Or, ‘how I made a lovely custom mobile with crap someone else found in their back yard’.
My mom’s BFF Carolyn contacted me about a year ago to ask about the possibility of me making her a custom piece. She had a cool stick she’d found somewhere or other — you can see above how it does look vaguely like a duck — & a bunch of old-style keys, some of which she’d gotten from her mother, some of which she’d found at antique stores over the years. She’d always intended to make something out of them, but never got around to it, something with which I suspect we’re all familiar.
So she sent me some pictures & asked if I’d be interested in making her wind chimes. I said sure — it looked like fun. & then six months passed, during which I occasionally thought about the project, but mostly just sort of survived, what with one thing & another.
Round about March I finally sat down with the parts again. I had a pretty good idea of what I was after, & I found a perfect piece of broken windchime to go with everything else.
I hung the windchime bit from the chains & laid it out next to the duck stick to get a look. It looked pretty good.
I tapped one of the keys against it, just to hear what sort of sound I’d get, & it went clunk.
… so that was a problem.
I dug around a bunch & found _another_ bit from _another_ windchime, which still sort of went clunk, but it was sort of a musical clunk, so it was, if not better, at least less bad. I got it hung from the duck stick, & that looked pretty good.
I got the keys lined up & laid out next to the chain I wanted to hang them from, & got ready to make a bunch of jump rings.
That … didn’t work out like I’d hoped.
So I found another stick, cut it to length, & hung the keys from that, instead. Feeling pretty good about the results, I took a couple pictures & sent them off to Carolyn, along with word that ‘slightly musical clunk’ was probably the best we were gonna get for sound.
She loved it! & she was fine with the sound, declaring that perhaps ‘mobile’ was a better word than ‘windchime’. But, she asked, could we maybe tilt it a bit? So it looks like the duck is flying?
Yup.
This was posted originally to my Patreon, a little over a week ago.
If you want to see these posts sooner, & not incidentally help support me & my cats in our travels & such, the way to do that is to sign up as one of my Patrons for as little as a buck a month.
I’d REALLY like that.
