Cat Naps

Just in the Nick of Time

2010-05-23T12:15:00.001-07:00

Annealing Scott's ring...the heat turns the gold black. Once annealed I let the ring sit in the pickle for over an hour to get rid of some excess copper that was sticking to it...13 days to go!

Making Scott's Wedding Band

2010-03-24T20:59:00.001-07:00

I'm making Scott's wedding band out of some gold I had from a ring I tried making a while back, and didn't love. First step is melting the gold.

Once it's melted down, it looks like a big bumpy blob and you have to roll the metal through a rolling machine to flatten it (or make it into wire). Below is a pic of it sticking out the other side of the rolling machine. Under that is the flattened piece. You have to keep annealing it (heating it up to almost melting) to soften it as the rolling makes it hard.

The next step will be cutting/filing it into the right size and shape. More pics to come...

Talon Logo

2009-12-06T19:13:00.000-08:00

The amazing Lulu designed these for me. Web site coming soon!

Braids

2009-11-19T16:43:00.000-08:00

I'm really into braids lately and made these little bangles up. I braided the wire and then flattened it. I tend to wear things in threes, but am totally into these two buddies together.

New Stuff

2009-11-19T16:15:00.001-08:00

I cast the glass amulette in bronze...loving the more masculine look to it. Think I'm going to sell this along with the glass one.

I made some hammered bangles too.

Wedding Site

2009-10-14T11:36:00.000-07:00

Woo Hoo! Finally got this up and running

www.scottandemily.wordpress.com

Exciting details to be posted daily. Just kidding. But you can go there for updates about the wedding.

xoxo

Finally!

2009-09-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

The polished bottles have arrived. Next...decide on type of closure - cork? Make a metal necker, figure out how to not break the bottle when I solder the metal, find chain, find a box-type thing to send the amulettes in, nicely ask Grant if he will take pics, Web site, SELL!

Ceremony

2009-08-27T13:47:00.000-07:00

Here is where the ceremony is going to be...very exciting!!

More details to come soon...

Bullet Cuff Links

2009-07-29T15:04:00.001-07:00

I'm making these little guys for Shannon. They came out pretty cute...

Matching Ring

2009-06-17T07:49:00.000-07:00

Citrine Necklace

2009-06-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

I just finished this necklace this weekend. It was really fun and easy to make. There are two bezels, the bottom one which is solid silver and on top of it is another bezel made out of gallery wire. The top bezel holds the stone in place. The hardest part of this piece was how delicate the wire is and not melting it when you solder it shut and to the bottom bezel. The stone is a citrine. I'm going to make a ring with the matching stone also using gallery wire.

Engaged

2009-06-02T18:46:00.000-07:00

Swoon...

Arrow is Famous!

2009-05-18T09:41:00.000-07:00

See the famous guy

Gems

2009-05-08T07:51:00.001-07:00

A friend and I headed up to the diamond district to buy some gems for future jewelry projects...I love going to the gem stores cause it's like being in a bond film. They are usually in an office building on like the 7th floor with no windows and you have to be buzzed into a tiny room where they look you up and down and you tell them why you are there. Then they begrudgingly let you in. Once inside you can basically ask for anything and they bring out trays and trays of the most beautiful stones. I could have spent hours and thousands, but we only had one hour and I ended up with the below stones...

Smoky Quartz

Peridot

CitrineSmoky Quartz

HGM Weekend

2009-04-28T07:35:00.000-07:00

Mike came to town this past weekend to mix a little business with pleasure.
We hit up Prime Meats in Carroll Gardens for some warm afternoon Weisswurst, beer and wine.
The show at Crash Mansion was maybe not what Mike was hoping for, but it was still fun to hear HGM play and then hit up Jones....looking forward to our trip to N.C. in May.

Very Exciting!

2009-04-22T07:43:00.001-07:00

Thanks to Scott, the super-shopper, for finding this...It has been about 13 years since I've had honey nut anything and was just telling him the other day how I much I was craving that taste. I may or may not have sent an email to General Mills thanking them...

