The "Man-Chain"

This piece was made for a fellow I work with who asked me to make him "a man-chain" to hang his lucky penny that his son gave him. It gave me good motivation to get cracking with my square stainless steel wire which I hadn't yet used..mostly because I didn't have a cutter which could make up for my weak girly-muscles and still fit inside the coils. I have obviously rectified that; with the purchase of a pair of compound aviation snips (Wiss, because that's what they had at the tool shop - in retrospect, perhaps I should have gotten something from The Ring Lord, but I didn't have to wait to have these shipped so...).

The chain is a simple 1-4 made with 1/4 hard, .047" by .047 square stainless, 3/16" ID; and 1/8" ID bronze rings. The penny is framed and hung using 2 circles of helm chain attached together. The stainless here is stuff I had on hand for an inlay I'm working on, soft 20ga wire.

For the record, stainless steel is wicked hard stuff to cut!! I have long handled diagonal cutters which work okay for the 20ga, but the larger stuff definately requires a compound cutter like aviation snips or bolt cutters. For anyone who insists on making/cutting their own rings, I highly recommend the "score and break" method described here. [a]It saves my tiny girly hands a lot of pain and misery :D, and [b] It saves some time, due to not having to reshape the rings which are deformed if you just cut right through with the aviation snips (I don't know if that happens with bolt cutters as I've never used them).
To learn the helm weave, and other interesting weaves, check out Phong's Tutorials at www.cgmaille.com.

First Craft Show

On the 28th of Ocotober we participated in the Pictou County Arts and Crafts Association's Victorian Christmas Craft Show, held in Westville. While not as big or as busy as we expected the show to be, it was a nice day out; we had reasonable sales for the price of the tables and I bumped into an old friend from high school.

I think possibly the best thing that came from this was a lesson: always take an interest in other vendors' work. While admiring a fellow vendor's beaded jewellery I commented on her displays, and was rewarded with the name of a Canadian supplier of display and packaging materials that has good prices. While I haven't ordered anything from them as yet, because I have started making my own custom sized and printed pillow boxes, it is good to have for the future. For anyone who'd like to check it out, their site is www.noblepack.com.