Hairy Potter

yesterday my beloved mr. metalology and I went into town to do something creative. did we drive all that way because we just can't be creative enough at home, you ask? well, sometimes it's nice to do something out of our comfort zones to regain the inspiration we need for what we like to do normally. and painting our own plates in a little ceramic studio is about as far away from my comfort zone as a thing can be, not to mention mr. metalology's opinion on the matter. 

which is ironic since he is such a fantastic artist. he majored in fine art in college, and is quite an impressive oil painter and cartoonist. yet he always hems and haws around like he doesn't know what he is doing. he finally settled on a dot pattern showing the sun setting (or rising, i guess) over the mountains. it is lovely! my design was cheerios, of course, just circles of different sizes in different colors. not very inspiring, just colorful. 

muddpies studio is where we did our damage. in kernersville, nc, it is a cute little gallery and ceramic painting studio we stumbled on one evening last week when we went to town for dinner. i immediately knew i wanted us to make something together, and since he agreed so easily, i decided to go ahead and schedule it before he could change his mind! haha! he has participated with me on several of these creative experiments, and although he dreads it up to the minute we start, he usually enjoys it in spite of himself. 

so after a morning spent working hard on our plates, we left to go find the happiest surprise of the day: a great restaurant we didn't know about yet. at the two brothers greek diner we enjoyed the best gyros we've had since we moved away from charlotte and the famous shomar's greek restaurant. it was amazing, delicious, and i think the most enjoyable part of the day for my reluctant artist husband. he stills smiles when he remembers that sandwich.

i need elbow augmentation surgery, but instead...

as you may know by now, i love organic fibers and fresh styles. i need for my clothes to be different, otherwise i might vanish into the background and never be seen again. i like long skirts and monochromatic tops that i can wear with my merrells sandals. something that drapes nicely to cover up my quirky curves and razor sharp elbows. (not kidding about the elbows, sadly, or the curves...)

i always love eileen fisher linens and silks. i always love earth creations hemp. i love sangam cottons and two star dog anything.  i love flax linens too. lately i have been cruising Etsy to find my latest favorite new top, and have come across some real jewels, but cannot decide:

i love this: from ureshii, this is the milkmaid top. it is gloriously elegantly casual. i think it would look nice with capris or a skirt. it is so lovely, and is offered in a variety of colors. hmmm, but what about my razor sharp elbows, you ask? with a top this perfect, maybe no one will notice?

this gorgeous top from sandmaiden is available in bamboo! how cool is that? she has a nice range of colors too, but i am partial to this black one. this looks so lovely with the really groovy collar and very cool sleeves that would solve that elbow problem of mine. it is just perfect!

i love this top! it is so cute and has the cutest name: little bits by ellainaboutique. it also comes in a nice range of colors, i like the grey and the coffee brown. it comes with a long sleeve option, 3/4 length sleeves or with cap sleeves. (a sleeve for every elbow shape, perfect!)

everything by secretlentil is awesome. her work is creative and fun, and looks like nothing else i've ever seen. i am completely infatuated with her very cool designs, some with razor sharp elbow coverage and some without! the color combinations are inventive, the styles are unique, and the size range is very inclusive. i love it!

so you can see my dilemma, how to decide which first? they are all so lovely, and like picking my favorite among my beloved little doggies, i cannot choose just one. HELP!

folly folly folly

today mr. metalology and i went on a field trip as we do most  saturdays this time of year. he is an amateur film maker and makes travel videos for our YouTube site and dantraveling.com. this week we chose to visit the strangest house in the world,  Körner's Folly, in kernersville, north carolina. it is an amazing house! 

Körner's Folly is an historic home that has twenty-seven rooms on seven levels. it is a rambling victorian mansion that could have only been envisioned by the artist and ad man, Jule Körner. Some of the rooms had ceilings so low that everyone but me (hysterical isn't it?) had to duck. Some of the rooms had ceilings twenty five feet high. in the attic space there is a little theater, called cupid's park after the murals decorating the walls that were painted by Caesar Milch. 

we were lucky enough to stumble in on puppet show day. this morning, the attic theater was host to several children anxiously awaiting the show that tells the history of the family and house using the most elegant handmade puppets! the puppeteers were great and took extra time to come out after the show and talk directly to the children. it was a special experience to have, completely by chance. 

