By tomorrow, these will be on their way to becoming earrings.
Monthly Archives: May 2011
Waiting for bunchberries
I am always looking at leaf textures and considering which ones to use with metal clay, but the leaf I use most often is that of the bunchberry dogwood. The back side has raised veins that recreate the lines of the front, when pressed into fresh soft clay. I guess you could say the bunchberry is my “go to” leaf.
I’ve been looking for bunchberry plants in shady areas on the side of the road. Where are they? I thought they would be out by now, but they are not in their usual spots. Maybe I am looking for them too early in the season. The only leaves to be found, where I usually find bunchberries, are the wild lily of the valley.
(Pretty little flowers, but the smooth leaf texture = boring.)
In my road side search, today, I remembered to look for old goldenrod stems from last fall. Since making my silver pod bead from the mold of a triple stem gall, I wanted to find a single stem gall to make a mold for single pod beads.
Though they were well-camouflaged in all of the dead grass and sticks on the side of the road, I was able to spot a few. I may still be waiting for the bunchberry plants to show up, but at least I didn’t have to wait until fall to find these.
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What’s for dinner?
Usually, when we don’t know what else to eat, we have lobster. I know. Tough, right? But geez, this spring weather has not been conducive to spending time on a lobster boat. Bruce is hoping to get out (haul traps) tomorrow if the wind dies down. It’s been a week since he has been fishing. At least the sun came out today, and it was warmish despite the wind.
Instead of lobster, tonight we had a big salad. It may sound boring, but we both like coming up with stuff to turn a regular salad into dinner.
Hard boiled eggs are a given. It’s an easy way to get protein into a salad. What looks like bacon is actually thin strips of speck, (prosciutto’s brother) that I picked up at Casa Della Mozeralla in the Bronx. (We’ve already finished the world’s best mozeralla.) I add strawberries to my salad because I like the texture and color. Bruce prefers tomatoes. We also put in yellow pepper, cucumber, avocado (if it has not gone bad like the one I cut into tonight), olives, and parmesan cheese.
One of my favorite thing to put in a big salad is chick peas. The canned ones are fine. I rinse them, drain them and spread them out on a paper towel to dry out. I then toss them in a mixture of flour and cayenne pepper, and saute them in a pan with oil until they are crispy. Martha Stewart has a similar recipe for roasted chickpeas, but I like using the saute pan. It’s quicker. Instead, I used the oven to make sourdough garlic croutons. The finishing touch for our salad.
This was a perfect dinner after spending most of the day in the studio.The whole day was actually pretty perfect, including the walk we took right after lunch. At the end of the island, by the old Coast Guard Station, you can get a 180° view of the water.
To the northeast it was rough, windy and full of whitecaps.
To the southwest it was calm as could be.
And in the middle, Baker Island.
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A tiny bead day
Today was a day I had looked forward to and dreaded. I made PMC beads, using a package of PMC I had purchased at a higher price than I would have paid today. Ah well, I will just have to get used to the up and down of the silver market. Once I let go of worrying about how much it cost, I got to work. It had been a while since I last worked with PMC and I sat down with a blank feeling as to what I would make first. I looked through my sketch book and made a list of the kinds of beads I wanted to make.
I started with the beads at the top of my list. Some flat “heishi” type beads made from my old scrap clay. The flat sections won’t show, but the burnished edges will, and they give a nice accent to other beads in a necklace. This is my new favorite thing to do with rehydrated dried clay. I then left off the list to make some tiny beads to use in some specific necklace designs. Tomorrow I’ll work on earring components and a few brooch ideas.
You can see the flat heishi beads in the background of the photo above. Once I used up my scrap clay, I got going on hollow beads. I made some fat coin shapes (but tiny) and some flat rectangles. The sides are smooth and the tops and bottoms are textured. These hollow beads are production pieces. I make a bunch at a time by wrapping a brass tube with metal clay, scoring it to mark off bead sections, drying it on a cup warmer, then sliding the dried tube of clay off the brass tubing. With a jeweler’s saw I cut the bead sections off the clay tube. With just a slight bit of sanding they are ready for the tops and bottoms.
I had a rectangular brass tube so I gave that a try for a batch of beads. I drilled some widthwise and some lengthwise. Do these shapes remind you of anything?
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Waiting until the last minute
I don’t know why I do it, it just seems to be my style. This morning I priced and packaged jewelry to send to the Red Dot Gallery in Deer Isle. They are reopening for the season on May 15. I was supposed to have my consignment pieces there a week before the opening, but here I was this morning, rushing around at the last minute to get my package to the post office before the mail went out at 11:30. I had planned to get this done over the weekend, but I didn’t.
After a busy week, I stepped away from responsibilities and took care of myself in a way I didn’t realize I needed. I slept for 10 hours on Friday night, and took a 2 hour nap on Saturday (after reading for an hour). I did the NYT crossword puzzle on Sunday, and took time to photograph some pieces to submit for consideration for the 2011 PMC Annual. That deadline is May 15, so maybe I actually did do some jewelry related work over the weekend. Whatever I did or didn’t do, I know that tonight I finally feel like I’ve caught up with myself.
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Low tide and fog…
…to start the day. A 7 a.m. walk after taking a few days off from a bunch of things. (Including blog posts.)
