Christmas day report.

Ok so its boxing day but i thought id write a little report on the "great day" .. well we got up, started eating chocolate as soon as our feet hit the ground as is traditional. Not wanting to wait too long we then opened all presents! The lad got a phone from grandma (well mainly from grandma and us supplying a small amount) and i got about four multitools, i usually get a pen knife or hammer, obviously i'm hard to buy for. This year though they excelled themselves

and found a multi tool with a hammer attached! Neat ah and probably not a lot of use but it shows willing...ok so then we warped back up the phone and commenced walking the three miles to grandmas.
Nice bright day though it did rain on us a bit. I insisted we decant two small bottles of Sloe gin "in case we bumped into anyone we knew" to some eye rolling. We walked up the back lanes the main road was surprisingly busy. (way back a few years ago grandma had been rushed to hospital and we had set out on boxing day to walk to the hospital 14 miles each way! only some kind soul gave us a lift there, and another stopped and gave us a lift home!) anyway we trudged happily and we did indeed bump into a friend, in fact the friend who lives in a caravan in the very field the sloes were gathered from. He was cycling to go swimming in the sea, which to us is nuts, but is his normal day things. Anyway we got to grandmas, we were welcomed in with, "come in then"...eat crackers and cheese (not really safe to eat much else there) and made a thing out of exchanging the presents, the lad acted very pleased, the wife showed off some shoes she got weeks ago for xmas....and me, the person who ferries her round, runs around collecting pills at a moments notice, the one who takes her out Saturdays and shopping every week... a demisting pad...for a car i don't have any more..thanks a bunch.

The walk back was nice, saw the odd daffodil flowering very early in a field, amazing amount of camellias are out too.

To me though the real sight and smell of Christmas is Butterbur, the odd wild flower that delights in flowering on the most nasty dirt and cold days, sending out a warm spicy perfume.

I've been thinking on a new bowl idea,but all that has come to a rather shuddering halt due to circumstances. The mother in law, 90 and rather frail expressed and interested in going to the Eden Project (Basically some huge geodesic domes full off plants in a big ex - China clay pit) This is quite an expedition in our tiny plastic car, but the very recent £275 it cost to haul it up to MOT standard gave me confidence. So me,the wife,grandma and the 14 year old lad squashed in and set off, and we very nearly made it. You turn off the main-ish road onto a road that goes only to the domes. Rounding a corner I saw a guy with a dog...Then A dog about a foot of the front of the car then the bonnet coming up to hit the screen,an awful bang.....I was going under 30 and I'd hit a dog square on. A golden ladrador.  Came to a stop lept out fully expecting the car to be covered in dog but no, it was sat on the grass next to its owner wagging it's tail.....The damage? The car is basically write off, bonnet,both wings,front bumper and the front engine support all mangled,radiator leaking too.  No one hurt ,though I've got a nasty crack on my shim,the old dear ...not bothered, stoic as an Easter Island statue. She ended up being taken to the domes in the dog walkers car with the lad,who pushed her round (and carers get in free!) While I walked up and down the verge feeling sick,the wife did battle with a quite frankly unhelpful insurance company on the phone.....so I'm rather distracted right now.
I found a bit of "police do not cross" tape right on the spot we hit and opposite was a wreath, looks like we weren't the first but possibly the luckiest. .......

murderers gloves

I'm so dim really' for years i've just bashed stuff scrubbed my hands and suffered them being sore, black and stinking of vinegar etc.I even laid the blocks on my shed with mostly bear hands. Its only just occurred

to me i could wear gloves. In fact Screwfix do a range of very cheep ones(.http://www.screwfix.com) Of course they do cool black ones. I paid about £2 for them, i chose cloth covered in latex reasoning if i touched anything hot, they would at least no melt right onto my fingers. My lad, immediately he saw them' dubbed then "murderers gloves" that had a hint of Darth Vader about them.
 Of course i often forget to wear them at all or on one occasion i did pick up a hot bowl caused them to melt a bit (and cause an awful stink).