the house itself was overwhelming. the rooms are connected by winding staircases, some of them so narrow i began to regret my big breakfast. these narrow passageways were obviously built before the days of the super size extra value drive thru meals. the rooms were lavishly decorated with incredible antiques and some rather strange pieces of furniture. the details in the woodwork and trim moldings were intricate and the fifteen fireplaces were decorated each with a different theme. 

it was a strange house to tour, and i cannot imagine living it in, much less cleaning it, but visiting it was the perfect adventure for a lazy saturday morning. 

on the hemp again!

so, today i went back to the meadows of dan trading company. i have a serious problem...

hello, my name is janet and i am addicted to hemp.

i really needed a haircut, in the worst way. due mostly to laziness i have not had a bona fide haircut in a couple of months or more. i have remedied this oversight by begging mr. metalology to cut my hair for me in the bathroom with a hand mirror in my hand shouting out directions and, 'no god no not that much' and that sort of thing. so after the kind of courage that only comes from seeing the bottom of the wine bottle, last night i decided that this morning i would go to stacy's and have a real haircut. 

here's the history: i have super bad luck with haircuts. super super bad. the worst haircut of my life happened about 3 weeks before my wedding, and that trauma lingers. and worse, since moving to north carolina i haven't really settled in to that trusting relationship with a haircutting professional that is so essential for me to have in order to allow anyone that close to my head with a sharp object, the kind you aren't allowed to take on a plane anymore. i have had excruciatingly rotten haircuts here in my new state. i am sure it is all my fault, i do not speak the 'haircutting tongue' my lexical skills just do not include bob, wedge, weave or any other term that might apply just as easily to boxing as to hair design. having said that:

so i was off to see tracy first thing this morning. i was very hopeful, i emailed myself a photo of a haircut i liked to show her on my iPhone. i figured a picture was worth a thousand words to avoid misunderstanding in this case. she did a wonderful job, my hair looks great, just like the picture (at least today...we'll see what happens when it's my turn to style it...) and i was so pleased and invigorated with the new energy that only comes with a successful new haircut that i took my car to the carwash and had it cleaned too. a fresh start all around! 

to reward my bravery, i decided to go back to the meadows of dan trading company and procure a new skirt. which i did. it is lovely, pale green and just the same as the last one i bought there. i also got a 'mud dyed' tee shirt with a lovely scoop neck and then on the way out to the car i found a sleeveless top on the sidewalk sale rack for $17 in my size, so OF COURSE i grabbed it too. 

hemp makes me feel good. but not because it is a sustainable fiber and good for the environment and blah blah blah, i mean those things are good too, but i like the way it hangs. i like the way it breathes. i like the way it looks on me, and i like almost nothing on me. i like the way the edges of these garments are serged and not hemmed. i like the raw edges.  

Trilliums

I have been thinking about our upcoming trip back to Tennessee with great excitement. Mr. Metalology and I were just back in our beloved Smokies in early April, to celebrate our birthdays and do some hiking. We were so lucky to see the trilliums in bloom all over the rocky hillsides.  It is my favorite wildflower, and nothing beats seeing it covering the ground in my favorite places.  

I came home with the idea to attempt to make a trillium flower in sterling silver. I hammered out a couple of different prototypes and was pleased with the shapes and forms, but nothing can capture the natural beauty of the real thing. Still, I try...

So our next trip to the Smokies will be the third week of June, and we are renting a mountain top condo to share with Mr. Metalology's sister and her family. It will be great, because when we are together there is lots of laughter. There will undoubtedly be hiking; hot, sweltering summertime hiking with bugs and possibly snakes. But there will surely not be the peace and quiet that we so enjoyed in April. The trails will be more crowded with tourists. The mosquitoes will be buzzing in our ears. But best of all, there will be the laughter of memories being made. 

I hope I come across something else that will inspire some more metalwork, that will mean that long after the trip is over I will still be reliving it at my workbench. 

wasting my raw materials just for fun

I don't know how other people relax, but I know what works for me. I like to do things that are unnecessary but yield a finished product anyhow, you know, goofing off by wasting my materials stash. One of my favorite time-wasting ventures is to get out some fine silver wire and fuse up a bunch of rings. 

Fine silver wire is the coolest thing! It's nice how it can be fused to itself and to sterling silver sheet metal. But I can really zone out by making a little stack of rings. 

