[ A meadow, currently covered in brown grass and scattered with trees, is seen through the frame of a metal shade pavilion. There’s a fence in front of it all, but that’s just because part of it’s a baseball field. ]
It’s not QUITE warm enough for Woods Day yet — give it another week — & Jasper needed to get Remy out to practice dealing with DOGS & PEOPLE & SQUIRRELS (oh MY), so instead we went to the park.
Of course I brought Loiosh! I don’t wanna DIE.
My setup wasn’t QUITE the same as usual, but it more-or-less worked:
[ Instead of my usual wooden worktop and folding chair, my stuff is spread across a picnic table with a bench. My canvas jewelry tool bag sits next to a water bottle and a pile of jewelry tools, driftwood and copper wire. Loiosh, an orange tabby wearing a green harness with a blue bowtie, stands beneath the bench. ]
I’d brought enough stuff to work on two faery home decor pieces — or so I thought, but, welp — & I figured I’d focus on the ‘bang on copper’ parts, because, well, ears.
Ears in two senses, tbh. For one, this way nobody has to listen to CLANG CLANG CLANG echoing through our far-too-tiny house. For another? Me, sitting in a public park, making bang noises with a bunch of stuff gathered around me on a bench. AND there’s a cat on a leash. Eventually, I figure, SOMEONE will get curious & come over to see what I’m doing. & if I get known as ‘that guy who makes jewelry & stuff at the park, & also has a leashcat’? That’s really not a bad thing.
Anyway, here’s where I started.
[ An old, beat-up mouse pad sits on the picnic table; on top of it is a flat, rectangular jewelry anvil. There’s also a pair of simple jewelry pliers, a light hammer with one flat and one rounded end, a pair of wire snips, two pieces of driftwood, and a skein of copper wire. ]
As usual, I started by framing the whole thing out. I like this as a layout:
[ The smaller piece of driftwood sits on the mouse pad. Above it is a small, ornate s-hook of thick copper wire; below, left to right, is a spiral with the tail leading up to the stick, a broad inverted u with both ends just about meeting the stick, and a third inverted u, this one running from the right side of the first u up to the right end of the stick. ]
After that I just hadda hammer stuff. A bunch.
I haven’t been doing near enough hammering lately, so I kept needing to take breaks. Most of them I’d get up & stretch a bunch, since I also haven’t been doing near enough of that. Sometimes I hadda untangle Loiosh. Sometimes I just hung out & watched the birds.
Eventually, sufficient hammering:
[ All the copper pieces described above have been hammered flat, then textured with the rounded end of the hammer. They’re piled on the jewelry anvil, with the hammer posed next to them in what I really hope is a photogenic sort of way. ]
Having accomplished that, I started on the second & larger driftwood bit, only to discover that I only had six(6) inches of that thick wire left. So I made a spiral out of it & started putting everything away; it’ll happen next time, once I’ve pried more wire out of the tangle it’s currently in. That’s about when Jasper & Remy wandered back up, so that worked out pretty well.
Did I wind up with an audience as I’d hoped?
[ The shaded area has a bunch of picnic tables; beyond it is a parking lot, with my van more-or-less in the middle. There’s a jackdaw under one of the tables. or possibly a starling, I’m never sure which is which. Anyway small black crow relative, eyeing me up from a safe distance. ]
… kind of.
