[ one long stick, shaped somewhat like a lacrosse stick & about a foot long; three shorter sticks, each about four inches long; & two tangles of copper wire sit in a pile, waiting for me to get a clue ]
As is traditional I picked up the big stick & it told me what it was gonna be called, so I grabbed some smaller sticks & some wire, & wow, was that not a lot to go on. Monday I rearranged the sticks a bunch of times & they didn’t do anything illuminating, so I figured I might be messing around a while to get them sitting the way they wanted to.
… or, yanno, not, cos this happened approximately three minutes after the last picture.
[ The big stick sits along the right side of the image; the three shorter ones are placed to the left, along with a piece of white sea glass, maybe two inches long. ]
Finding the random piece of seaglass I’d left in the bottom of the basket did help a lot, gotta admit. So I got that ready first.
[ The seaglass is wound around with copper wire, with loops sticking out on three sides. ]
The lighter wire I brought was still a bunch thicker than the light wire I’ve been working with lately, so wrapping with it was a bit of an adjustment, but on the up side, it’s sturdy enough that I can leave in little windy bits & it’ll still hold. Also good for hooking together two sticks!
[ Two of the smaller sticks are attached at the ends at a right angle, with copper wire wrapped around them both to hold them together. ]
Having attached a stick to a stick, I followed it up by attaching a stick to a stick.
[ The end of one of those sticks is attached to the middle of the bigger stick. ]
& then it was time to add the seaglass, so I hadda make some loops.
[ One end of the bigger stick, with copper wire wrapped around it; there’s a loop at the top, & another one a couple inches down. ]
It almost looked like the three sticks would make a triangle on their own …
One of the loops on the seaglass piece is sitting next to the top loop on the big stick & another loop at the end of one of the smaller sticks. ]
… but when I checked the spacing wasn’t QUITE right.
[ A view of the upper part of the piece. The three sticks make an open-ended triangle, with the seaglass attached in the middle, but there’s a gap between the top of the big stick & the end of the smaller one. ]
Easy fix, though.
[ A short piece of wire, a couple inches long, has been wrapped around the very tip of the shorter stick, then into the loop at the top of the big stick, holding them maybe an inch apart. ]
Made a loop on the end of the last stick, cos I knew I’d be hooking something to it.
[ Yep, there’s a loop on the end of that stick. ]
Wound the wire the rest of the way up, & used the last of it to hook that stick to the other two small ones, & reinforce that join some.
[ The spot where the three sticks join has copper wire wrapped around it several times, in a variety of directions. ]
To nobody’s surprise, what I made to hook to the bottom of that stick was a spiral. A BIG one — it took a while to hammer the texturing into it. I kept needing to take breaks.
[ The spiral sits on the flat steel anvil I use for hammering wire. It’s a good three inches across. ]
But yeah, that fills that space nicely.
[ The end of the copper spiral is hooked to the loop at the end of the smaller stick; copper jump rings connect it to the big stick, & to a spot on another of the small sticks. ]
There was still a gap there, though, & the bottom of the big stick, which really is sort of neat, wound up kind of hanging out on its own.
[ There’s a couple inches of gap between the big spiral & the end of the big stick. ]
When in doubt, add another spiral!
[ A smaller spiral, maybe an inch and a half across, hangs from the same loop that the bigger spiral is attached to. The entire piece is hanging from a small branch against a tree trunk — the four sticks are arranged in a very rough H shape. The seaglass sits in the top of the H, & the big spiral in the bottom. The small spiral hangs from the bottom of the left side of the H, & below that is the end of the big stick, which makes up the right side of the H & then curls around beneath that like the tail on the letter J. ]
OH & since my mom & my aunt-by-adoption grumbled at me for not putting the size of these pieces in the posts — look, that goes in the listing, & I haven’t had a CHANCE to list any of these yet, y’all keep BUYING them — this one’s just about a foot high, counting the hook at the top.
… maybe THIS one will last long enough to make it to the website.
