Fragments from a few walks before leaving home

 

This blog post celebrates some of  the birds and blossoms in our neighbourhood. They make my walks a joy.

Blossoms....

Birds ....

Orchid blossoms ...

I hope they bring a bit of joy and hope to you as well.

Twenty boat forms for Scotland

 

I have been accepted to hold a solo exhibition in a small new exhibition space in the Scottish highlands towards the end of this year. One of the pieces will have 100 small boats. I have made the sails and hulls for 20 boats that I will take to Scotland this trip to see if it is possible to get a local welder to tack weld the sails to the mast and hulls.

The opening photo shows two prototype boats with the sails set in two different directions. Below are some photos of the process of making the 20 boat forms.

I will post some photos of the boats welded in Scotland if that works.

Go gently hearts

 

One of Fiona and my sayings for 2023 is "go gently" - encouraging ourselves and others to be kind to ourselves, kind to our minds and move through the world more slowly, quietly without judging ourselves too much.

I made probably about 15-20 metal metal hearts with "go gently" stamped on the back. These have been gifted to folk over the last few months.

I decided that I would make another stash to have in reserve as give aways particularly when we return home from Scotland.

I tend to do a metal (pewter) melt when I'm in the workshop doing other tasks. Each time I get to pour about 4-5 hearts of two sizes. 

By adding a few brass offcuts to the mix I fluke it sometimes and get a pour that has a gold sheen and even a purple dot where the pour is finished. This blog post just shares some images from a few of those pours.

Whilst I have quite a few hearts in the tool box draw I will make s few more over the next week.

The hearts will get stamped with "go gently" when I return from Scotland.

Darkish morning and bits of beauty

 

It is official - it was darkish this morning when we rose - the village lights were still on as you can see from then photo above. But by the time I got to walk the morning light  was creeping in so I could see many bits of beauty.

Though we are into autumn it has still been warm enough for plants to think there is still time to bloom - including orchids in G's orchid house.

I always hope that sharing the colour in our neighbourhood might bring a little joy to those folk who are caught in an ongoing winter.

Progressing sails and hulls; and testing new fixing arrangement

 

As I have said in an earlier blog post doing multiples in metal can be tedious and time consuming. I am making process with the sails - a stack of 100 cut and ground blanks above.

I have started to drill holes in the blanks for the mast to go through - see below. I'm doing this before I anneal and form (hammer) the sails.

I also wanted to test a new more stable but detachable way of fixing the boats to mesh - photos below. As you can see the new design clips around one strand of mesh and over the adjacent strand.

Because I got bored and my arm got tired  with drilling holes for masts I made a start on folding the metal for the hulls. I have worked out that I can use a groove in my aluminium vase jaws to bend the blanks in half - saves a lot of hammering on the anvil.

The copper patina on some of the hull blanks is gorgeous.