Ones i have found really useful are the disposable Nitrile gloves (the blue ones) they come in 100 glove boxes. Great for dabbling in vineger or fixing the car (though grease and oil rapidly degrades them)..

Happy post

That was so depressing I'm going to post a happy pic I found on my phone. That's Jake the westie. A dog of our friends,we looked after him when they went away for a week. Of course he recognised me as the true leader of the pack. Hence sleeping on my Croc.  I'd like a dog but can't afford one, even rescue dogs nowadays cost about £150 !

oops

Oh dear we all make mistakes  don't we? This is a good one. I spent days

hammering this one,days raising the sides up further than I thought I could,then hours giving it a nice even hammer texture. Hours neatly turning the beaded edge. Of course I wasn't  satisfied with a handsom on bowl, and I decided to experiment. I decided I wanted to sink three glass marbles in the base to make it stand up well. Not only that but I decided that the ever present problem of supporting the copper as it's bashed might be solved using potters clay. Which is cheep (£6 for a big lump at a potters supply place) and I found out....messy and totally unsuitable. Anyway I filled her up and went to bashing. The sad result you can see here. A normal person might stop when one went wrong,or maybe two, but I plunged on undaunted by reality and went straight ahead and made three damgmed great holes it it. Not even neat holes but great tears.  I've been wondering just how to fix it for a few months, solder won't work , patch might or rivets. Meanwhile I used it to display the pegs at the art show...even as I type it's in the room looking at me with reproach,  it says you did this to me, you fix me......creepy it is.

Well in a bit of a turn up a nice lady turned up to the house with hubby and bought the Hares bowl. I even showed them the shed and that didn't put them off! As its one of my first proper bowls and made of Hotdogs old water tank i will miss it. But its gone to a good home.

There it is at the back of the table next to the heart bowl. It has been much admired and now its moved along.

Notice Rose's stuff on the table we shared (such confidence ah) Great cats!

Notice we also bagged the single most important bit of equipment at an art show, comfy chairs!

Pegs...seems like hundreds of 'em

 Ok so here's the making of things bit. I decided that cheaper was good rather than the bowls, just to make people buy something... So in a heated discussion with my friend Judy ( a really talented painter and free form mother to five kids), about xmas presents for her family. I argued that what every she made her family wouldn't want anyway and all that was needed was something they would say they were pleased with and not throw straight back at her. After going round the usual things of unreasonable complexity i suggested pegs. Just off the top of my head, pegs cut a slot in the top insert a cut out bird, done...an idea she rejected on the grounds of seeming too easy. Though latter on she did try it' she reports, it was too fiddly and she couldn't find a glue suitable (though by suitable she seems to mean "lasts for ever". To which i pointed out many of Leonardo's frescos dropped off the walls,sometimes within a few years of him finishing them, so an immortal clothes peg was not needed) and she for some unfathomable reason used. just sprung wood pegs rather than the much cuter "dolly pegs. Any road up. i acquired some "dolly" pegs, sawed a slot in the top, painted the top with wood primer, masked off with insulation tape, which i find is softer and works better than real masking tape.

I then painted over with Cyan emulsion i has laying about. leaving a stylish white bit showing. I then found some small of cuts of copper pipes, acquired when the mother in law had central heating fitter to her old council house. They were about 2 inches long so i cut them along and hammered them flat. Annealing cleaning then i drew some birds on them, cut them out and shaped them with my trusty small hammer. Sliped into the slot with trusty "super" glue the looked a treat, but did take much longer than i planned. This one was the very first.

Here's some as displayed pegged round a bowl i had (its got holes in it, but thats another story)...the first one came out looking very normal bird like as i went on the changed and ended up looking very "insane chicken" indeed...i will take a pic of one of them latter on... hay i sold some! a nice lady took five at once (it was £10 for fiver or £3 each) and Rose my partner in Art crime bought another two, and a fellow stall holder bout one, on the way home we dropped in a friends house and she bought one... All very surprising. No idea what to do with them now..

