome kid back again. And in the evening, when it wears off, we still have our awesome kid, he’s just tied himself up in a pretzel on the floor, is all.

Honestly, I think the meds have helped a lot, but I also think that he has matured a lot too. When we go outside and he’s running around with kids, I think now he’s just more clued in to himself and when he is reaching his breaking point — now, he will will come inside and say, “I’m done playing outside.” Whereas before, he would stay outside and possibly get overworked up about something until it has escalated past the point of no return. Now, he can remove himself before it gets to that point. It also helps that we’re pretty much always out there to monitor. And I do want to give credit to the medication as well, I think it has helped him to be less scattered and just, ALL OVER THE PLACE to make these realizations about himself.

Jocelyn is doing great too. If I had to complain about Jocelyn, it’s that 1) SHE TAKES FOREVER TO DO ANYTHING, 2) She is ALWAYS hurting herself, and 3) she will get PISSED at you if you don’t give her her own way (but not always.) And to all of the above I have to remind myself… SHE IS REALLY, PRETTY DAMN YOUNG. It is hard to remember that, even though she’s my own kid. Is it just the fact that she’s a second child maybe? I have to remember what Ethan was like before he was even in kindergarten and in my mind, he seemed back then a LOT younger than she does now.. Do we expect more from her? I’m not sure, maybe. If she would just hurry up and buckle up in the car now and then, our lives would be a whole lot easier, is all I’m saying 🙂 But really, she is a joy and is doing the cutest damn stuff all the time.

This past weekend, we decided to take the kids to see Up! Jocelyn said, “What’s “up?”” and I said, “you know, the movie with the house that goes up with all the balloons?” And she got this look of recognition in her eyes, and she says, “Ohhhhhhh, you mean, ‘PIXAR’S Up,’ Mommy.”

And then she corrected herself, “I mean, not Pixar’s Up, it’s ACTUALLY DISNEY Pixar’s UP.”

Indeed.

Partway into the movie, there’s a part where they come down out of the clouds and try to figure out where they are. the little girl next to Jocelyn said, “What IS THIS??” in a kind of way that really meant, “where are they?”

But Jocelyn quietly whispered to her, “It’s Disney Pixar’s Up.” I had to smother my chuckling.

Anyway, so things are going well. There’s 2? 3? weeks left to school. Then Ethan will go to Taekwondo summer camp, and Jocelyn will pretty much carry on at her daycare as she already is except probably with more water and sunscreen involved.

We are making plans to go to Oregon in July for my brother’s wedding.

We are also making plans to do various painting and carpet replacement in the house over the summer.

So. Yeah. fun stuff!

2 other things:
My toe is still dislocated, and now? NOW?? My other foot is kind of irritating me too.
In my last storytime post, I remember I had another childhood memory that I was going to post and I remember it was a DOOZY.. and now I can’t remember what it was about. Doh.
And last, the keyboard on this laptop is starting to get screwy. Well, sticky, to be exact. I’ve tried to clean the keyboard once or twice with disastrous results (let’s just say cleaning laptop keyboard VERY DIFFERENT from normal keyboard cleaning).

You don’t want to bring any vodka over, do you?

-amy

I have like, 3-4 big blog posts boiling around in my head, but some are interlinked, and some are not and I’ve been putting them off all week so rather than continue to put them off because they seem “too big” to tackle, I’m just going to do them all super quick and get them out there.

1. James and I have been married for 10 years TODAY. We went to lunch, since we suck and have no sitter for tonight or this weekend. We came to the agreement that we will go for another 10 years. I tried to change the terms of our marriage (I want him to “obey” but he wasn’t going for it) but in the end, we figured we can give it another 10 years.

2. The above conversation was actually like 30 seconds. Just so you know. We’re not actually that callous. We’re just very amusing to ourselves. The rest of lunch, we talked about house remodeling. Because we’re just that romantic and dreamy!

3. I have dislocated my toe. “How!?” you cry! Well, it was nothing dramatic. I wore heels for several days in a row a few weeks ago, and did more than moderate walking around errand running on the last day and my feet hurt. Really bad. Usually I wear heels, my feet hurt, and in a day or so, they’re fine again.

Well, they weren’t fine, and when I hit the 2 weeks with my right foot really kind of killing me, I decided to go see a podiatrist. He suspected a fracture, x-ray-ed, and lucky me, no fracture —- my 2nd toe is just DISLOCATED. He prescribed me a anti-inflammatory cream to use 2x a day, a pad to stick on the ball of my foot to take the pressure off the joints, light wrapping to compress the area and anti-inflammatory pills to take orally. I go back next week. The toe should want to move back into place when the swelling goes down, if not, I may need physical therapy.

So, in a word, my foot hurts, and when it gets later in the day, I start to hobble rather than walk. Don’t worry, I make sure to give James frequent updates on the status of the foot pain. “it HURTS OH GOD IT REALLY HURTS!” Definitely every hour. Usually every 15 minutes. He shows his appreciation of my helpfulness by attempting to smother me with a pillow. Because of the love.

