[ A driftwood stick, maybe seven inches long with two bends in it, sits on an old mouse pad, along with a couple pieces of thick copper wire in various shapes and a set of stacked plastic jars with blue beads in them. ]
My workbench can be the same worktable I use to pack orders. That’s not great, since I have to pack one set of things away to make room for the other, but it’s better than nothing.
My workbench can also be one of the round tables with benches around them on the porch outside of where some of us go to therapy. I often wind up having to wait there for someone else to be done with therapy, so I bring along projects. (Or I forget them & spend an hour doing color by number stuff on my phone, but, welp.)
Since the bench turned out to not be all that comfortable, I started bringing along my comfy camping chair & the wooden shelf thing I slapped together a bunch of years back & now use as my travel workbench. Nobody’s objected to me setting up there, despite the slowly increasing number of things I’ve been bringing along, & oh, also, the banging. I guess as long as I’m not there for hours & hours, they’re good.
[ The same mouse pad, this time sitting in shaded but clearly natural light. The same stick is there, plus the various copper bits, which have been hammered flat. There’s also a bent-up length of thinner copper wire sitting in the foreground. ]
This one wound up kinda fun, because I realized once I’d finished up hammering things (& I _did_ hammer both pieces I was working on before I started anything else, this time) that I’d forgotten to pack the coil of thinner wire I usually bring along. I dug around in the bag, & found some bits, but all of it was thicker than what I’ve been working with lately.
Which is fine! I can still make it do what I need. Except, alas, for making it fit through some of the beads. Including the leaf beads, which have fairly small holes.
Welp.
I did what I could. Fortunately most of the beads did fit just fine, & I got a couple bits done.
[ A wavy length of hammered copper wire. One end has a small loop for hanging; the other end has been flattened, with the flat bit rounded off so it’s smooth. Thinner wire winds around it in mirrored waves, with small pink and blue beads threaded onto it. ]
It’s definitely chunkier than I’m used to, but it works.
I used some even thicker stuff — though still lighter than what I use for hammered bits, which is usually 12 gauge — for doing the loop connections onto the stick. That was honestly a bit of effort; the thicker stuff doesn’t like to go around things too smoothly, so when I need it to fit tight I have to wrap it around & then tighten it a LOT more than with the thinner stuff. That always risks twisting the wire enough that it snaps, but I got lucky this time.
[ One end of the stick, with wire that’s just thinner than the hammered copper below wrapped around it, then around a loop. ]
What I do here is similar to the way I finish off the danglies — I do a loop on sort of a stalk, & that’s one end, then the wire goes & does what I need — goes around the stick in this case, or through whatever beads I want on the dangly — & then it wraps back around the stalk, so everything’s neatly finished & I have a loop to fasten it to the next bit. I should probably write up a howto one of these years, I guess.
But! Anyways. That was reasonably effective, I got all the fastening points done, & ran out of things I could do RIGHT before it was time to head home.
Where a workbench can be the same comfy chair & wooden shelf, sitting out front of the house in what was left of the sun, close enough for Remy to keep an eye on me but far enough he can’t try to help. By jumping on me.
[ The same wooden shelf as before, this time on bare dirt, with a pile of firewood visible just beyond. The shadows are long; it’s near sunset. All the usual accoutrements are sitting on it, along with a tall clear cup full of orange colored smoothie. ]
I got most of the requisite danglies done before the sun went down & it got too cold, but I still had some energy left & I wanted this piece DONE, so I hauled everything back inside & upstairs to my desk. Which, as workbenches go, is much like using the order-packing table: doable, but I gotta move a lot of stuff out of the way, then move it all back when I’m done. More SPACE, I need more SPACE.
[ The same assortment of stuff, this time sitting on my desk, right in front of my keyboard, with the pile of danglies, blue leaves along with the smaller pink and blue beads, sitting in the center. ]
Danglies!
[ A closer view of the pile of danglies — each has a loop at the top, from which the wire drops through six blue and pink beads, goes through the leaf bead, and winds back up around the smaller beads two at a time before winding around the stalk of the loop to finish off. ]
& that’s when I finally got focused enough I forgot about the camera & finished the entire rest of the thing. There wasn’t a lot more to do at that point, just wrapping thin wire around thick wire & fastening everything together.
[ The finished piece! There’s a fastening point at each end of the stick, and hammered copper wire runs from one to the other in an arc with a loop at one end and a loose spiral at the other. Seven danglies hang from it, at mostly-even intervals, with more pink and blue beads in between. Two more fastening point sit at each end of the almost-horizontal part of the stick; each has two loops, one facing up & one down. The two upward loops connect to the ends of a narrow arc of hammered copper wire, which has more pink and blue beads, plus an s-hook at the top. One of the downward-facing loops holds a hammered copper spiral; the other has the wavy copper wire bit hanging from it. ]
I didn’t notice, at the time, that one of the leaves had already broken; I need to replace that one, then get pictures, but this one should be listed for sale soon. I hope!