I got bored on Friday, (for reasons beond thought i'd got it my head that the art show was on Friday,so i'd rushed to get everything finished) found I could do this on the tablet thingy....Full marks to anyone who recognises the film. Love those old SF films.
For reasons of "it just would wouldn't it" I just checked on a proper computer...and the clip fails to work, but it does in the Android youtube app....god knows why.

Today I have mostly been in Constantine, near Gweek. Doing an art show thing. Despite my usual died of such things I enjoyed it,tea on tap a good friend (Rose) to chat to and interesting people passing by. I even sold a couple of things, which is quite frankly a shock. Met a person who sews great things https://www.facebook.com/LyrebirdDesign worth looking up ! As well as a lady wrangling some kids, it could have been only one, but it appeared to be more, who used to do Blacksmithing. Interesting she preferred "stick" welding to Mig (I soon want a mig!) .... though I know myself well enough to know, I want really to mess about with a mig welder for about a day......then sort of wonder what I needed one for.
I did take pics but..last week I lent the camera to a tech savy sixteen year old, to take pics of me masquerading as a rock star for his Rock magazine media studies project. Yes really! And he changed all the settings and for the life of I couldn't get any non fuzzy pics until the battery's ran out. I will try again tomorrow.

Untidy mind.

 A rush of cash lead me to buy one of them newfangled tablet things,which can only lead to trouble. Anyway it took this picture so it spirit of experimentation here it is. Notice how horribly untidy the room is. How cute my feet are and all the various cap I've made hangs road like a bad smell. Things I've made , the robot marionette, the brocade teddy bear (wearing a copper spiked dog collar I made), hybrid barbie/scorpion (barely visible on to the marionette control), bird topped pegs around a bowl etc.....Oh and I see a hurdygirdy behind the coal scuttle. I didn't make the tuba,that was found in Oxfam for £39, I just couldn't resist it.... oh and a Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, Sherlock Holmes film on telly...

The ring O'doom (no idea why this post isnt showing right out in the open, maybe its shy, click on it and its got pictures and everything)

More ring piece

First thought was, make the silver shank soft. I'm used to copper, but apparently silver is slightly different, get it red hot and let it cool down,rather than quench it. However I found my torch is more suited to melting roof  pitch than delicate work and it sort of melted the surface so it looked like tree bark!  This tipped even me off that I was rather out of my depth. So I consulted with a local jeweler. This confirmed I was indeed in deep water. So off to Kernowcraft for supplies again.

This is the shank on a nifty soldering block they sold me

The nice girl also sold me two differing silver solders, I had thought my usual brazing rod would do, but heat wise,the silver would melt. Two solders one melts also a lower temperature  so in theory the shank could be fixed then the gallery then the two united. ..good theory ah.

This is the gallery attached to the base of silver,see how big t.he stone is!

The tale of the silver opal ring

Not three miles away lives an old lady, the mother in law. I take her shopping every week and out for an airing on Saturdays. On just such an innocent trip I happened to mention that I intended to visit Kernowcraft ( http://www.kernowcraft.com/) out Peranporth way, she expressed and interest in going along, so wife and old dear in tow, that's where we went, it was there the trouble started. The old dear loves opals, there were opals on the front counter, blithely she announced she wanted an opal, selected one (£98!) . I did wonder just where this was going but....well if you reach 90 years your sort of entitled to indulge yourself. She then announced that I would, and had agreed, to make her a silver opal ring...my eye met the wives and I raised an eyebrow,  I had no knowledge of agreeing to anything, but, hell,  I'm all about the quiet life so I nodded, shuffled about and wondered as she chose the stone, I did intervene to point out I needed a bit of silver for the back, some for the ring and a bit of 'gallery' to go round the edge. Thinking on my feet, I was already there planning.

Back soon

The Internet thought I'd got bored and wandered off, true, but I will be back with lots of pics and general things I have been up to, watch this space.