By afternoon, the sun was out, the tide was high, and the Dip of the Month Club took their May dip in honor of Mother’s Day. Prompted by Beatrice and Xander, who went swimming yesterday, their mom, Melissa, took her first dip of the month. “After I finally got in, it wasn’t so bad!”
The water has warmed up to about 45°. Three of us went in the water 4 different times. Joy, Bea and Xander went in 5 times. It looks almost like summer doesn’t it?
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It’s not like a train…
…my commute on the mail boat. Everyone gets tired of their commute, no matter what mode of transportation. I do too. But sometimes I get to ride with some pretty interesting passengers. (Like 28,000 bees a few weeks ago.) Yesterday, the ride was one to make me smile.
Araucana chicks, also known as Easter Egg chicks because they will grow up to lay eggs that are not brown or white, but blue or green!
Today was one of those days where I felt like I laid an egg. I just couldn’t focus. I had time to work in the studio, but I had trouble starting or finishing anything. It was just sort of a dumb day. Outside it was drizzly, foggy and cold. I talked with my mom in the afternoon and she said, “You know, it’s just kind of a dumb day.” Bruce came home from hauling traps, and the minute he walked through the door he said, “What a dumb day!” Three votes for dumb. I guess it was just that kind of day around here.
I recouped some momentum by making chili and cornbread for dinner. Afterwards I watched an episode of “Mad Men” with Bruce, paid bills, balanced checkbooks and made sourdough bread. I even wrote a thank you note. The dumb day ended.
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“Henry, we’re in trouble…”
The words spoken by our friend Dan Lief to our friend Henry Isaacs as Bruce brought out the birthday cake he made for me, today. The cake was delicious, but it was Bruce’s attention to detail that blew me away. (Yes, Dan, this cake will be a hard act to follow!)
A honey chocolate cake, with honey ganache, decorated with…what else? Bees!
Bruce searched through half a bag of jelly beans to pick out the yellow ones, fitted each one with a pair of almond slice wings, and drew eyes and stripes using a toothpick dipped into the ganache.
Grape hyacinths, freshly picked from our garden, put the finishing touch on the plate.
Almost every year I feel a little “squirrely” about my birthday. I have a weird mix of feelings with expectations about celebrating and a desire not to be the center of attention. I usually like the day after my birthday a whole lot better than the date of my birth. This year, however, everything was low key. Throughout the day there were times I forgot it even was my birthday. I had a nice lunch with my mom, talked to my brother and both of my sons on the phone, and ended the day in the company of good friends with a lovely dinner prepared by my mother-in-law. All in all a most comfortable and happy birthday.
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I can’t drive through Freeport…
…without stopping to pick up something at the Beadin’ Path. On my trip back to Maine on Monday I had just enough time for a 30 minute stop at my favorite bead store. I have more patinas to try from Miss Ficklemedia, so I picked up a few more copper and brass pieces to work with.
I also scored some more raku beads made by Keith O’Connor. I can’t wait to make more silver beads of my own to go with these. I chose the darker colors to mix with some beach rocks and silver.
I thought these vintage glass “nail head” beads were interesting. They remind me of mica. At 10mm they will be a handy size to mix with a variety of beads I have on hand.
These German glass lamp work beads are 40mm long and 10mm wide between the tapers. I’m not sure how I will use them, but I thought they were pretty cool.
I’m always on the lookout for interesting freshwater pearls. Keshi pearls, like these, are pearls that grow without a nucleus.
The Labradorite beads below were my favorite find on this trip. They were pretty expensive and there were just two strands left. I was only going to buy one strand, but the schiller effect (light refraction) in these beads was especially nice, and I really liked the shape. The graduated sizes will give me more options too. I had several ideas in mind for these, so at the last minute I added the second strand to my purchase.
Now all I want to do is get to work! Though I have two days off the island on my schedule this week, so that means less studio time until the weekend. C’est la vie, eh?
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Coming home
For me it is one of the best things about going away. Even after having a fabulous time with my best friend.
I left Rye at 6:45 and had an uneventful drive back to Maine. More gorgeous weather but fewer leaves on the trees the farther north I traveled. Bruce called me from his lobster boat around 1:30 to see if I would meet him in Bar Harbor. He had a doctor’s appointment at 3:30 and his crew would give him a ride over. My timing was perfect to pick him up and then we headed back to Islesford aboard the Barbara Ann.
Good thing the dress I bought for our son’s wedding in September is safely stored in this dress bag. There was no place to really hang it on the boat, so Bruce laid it on top of the nice flat bait stand.
It’s also a good thing the bait stand is covered, because just below that cover is bait for the lobster traps that looks like this:
I never get tired of looking back at this view of the mountains of Mount Desert Island.
While I was gone, Courtney Chaplin put the float in at the Islesford Dock Restaurant. They won’t be open for business until later in June, but seeing the float and Dan’s boat back in the water is a good sign of spring!
We unloaded all the stuff, from my trip, at the Town Dock. As I carried my suitcase, the cooler full of goodies from Arthur Avenue, my new dress, etc. up the ramp, Bruce put his boat on the mooring. We forgot to unload the present I brought him from a Saturday farmer’s market on Broadway. The rosemary plant got an extra ride in the skiff.
It is good to be home.
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Barbara S Fernald Jewelry 