4. I am re-starting up Project Skinny. I actually started it up officially on SUNDAY! I went to a Weight Watcher’s meeting and let me tell you, that starting weight is a little scary. I knew my weight was creeping up this year, but I wanted fries from 5 Guys more than I wanted a skinny ass, so it was easy to stick my head in the sand and ignore the obvious. I don’t want to make excuses, but the stress with the stuff going on with Ethan definitely was a factor. The last straw though, honestly, was the foot/toe thing that really did it.

After my foot was STILL hurting me (this was before I got myself to a doctor) after over a week, it dawned on me that perhaps my foot has suffered a more serious injury FROM WEARING HEELS… that PERHAPS… MAYBE JUST PERHAPS… I WAS TOO GODDAMN FAT. A person should be able to walk around Target and Petsmart and do errands in heels WITHOUT DOING SERIOUS INJURY TO HER FEET. Obviously, the feet aren’t meant to carry around the amount of weight mine have been carrying around! That was it. It was the last straw, and it was time to do something about it. (Please someone bottle this feeling for the future.)

So I really got my resolve together Saturday. I was going to go back to Weight Watcher’s, and I was going to start Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred. I’ve heard about it on Twitter and a few friends have commented on it and it looked good to me (helloooo! only 20 minutes!) so I had bought it. Well, now was the time, baby! I didn’t start it Saturday as I had intended, but I did Sunday and I was doing pretty well on it until I think I aggravated my toe a bit more — Day 4 I pushed myself pretty hard, and it is also the day my foot was killing me and I called the doctor! And now I am putting the Shred on hold.

It kind of sucks because the motivation for me to GET UP EARLY (ie: move heaven and earth) and DO AN EXERCISE VIDEO (ie: shoot myself in the foot) is… well…. DIFFICULT. But I had it! I had the motivation! I did FOUR WHOLE DAYS, PEOPLE! That is huge. And now I have to put it on hold until my foot is better. I can only hope I can muster the motivation back up when that day comes. Sigh.

And I was really actually enjoying tolerating liking how i felt afterwards. I was sore, but a good sore. I was tired, but also more energetic. And with each day I was a bit less sore than the one before and I could push myself a bit more than before.

So anyway, yeah. I am trying not to look at a big goal right now, but am focusing on the wedding we are going to in mid July. It would be nice to get a good solid loss in before then, and I have enough time to do it. I’ll be tracking my progress here.

5. FIRE! Soon, I am going to PLAY WITH FIRE. I have been wanting to take a metal smithing class since the beginning of the year but have purposefully put it off. But now the time is almost upon me. I am taking a beginning soldering class next Sunday, ALL DAY, AND I CAN’T WAIT!

Me. Melting metal. Maximum Awesome.

That is all!

For NOW. CARRY ON!

-amy, who’s foot hurts. Really bad. I’ll call you in 15 minutes with another update.

I have a couple of really distinct memories from my very young girlhood. I lived in Colorado until I was 8, but we moved to washington state before I was nine. I don’t remember much of 2nd grade, but 1st grade is vivid and In Color!

I remember how hot it was in Colorado. When my parents told us we were moving to Washington, and they mentioned it had a lot of trees.. I remember I was glad about that because there would be a lot of shade. You know, shade is a good thing when it’s always hot out.

My very best friend in the world was Tina. she lived in the neighborhood one over from us. My house was in the middle of an acre of alfalfa, which, just for your knowledge, is like, one of the best things for a kid to play in. When it’s been growing all summer and is really long, you can pick it and lay it down in a bed and lay down and no one can see you. You can play in it like a fort. When it’s short, lots of those little prickly weeds with stickers on them (heretofore called, as we always called them, “sticker bushes”) grew everywhere, so as to provide kids who always ran around barefoot with Feet With Skin Like Elephant Leather. We used to run races barefoot, to see who could go over all the sticker bushes the fastest. I won often, and still have Feet With Many Callouses.

Anyway, back to Tina. To get to her house, I had to cross the field of alphalfa, go over a little footbridge over a creek/crick/running trickle of water, go through her neighborhood to her house. We named all these little places, but the only one I can remember now was we called the field we must cross to get to each other’s house, “Rattlesnake Country”.

Tina and I were the very best of friends. We went to kindergarten together to a school far away from our house, and the teacher was old and crotchety. I remember she would point to the inside of our wrists, and tell us that right now, that spot with the blue veins was weak and gooey. And we had to color VERY hard with our crayons to make the inside of our wrists strong and un-gooey. I remember hating her a little bit for that. However, her teacher’s assistant was the loveliest young lady named Ms. Pakorney. And just in time for us to enter first grade, a NEW school was finished being built, and it was just a hop skip and a jump away from Tina’s house, and thus, we could walk to school. And LO AND BEHOLD… Ms. Pakorney was our first grade teacher.

