Wyrding Studios Art Retreat

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:29:49 GMT

... was on Saturday. Posting this on Tuesday. I have done worse.

Ellie and I left the house late and picked up shadesong late as a result, but traffic was very light and we still made it to Wyrding Studios a bit early.

The morning activity was spinning, first from combed top and then from a batt. I seem to spin faster from combed top (easier to manage the fiber) but more consistently from batts (I find drafting easier). Although, as you can probably tell, I'm not very good at it yet. But between how satisfying it was and how many of Kythryne's art batts I've purchased already, I will continue spinning and, I hope, improving.

After lunch, we went up to the studio and picked out things for either a pendant or a pair of earrings. I made these earrings. We also got to pick out things for a take-home project, although I wound up with some spare time and made this before and after the fused glass portion of the day.

Fused glass! No photos of that yet. But now I have learned how to cut glass, and that dichroic glass looks different before and after it's fused. I did wind up with a small scrap of silver dichroic glass that had gone through the kiln all by its lonesome, so I made this pendant for fun.

The last portion of the day was a demonstration of making jewelry from found objects. I brought a set of dice, a silk flower that fell off Cameryn's set for Phone Whore, a shower curtain clip, and some blobs of solder. The blobs turned out to be too fragile for wire-wrapping, but Kythryne got everything else in there. And the d20 pops out the back of the pendant.

Here's all the photos from the art retreat. And there is another one in October, for those of you who can make it to Concord, NH.

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Next time I go snail-collecting, I'm bringing a bucket.

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:30:17 GMT

It's tempting to leave you with no context for that subject. But not that tempting.

I first noticed the lovely snails in Jamaica Plain when I moved into this apartment last August. They get very large, and their shells are all sorts of pretty shades of brown. But all I've done so far is try not to step on them.

I was coming home from work today and noticed a couple of empty shells on the sidewalk, just under the overhang of the front hedge. Hm, I thought, and picked them up. I could make something with these.

I went back outside to see if I could find more empty snail shells, and I did. The area where the hedge encroaches on the sidewalk seems to be some kind of snail graveyard. (The neighbors' kids had a lot of fun staring at me as I poked the accumulated leaf/dirt/snail debris with a stick).

Eventually I wound up with a little pile that was just a smidge more than a handful. I'll need to clean them somehow (and I suspect some will not survive that step) because they're covered in leaf bits and dirt, and some of them still have dried snail-snot in them.

( Today's haul. )

And how was your day?

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picked a handful of violets in my name

Wyrding Studios Art Retreat

Next time I go snail-collecting, I'm bringing a bucket.