UPDATE: GM wrote back the following nice letter indicating more sugary gluten-free cereals are on the way:

Dear Valued Consumer:

Thank you for contacting General Mills regarding our gluten free Honey Nut Chex cereal. We appreciate the time you have taken to share your positive feedback with us. We will be very happy to pass on your comments to the product team. On June 1, 2009, the following cereals will be made available nationwide and all will be gluten free. They are the Cinnamon Chex, Corn Chex, Chocolate Chex and Strawberry Chex. We produced Rice Chex as gluten free last year and this year these others plus the Honey Nut Chex all will be gluten free.

We are committed to creating the highest quality products for our consumers. Feedback such as yours helps us achieve this goal for the future.

We appreciate your loyalty and hope you continue to enjoy our products.

Sincerely,

Paula A. Vaughn

General Mills
Consumer Services

Morbid Anatomy

2009-02-26T06:28:00.000-08:00

Scott and I stumbled on this great museum/library on the Gowanus Canal the other day called Proteus Gowanus. They have a vintage library with the most amazing old, out-of-print books on natural curiosities and such.

As it turns out, they are getting ready to add a morbid anatomy section to the library. It will house Joanna Ebenstein's ever-growing collection of books, catalogs, photographs, articles, ephemera and artifacts exploring the interstices of art and medicine, death and culture. I can't wait to get back and check it out. In the meantime, here is her blog, which facinated me for hours and some of my favorite images from it: http://morbidanatomy.blogspot.com/

Cat Fancy

2009-02-25T12:04:00.001-08:00

I'm hoping this comes in the mail soon...

Mike's Moon

2009-02-12T13:46:00.000-08:00

I finally finished it! Still working away on my gold ring...

Roller Jammin'

2009-01-25T12:37:00.001-08:00

We drove to Staten Island for some "Adult Night" roller action.

I'm famous!

2009-01-20T09:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE50J2Z520090120?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=10112

Who Am I?

2009-01-15T06:49:00.000-08:00

Out of all my music, this is what I put on my iPhone. What do these record choices say about me? (p.s. the only reason Rod isn't on here is b/c we only have records.)

Aston Familyman Barrett - Familyman in Dub
The Band - Music from the Big Pink, The Band
Beck - Sea Change
Blonde Redhead - 23
Bob Dylan - Desire
Brighblack Morning Light - Brightblack Morning Light
The Byrds - Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Cat Power - The Covers
Court and Spark - Bless You
Emmylou Harris - Wrecking Ball
Feist - The Reminder
Fleetwood Mac - Rumours
Gillian Welch - Time
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci - How I long to feel that summer in my heart
Greatful Dead - Working Man's Dead
Hall & Oats - Greatest Hits
J.J. Cale - Troubadour
Kraftwerk - Computer Love
M.I.A. - Arular
Magnolia Electric Company - What comes after the blues
The Meters - Best of
Miles David - Kind of blue
Morrissey - Bona Drag
The National - Sad song for dirty lovers
Neil Young - Tonight's the Night
Nick Drake - Pink Moon
Paul McCartney - Ram
Richard & Linda Thompson - I want to see the bright lights tonight
Roxy Music - Avalon
Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker
The Smiths - Meat is Murder, Hatful of Hollow, Rank, The Smiths, Strageways
Supertramp - 3 songs from Breakfast in America
Tom Petty - Wildflowers
Townes Van Zandt - Townes Van Zandt
Vetiver - Thing of the past
Wiskeytown - Strangers Almanac
Wilco - Sky blue sky
Wolfkings - Freeze - Die - Come to Life

Gondwana

2009-01-08T19:57:00.000-08:00

Scott and I went to the NY Philharmonic tonight and heard some amazing music. My favorite was the piece by Tristan Murail called Gondwana. Gondwana is the name given to the southern portion of Pangaea.

I searched online for a performance of Gondwana, but couldn't find anything. The music is really hard to put into words, but here is a review I found that describes it pretty well.

The originality of Murail’s musical approach is everywhere apparent, couched in a sequence of saturated harmonies which sometimes achieve a positively Messiaenic luxuriance. The work’s opening few minutes, in which a single chord is gradually transformed and ultimately dissolved into a flurry of trills is a good example of Murail’s spectral technique, both in the strange initial harmony (a complex, bell-like sonority generated using the studio technique of frequency modulation) and in the way Murail shapes his music in long, seamlessly evolving paragraphs – an apt musical parallel to the massive geological processes which led to the formation of the ancient super-continent of Gondwana evoked by the work’s title.