First grade was exciting, especially with Ms. Pakorney who did lovely things like read us Ramona the Pest, and never ever told us our wrists were filled with goo and that we mustn’t leave ANY WHITE SPACE when we colored or the goo would never go away.. Basically, first grade at our new school was heaven.

First grade was also when I remember really “getting” this reading thing. I remember being in the car and looking around and realizing, “Hey, I can totally read all this stuff around me.” I read Charlotte’s Web and was tickled to DEATH that I was so grown up that I could read a CHAPTER BOOK.

I remember that our class split up for reading groups, and I was in the highest group. It was me, and another girl, and a boy. And we got to name our reading group. And even though me and the other girl had all sorts of LOVELY names picked out, names like, the UNICORNS or the RAINBOWS or the RAINBOW UNICORNS… this boy must have been very cute and charming because he convinced us to name our reading group THE STEELERS. (I still root for the steelers whenever they happen to be on and I happen to be in the same room.)

Tina and I were in the same class and we both became good friends with lots of kids in the class, but especially a girl named Christine. I remember thinking that we were JUST LIKE SISTERS because her name was CHRISTINE and my MIDDLE name was CHRISTINA. I adored her long blonde almost-white hair, and thought that maybe if I scrubbed hard enough when I shampooed, MY hair would maybe turn that lovely white-blonde color too. The three of us played together all the time, but of course Tina and I stayed best friends, because we still lived close and walked home together and spent every possible moment on the weekends together.

Until one day, Tina asked her mom if she could have Christine and I over to her house friday and STAY OVERNIGHT! Oh the excitement! Oh the giddiness! OH MY GOD THE ANTICIPATION!

The three of us planned and plotted and giggled and squirmed with delight. Christine had a special note from her parents allowing her to walk home with us to Tina’s house. Friday morning we were keyed up to, I’m sure, a frenzy state of excitement. Until Friday afternoon, when Tina and Christine decided they wanted to have a sleepover BY THEMSELVES. WITHOUT ME. I am fairly certain it was because of the planning. I had wanted X, while both of them wanted Y, and there was a fight, and in the end, they decided they did not want me over. It was the epitome of Girl Drama, which basically is Girls Playing At Being Women kind of drama. It did not blow over, and I remember some vague turning of their backs to me and marching off to plan THEIR sleepover, type of behaviour, and I was simply crushed.

The fight and the decision to not include me, I don’t really remember that well. It was the aftermath that I remember vividly. I remember the sting of that pain. I remember crying my little heart out at home, after school, walking around my house, wandering out into the alfalfa, curling up and letting the tears roll down my face – knowing that right then, AT THAT MOMENT, Tina and Christine were doing all those things that we had planned to do together. I remember feeling so hurt that Tina would choose to side with Christine over me, choose to have Christine over AND NOT ME. I’m sure I wasn’t too pleased with Christine either, but the pangs of Tina’s rejection hurt the most, and also, the pangs of JEALOUSY. I was SO jealous of Christine, with her long blonde hair. Tina had chosen HER instead of ME.

A few days later, Monday rolled around, and the two of them quickly made up with me and I remember that feeling of surprise, that the pain that had hurt me so badly, that the event that had made me feel SO HORRIBLE, could clear up so quickly. They told me about their sleepover adventures and wished that I had been there and that NEXT TIME, would be even MORE fun.

I don’t feel any pain in this memory now, of course, but when I do think about it, I like to pick it apart in my head. It was definitely the first time I felt betrayed by a good friend, and I am sure that Tina was just as enamored with Christine as I was. New, exciting, and of course, let’s not forget that beautiful long blonde hair.

I look at my kids and wonder what they will remember from this time. I know Ethan has already experienced the rocky stab from friends not necessarily choosing his way of doing things, and has already built up some defenses. Jocelyn is still too young for everything to not be huge and dramatic.. If her friend can’t come out and play because she has to eat dinner, it will be the end of the world for Jocelyn..

..but then, I remember it that whole experience being the end of the world for me, so maybe I was “too young” too.

I’ve got another DOOZIE of a memory, that I’m going to save for another time.

-amy

I had this necklace ALMOST finished for a long time, well, it was finished, but not quite the way I wanted. I finally sat down one night this week and added an extension chain so that the length could be variable – now it can be either 17-19 inches, though I guess I should make it a shorter range in case someone wants it as a choker..

Anyway, here it is, and I simply adore it. The focal pendant is a vintage lucite reproduction of a german filigree, and I have a few other colors of, so that will be fun. The chainmaille weave I used is European 4-in-1, with a simple 2-1 used for the connector at the back. It closes with a lobster clasp, and all metal is sterling silver, which means it is 92.5% fine silver, and 7.5% copper, which gives it more strength and hardness than 100% fine silver. The beads are amethyst.

So pretty. It’s listed in my etsy shop, though I will have to make another one for me to keep if it sells!

-amy