I'm Married!

Terrarium experiment

I'm now experimenting with terrariums. Check this out. I layered it with pebbles, charcoal, moss, topsoil and then a few seeds and this sensevaria plant.

It was interesting getting all that in through the little hole in the top. I will see if it all grows and post updates through the next couple of weeks.

Another Completed Commission

Tessa the mistress of wonderful cooking and Grad Student extraordinaire, requested a viking knit necklace much like the one I was commissioned to do for Sparkly Lady. She has a sensitivity to copper though so she wanted it our of silver. I got some silver wire and got to work. I had originally planned to use some copper and paint it for the end caps and clasp but I didn't like the look of that so I caved in and bought some silver findings to complete the piece. Here it is.

This is a finished length of the three nails knit. You can see the difference between this knit and viking knit. It is much easier to make wide ropes from this technique, however they are more hollow and see through, which does present the opportunity for inserting beads.

Alternate wire knitting

I've been working on another form of knitting wire.

It is very similar to how industrial knitting is done. A row of loops is pulled through the row beneath it. It goes a bit quicker than the viking knitting, since you don't have to thread the end of the wire through each loop.

The trade off is that the wire has to be formed prior to looping it. The wire needs to be wrapped around three nails on a board, over and over.


You can see from this starter piece that it looks pretty different from viking knitting. I will take some more pics of a completed length for comparison when I've got it done.

Also,
I made another herring bone weave piece to practice and to better show its construction.

Heres a shot from the side

Heres one from the back and one from the front.

Supplies

The viking knit and other copper projects have been using up my available phone wire copper pretty quickly so today went ahead and stripped some more. Now I have about 100 feet of it ready for use in other projects. On a related note I have another viking knit commission that requires a little bit different direction. I must do it in silver, so I had to order the wire. I'm not sure when it will arrive but as soon as I get the thing started I will post some pics.

Here's the wire I stripped today.

This technique is called herring bone weaving. I looked at a few pieces and tried to replicate it. I need some nylon jawed pliers to smooth out the wire, but the weave I've got down.