Spectral music involves the use of the fundamental properties of sound as a basis for harmony, as well as the use of spectral analysis, FM, RM and AM synthesis as a method of deriving polphony.

I'm starting to sound like Scott now, but all those words above = really cool sounds that make you want to lay back, close your eyes and let the waves wash over you.

Oh and on the way home, I didn't notice, but some dude was "apparently" taking photos up my dress with his phone and this other guy walked over and started screaming at him to erase the photos and then told me that he saw the guy taking flash photos up my dress. The photo guy of course denied it and offered to show Scott his cell phone for proof to which Scott said, "nah man, I've already seen up there." I felt bad for the guy if he wasn't taking photos, but just in case, I moved seats. Only in New York...

Rings

2008-12-14T11:58:00.000-08:00

Rings have been made. Now I just need to solder the braided part around the flat band, solder the two bands together, create a bezel for the stone and set the stone.

This is what the band will look like once I solder the braid on the flat band. I'm doing two bands like this and the stone will sit between them. Not sure why I did such a complicated design, but it will be cool once it's done.

Thanksgiving

2008-12-07T07:38:00.000-08:00

We had our first New York Thanksgiving this year. It was also the first time we hosted it at our house. It all started with an excellent young turkey from Bell & Evans. You might have heard of Bell & Evans as they are the people who provide the turkey for the president every year. Not the one that gets pardoned, the real one. You can't really tell from the picture, but this guy was somewhere between 18 and 20 pounds. I had to bring him home from the butcher in our little shopping cart because he was too heavy to carry.
We brined the turkey in a salt water bath for about 12 hours. It was kind of gross because the water turned all pink and bloody. After we put the turkey in the oven we had this yummy cheese plate.Doesn't this look perfect? It kind of reminded me of that movie Delicatessen though. Here is some of the other great food we had. In the front are samosas that anshuman made by hand. I also see the marshmallow yams Ellie made and the mashed potatoes, roasted carrots and green beans that Jason made at our house. Cranberries on the side. There were cheesy potatoes that Susie made not shown in this pic and gluten-free stuffing that I made. Oh and you can't forget the gluten-free pumpkin pie and berry pie we had after a long walk around the neighborhood.
The next day Scott and I took leftovers to Central Park and had a little picnic and then went to the Whitney to see the William Eggleston exhibit. I love the Whitney. It's the perfect size and never overwhelming. It was super crowded, but it felt like a real New York thing to do, so I mostly enjoyed viewing his amazing photos with a hundred other people.

Halloween

2008-11-18T07:34:00.001-08:00

Halloween was fun this year. I used an old zombie tennis player outfit I had in the closet and added the tennis ball-in-the-head accent. I'm a lot better at scary makeup than normal makeup. Scott managed to pull off a pretty good yellowman costume last minute.

Back on track

2008-11-18T07:26:00.000-08:00

My gold class ended and I took a little hiatus while traveling here and there. Now I'm back and even more excited to finish. I finally made wire and now have two bands. Progress is quicker now and I should be done within the next few weeks. Then it will be time for moons and lockets...

YES!

2008-11-04T20:47:00.001-08:00

Fun with safety goggles

2008-10-21T19:38:00.001-07:00

Cuteness

2008-10-07T12:26:00.001-07:00

Since that last entry was so boring, I thought I would post a photo of Arrow. He totally knows how cute he is in this one...

Snaky

2008-10-07T12:08:00.000-07:00

This is about 3mm, so I'm close and it's going a lot faster now that the wire is thinner. I have one more class and kind of can't believe I spent this whole time just rolling out the metal. I definitely have an appreciation for how it feels to work with gold now.

After this class, I'm going to just attend the open studio time and will finish this ring and make some other projects friends have requested. Hopefully things go a little faster from here on out.

Getting there

2008-09-20T12:36:00.000-07:00

After six hours of work and a few cracking setbacks, my hot dog is a little longer. I have to keep rolling it until I get it down to 3mm wire.

