Cable, Copper and Le Tour

I phoned ComCast yesterday.  One of my customers who has become a good friend over the years works in their customer service department.  She's my "ace in the hole" for me when I need to work with them.  So I phoned her and left her a phone message.  By the time the day was over, I had an appointment scheduled for installation of a different channel box than I had originally been shipped, and all of this will happen after I return from my end of the month workshops, enabling DH to have time to build the new stand that he says he needs to make for all of this to look appropriate in his eyes.  Oy veh!  The things I do for peace in my house - LOL. 

Captain Phil Harris

I have a day to get my charms made, fired and enameled for the PMC Conference.  A day is stretching it a bit - I can't work into the evening on Wednesday because I have to go to "Despicable Me" that evening with Chickie.  I got the image of my sigil done last night and printed out on the photo emulsion film this morning.  I'll make the PPP plate today (either within a half-hour now or as soon as I get to the shop) and I'll start working on the copper tonight while watching "Dangerous Catch".  It's Captain Phil's final episode.  He died earlier this year and was one of my favorite Captains on the show, so I don't want to miss this.  Hopefully I'll have at least one batch of copper ready to fire overnight. 

Stage 9 - Gotta Love the Alps!

And Le Tour de France resumes today in the Alps.  Stage 9 had the hors-cat Col de la Madeleine and that's a real nasty climb of 25km with a 2000 meter summit.  The major steep climbs are at the lower reaches, it mellows out a bit towards the top, but it's still nasty.  My favorites are the Pyrenees and we get to those at the end of the week.  But we have Tuesday and Wednesday in the Alps and mountain stages are always great! 

Measure Twice, Cut Once

I've been working on the storyboard for my Onyx box. After enlarging the heraldic symbols so that I can overdraw them, I took my copper sheet and drew out the rectangles for each of the six sigils. Then I looked carefully at the rectangles again, and realized that the sizing was totally off. I had measured carefully with my digital caliper, but it looked wrong. I decided to put the sheet away, remeasure the original space again, and try again the next day.

The next day I went back to the sheet. Indeed - I was WAY small on the squares I had scribed and marked. So, I re-measured again and cut out a paper template. I checked the template on the box top last night, and it still needs to be larger (although only by a few mm), so I will take the box with me today and measure again. I am quite determined to have the measurements accurate before I cut the copper - I can't afford metal waste and it makes no sense to measure and cut inaccurately. By the time I get the rectangles cut, I probably will have measured four or five times before I cut, but it will be the accurate measure and I will be able to progress on to the next step. Here are some more sigils to share...the top is for Gil-Galad, and the center one is Beorn.

Sigils, Standard and Heraldry

Like I don't have enough projects pending....OK, I know that projects come knocking at the mental door. But what law says that I have to open that door? What perverse sense of humor of the ONE caused me to open this latest door? Well....I did, and it resulted in a deep dive for the past three months and another major project on my burner.

It started with a hunt for a sigil. Bear with me - we'll come up for air eventually. I wanted a closer look at the sigil of Gil-Galad (yes...we're dealing with Lord of the Rings again) that both Gil-Galad and Elrond wear at the shots of the Last Alliance in the film version. Peter Jackson and his staff did their research and many of the details that they had in the film were "canon", i.e., they were straight from the descriptions laid out in many of Tolkien's writings. A search for Gil-Galad's sigil led to several websites, including the fan fiction websites that I've been involved in ever since. But in this search for the sigil, I also found many more sigils and heraldic devices that were carried by characters of LOTR. So......

I have an item I purchased several years ago that I wanted to enamel. I have decided that I want to put some of these sigils onto the item in enamel. The sigils are very detailed, so doing the enamel will be a challenge. But I think I'll enjoy the challenge, so I spent two hours last night resizing 30+ sigils to the size that I will need. Now I can start drawing the final versions to-size, do the color plates, and try and figure out the best ways to make this happen....all I needed - ONE MORE PROJECT - OI VEH !

(Sigils pictured are Luthien, Finrod and Earendil, from top to bottom.)

Friends and Life

Many times, while trying to start my Wednesdays, I will drop by my local Barnes & Noble bookstore to check out the latest magazines and pick up a book or two that I will find interesting. Yesterday was no exception. I dropped through their doors, headed to the magazines and got several that I needed current issues of, then headed to the books to get a replacement copy of Tolkien's "Silmarillion" (I've been hunting for my copy for more than a month without success - so it was time for a replacement copy). I heard my name called from the cafe area of the store and looked up to see a dear friend and customer - Linda Davis. Linda is a doll maker with a wicked and lovely sense of humor. She embellishes her dolls with beads and they come alive! I adore her work and she's been a constant source of color and inspiration for us over the past few years. She's been fighting lymphoma for the past year, so I hereby send white light to her (I've been doing so for several months, but it never hurts to re-focus) and thank her for once again brightening my day.

As workshop days go, it wasn't extremely productive. But I did start working on a project I've had on the back burner for a couple of years. I have two specific cigar boxes that have a recessed lid. I purchased them for cheap at the Renaissance Faire when the local "smoke shop" sold the used boxes rather than reload them into their vehicle and take them back to their brick and mortor shop. I've been wanting to enamel the recessed panel, just haven't been able to decide on a theme. Since I have two of them, I have finally decided to do one of them with six panels of Elvish sigils. The sigils, visible symbols of a house, king, etc., are emblems of heraldry and are beautiful. I have the ones I have chosen in miniature pictures, but need to redraw them to meet the size requirements. That's the next stage. So, even though I didn't get a chance to do a lot of creativity, I still did manage to vaccuum my lower level flooring, scrub my shower and bathroom, hem and work on my cloak, and decide the sigils for my cigar box. All in all, a good workshop day, even without firing up the kiln.