I first take my wire and wrap a long length of it around the wooden handle of my brass hammer. I have a ring mandrel, but for whatever reason, I always reach for that hammer handle instead. I make a long tight coil around the wood, slide it off and cut the rings like you would when you are making jumprings. I fuse them using my biggest butane torch, a totally zen experience since I usually do this at night and turn off my bench lights. I watch the metal glow to that salmon-peach color just before it fuses at the joint. I quench them, but only because the one time when I didn't, I burned a ring-shaped hole through the rubber matting I have laying on that part of my workbench. Once they are quenched, I use that same little brass hammer to texture the edges and then put them aside to be tumbled. 

I am always amazed at how bright and shiny the fine silver gets once it is out of the tumbler. It makes all sterling silver, no matter how polished, look dull by comparison. I have now made several stacks of these rings and wear them on several fingers. I also use this technique to make hammered links that I use in different projects, usually as a connector for a pendant, only for those I like to reshape the ring into a somewhat triangular pebble shape, a more organic and less symmetrical look. If I reshape it after fusing but before hammering it is easier to get the new shape I am going for, while the metal is still soft and has not been work-hardened yet. 

I don't know if it's the glow of the metal in the dark that I find relaxing, or just the repetitive action of making something I already know how to make, something that's not even challenging in the slightest bit, something so familiar that were it not for the fire coming out of the torch, I could maybe do it with my eyes closed, but something about the melting silver is the little relaxation award I like to give myself at the end of a long day at my bench. 

Chicken in a Biscuit

today dan and i went to pocahontas virginia again for a visit. we have been there numerous times over the past couple of years, it is our unofficial home away from home. we first went there to make a little travel video for dan's youtube site:

http://www.youtube.com/user/dmccoig

then we went back to make a longer full length documentary complete with oral histories and interviews. over the course of two years we made about 12 weekend visits and several new friends in this sweet little town. our film project is over now, we showed the finished piece at the annual exhibition mine opening ceremony a few weeks ago. 

today we went back for a visit with our friends Tom and Amy. it was a great day and i wore my new blue hemp skirt (see previous post) layered tee shirts and my favorite merrells sandals, which made me feel awesome and prosperous. 

while we were there, i met some new people, one of whom was also wearing merrells, and i was immediately interested in her cute shoes. she complemented the necklace i was wearing, and since i almost always wear my own designs, i said,"thanks, i made this friday morning, i'm a metalsmith." it was one of my reticulated rose prototypes, all sterling silver and i am proud of the piece since it's still new and i'm not tired of it yet. she said, "oh, who do you work for?" and i said, "myself, i have my own business and sell my work in a few galleries and online at Etsy." to which she promptly said, "oh."

i don't know why people seem disappointed when they find out that i am in business for myself, i think of it as every american's dream to have their own business doing something they love and find fulfilling. but when i tell someone that's what i do, i actually feel silly saying it out loud and feeling like i might have to defend it. crazy, right? maybe not... 

hemp addict...

hello, my name is janet and i am addicted to hemp.  

i recently discovered hemp clothing when i was in Mount Airy, NC at the Meadows of Dan Trading Company.  i saw this skirt from across the room.  i sauntered over to the skirt and gently touched the fabric, expecting it to have as much of a smooth and supple texture as an old rope-swing.  can you imagine my surprise when my fingertips were instead rewarded with the silky softness of the fabric, that wonderful fabric that drapes across my sad little body like a fine grecian toga. i was hooked after looking into the dressing room mirror.  i couldn't believe my luck, a skirt that was comfortable and organic and fashionable and smoothed out some of my sadder curves. 

of course, i bought the skirt. and the jacket. and a cami, just in case. 

now i feel compelled to purchase this skirt in every color available, i mean, i can't wear this same skirt everyday, someone might notice. so i looked to the internet to find more. 

http://www.earthcreations.net

amazing, right? i know. i even found one on eBay, and guess what? it was $12 and so i bought it too. it is a lovely robin's egg blue, my fav, so even though the skirt was a size 16 and i am an 8 at best, i bought it trusting that my alterations lady could fix it for me. she is awesome, and she charges $12.50 to rework this wonder of fashion design to fit my body.  so the total price for this skirt, brand new with tags, is $24.50, still far less expensive than the $50+ i paid in Mount Airy.  and yes, i see the irony of paying more for the alterations than for the skirt itself, but hello, my name is janet and i am addicted to hemp.