Cats

Tigris, our new kitten is very busy all the time. When I'm on the computer, she likes to sit in front of the monitor, in typical cat fashion. As you can see, Facebook is on the monitor. If you haven't signed up for facebook, I highly reccommend it. I've been connecting with tons of people there. it is a lot of fun catching up with old friends, and staying in touchwith poeple.

Joe is very tolerant of the crazy kitty, who attacks him whenever she gets a chance! They still have little love fests, and last night, they were sleeping together on my bed.

This is not the greatest picture. I took it with my cell phone. Anyway, I had an appointment at The Enchantment Resort in Sedona yesterday. The buyer for the boutique there saw my jewelry in Tempe, and placed a nice order! After our meeting, I decided to take a little hike down the Boynton Canyon trail, which was a half mile from the resort. Since it was an unplanned event, I only hiked for about an hour. I had left the water bottle in the car. It was chilly, but refreshing, and there was snow on the ground in the shady spots. I was sweaty and feeling fab by the time I got back to the car. Gotta remember to do that more often!

the house

I have been slacking on housework lately, getting ready for the art fairs. Now that they have passed, I can focus a little on the house as well as the jewelry. I started a clean sweep of the house a few days ago. We will have a LARGE yard sale when I'm finished. Maybe in a month or so :-) After the laundry room was clean, I moved into the pantry, which is like a hallway off the kitchen, leading to the laundry room. The shelves were pretty ugly-white with country blue contact paper on the shelves. Maybe not ugly to all, but definitely not my style. They needed cleaning, and since they were empty for wiping down, I figured I might as well do something with the.

Here is the after shot. I had some 'mango madness' paint leftover from the "juicy room". I put that into some white trim paint I had laying around, and this is what came out. I covered the shelves with some handmade paper(also had that laying around waiting for a project). They will do for now. Now I will have to paint the rest of the pantry, but I'm going to continue my clean sweep first.

Well, I remembered to bring the D70 for morning 2, but left the memory card at home-HA We spent the morning watching a demo and then I started another smaller blade with the leftover piece of steel from the handle of this one.
I removed all the scale off the blade with the belt sander and a 36 grit belt. Next comes the handle. We had some cherry wood left over from our mantle, so I'm using that. Eric cut me some nice little handle sized pieces.

After drilling holes for rivets(I'm using silver), I traced around the blade handle, then cut out the shape using a hack saw and band saw. Not the way you might think, going around the traced edge, but we had to cut little "rays" in from the edge all the way around the shape, then go back and trim them off. The wood is too thick to just cut like a jig saw, the saw blade would have broken.

After that, I went back to the belt sander, and cleaned up the edges. Now the handle is off the knife so we can temper the blades. The above photo shows the knife after I cut the handles, but before sanding them.

A coke fire is much better for tempering than gas, so Ray built a fire and did a demo. First the blade must be made hard by bringing it up to a non magnetic state and slowly quenching in oil. This is the quick qay to do it. A better way would be to bring it up to heat, then let it cool slowly, over night in a bucket of vermiculite.

Now the steel is very hard , but too brittle for a knife, it would just snap when you used it. So the blade now has to be tempered by brining it up to the desired heat for the hardness you want. This is done by watching the colors of the metal. I will be going for a blue/purple, which I might just leave on the steel. I think it would look cool with the cherry wood and silver rivets. I will probably sharpen the blade before tempering, so I have that option.

Knife making-Day 1

Today I spent the day making a knife over at Pieh Tools Blacksmithing Supplies, where I took the blacksmithing workshop last year. This year it is a knife making workshop with world renowned knife maker, Ray Rybar. With the Holidays around the corner, the timing wasn't great, but I could not pass up a chance to learn from this extremely talented crafts person. We started off with a section of coil spring. I was a little late, as today there was school, but i'm assuming it came off a car. Before beginning, we heard about the different kinds of steel, and the best ones to use for knives. High carbon steel is quite strong, but can be brittle and is difficult to work with, so we used a medium grade, which can also be quite strong, and somewhat more forgiving than steel with a higher carbon content. Then a demo, and off to the forge.

I forgot my D70 in the morning, so I didn't shoot the early couple of stages. First we had to straighten out the spring over the anvil, then we used the power hammer to flatten it out. In the above shot, I have started to form the blade end.

That's Ray on the right and Amy, the owner of Pieh tools. It's always nice when the pro gives your piece a little help!

Starting to look like something...

I was working the handle end at this point, letting it cool so i could figure out a good length.

Almost finished for the here, the handle needs a little more tapering, then a grinding to get the 'profile', or general shape the knife will be before sanding it clean.

Ok, really, how COOL is that?!

Stay tuned....

My commute to Jerome

OK, so I'm driving to Jerome, and thought that a little photo journey would be good for the blog :)
Keep in mind that I was clicking as I was driving, so the pictures aren't the greatest. First Highway 260 to Cottonwood, about 15 miles. Jerome is up on the right edge of Mingus Mountain, on the left.

Sedona off to the right, about 20 miles.

Entrance to the dirt bike trails, a little less than halfway to Cottonwood.
We saw a tarantula there last summer-awesome!

Made it through the strip mall part of Cottonwood, I am now headed towards Old Town. Funky little part of town with nice little shops and a couple good restaraunts. We found Gelato there!

Through Cottonwood, i'm now in Clarkdale. When Jerome was a mining town, the bigwigs lived in Clarkdale, while the mine workers lived up on the hill. There are two ways to get through Cottonwood. I decided to take the longer way this morning. There is all kinds of construction the other way.

Now I'm headed "up the hill" towards Jerome. Jerome sits on the side of Cleopatra hill on Mingus Mountain, in the Black mountain range.

Had a slow moving RV in front of me, so I could click away.

Up, up, up. It's only about four miles up the hill :)

Almost there. Can you see the "J" on the peak? It lights up at night :)

Straight ahead(red roof) is the Ghost City Inn, a little haunted Hotel.

The co-op is the tall building on the right. It was the Hotel Jerome back in the day, and was pretty fancy for the times. Phones in every room! First and largest single poured concrete building in AZ when it was built in 1917. Deemed almost fireproof. Couldn't get Completely fireproof status because of the wood window frames. We occupy the street level, and there is private studio space and storage on the upper three levels.

On the left, are two shops that also carry my work. The owner, Christy Fisher, is also a member of the Co-op. Apartments on the upper floors.

MAde it! This is the view from where I park my car. The San Francisco Peaks In Flagstaff are coverd with snow.

A look back down the hill. The Co-op is a couple buildings down the street to the right. I took about 90 pictures on the 45 minute journey, but you get the general idea. Not a bad commute!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had rain and fog to be thankful for on Thanksgiving, and the day before. The above photo was taken at about 8:30 am on Friday. This was the view out the back.

Same view, two hours later. So nice to have a few rainy days, but just as nice to have the sun come out again!