Two of my favorite things

2008-09-18T08:27:00.001-07:00

labor day antics

2008-09-02T17:16:00.001-07:00

Puss

Pollination

Popsicles

Posh

Pantless

Party

hot dog

2008-09-02T17:10:00.001-07:00

After six hours, this is what my gold now looks like. The end goal is 3 mm wire. I remelted it into a hot dog shape and then put it through the roller about a million times. I can only roll it about five times before I have to anneal it. Annealing involves heating it up until it almost melts and then putting it in the pickle (a liquid bath) to get rid of the "dirt" that gets on it from annealing. It keeps starting to crack along the top (you can kind of see this in the picture) and I've had to slightly remelt it once already to fix this. When you remelt it, you kind of have to start all over again. I'm trying to be patient.

$425 worth of gold

2008-08-28T11:28:00.001-07:00

Can you believe it's so small? I created this alloy last week by combining 24 karat gold with a tiny bit of silver and copper. You pick the color you want your gold to look like and then use a handy chart to figure out how much silver/copper to add to get that color. I went for Very Deep Yellow, 18 karat, which should be a bit darker than the usual color you see.
Yesterday I went to R Gems in the city to pick out a stone for the ring. I've always loved rocks and gems (even had a rock tumbler as a kid) so I could have spent hours looking at all of their stones. I ended up with a garnet (my birthstone) and a green quartz. I think I'll probably go with the garnet for this ring. They were super nice and even gave Scott and me a tour of the back where they cut the stones. The guy was saying that they use a diamond blade to cut the stones and this type of blade won't hurt your finger if you touch it. He fired it up to show us and pressed his finger against it firmly and sure enough nothing happened. Then he took a rock to it and it cut right through. I'm a little confused about how exactly that happened.

First Piece

2008-08-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

I got to reminiscing about the very first piece I made when I started taking metalsmithing classes back in SF. The days of the deer (and big belts) are slipping away, but I still love this buckle (especially the green eye!).

Tonight I'm starting a gold class at 174 Studio in Williamsburg. I've only worked in silver, brass, copper, etc. so I'm super excited to work with a new metal. We start with pure 24 karat gold and custom alloy it to create 14 karat gold in a custom color. Then I'll make a piece with it. Stay tuned...

Working so hard

2008-08-20T10:19:00.000-07:00

Perfect Summer Stoop Sipper

2008-07-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

2007 Chateau Montaud Rose, Cotes de Provence

My local wine shop directed me towards this rose that is great for a late summer evening spent sitting on the stoop gossiping with neighbors. It smells of strawberries and melon and is the most pale pink in color. It is also refreshingly dry while still retaining some nice fruit flavors. And it's low in alcohol (labeled at 12%) so you can have many glasses without guilt or hangover. Yum!

Tat

2008-07-02T18:51:00.000-07:00

I got a tattoo last week. It's a zinfandel leaf. Zinfandel isn't my most favorite type of wine, but we grew old-vine zinfandel on the vineyard I grew up on so it's a sentimental choice. Thanks to sweet Lulu for helping with design.

Mavis Staples

2008-06-15T15:32:00.000-07:00

On Friday, Scott, Linda and I went to see Mavis Staples at the SummerStage in Central Park. It was a magical evening that left us all smiling for a long time afterwards.

Gratuitous Arrow Photo of the Day

2008-06-13T14:19:00.001-07:00

Cat Naps Finally Happens in 2008

2008-01-09T12:44:00.000-08:00

I'm finally starting this blog to document life in Brooklyn/NYC and any other things I'm currently into. One of my 08 intentions is motivation, so hopefully I'll post frequently.

We closed out 2007 with a big trip back west to see family and friends and take some much needed time away from reality. Some highlights included:

BBQ Turkey and massive overeating in Ojai
Playing soccer and losing to my mom's dog callie
Noontime margaritas and more with old friends in Laguna
Morning hot tub soaks with Artie and Eileen
Bolompie papusas
Playing with Robert and Amy's three cats
Madness at the Hemlock
New Years back in Laguna with Jessica, Jason and their friends

Here are some pics. Stay tuned for more soon...