Tuesday, October 14, 2014

towers in a locket

This lovely gold-filled locket came from an antique store in Aurora, Oregon...such a nice locket. I cleaned it, then wanted to fill it. I thought of the embossed stocknagel* I got from a store in Latvia. So I cut two ovals from two stocknagel--one of Kotnov Tower in Tábor, Czech Repubic, and one of the Mariatrost Basilica in Austria--to fit the locket's two sides. I shaped them to give them a slight dome, backed them with two cut-to-fit pieces of thin brass and put them behind the metal picture frames. The chain is composed of an antique gold-filled watch chain and a gold-filled necklace chain section. I found a cool antique spring clasp to close the necklace. See part of the process in the pics below.








*Stocknagel are small plaques made of brass or sheet metal that would be attached to a walking stick with a few small nails. Collected as souvenirs, the custom began as a European alpine tradition in which the medallions covering the walking stick served as documentation and commemoration of a hiker's travels.

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

allotment of aluminum

On the epic road trip of the summer of 2014, up the PCH to Canada, across the Cascades, and down through Montana, we stopped at some great antique stores, and my eye was drawn to aluminum containers—a pill box, bobby pin safe, glasses case. The embossed letters, figures, and flowers looked amazing, and I loved the color of the metal. Today I cut up the beat-up glasses case, and I filed, and filed, and filed (Note: Must obtain better files) till my fingers went numb, and then I had a pretty piece.








Saturday, July 12, 2014

Mittelstand

A question on Quora asks, "What does Germany do right?" Apparently, a lot. One example is the high quality of German products and the excellent service provided by the makers of those products. Case in point: A watch purchased in Germany in 1937 is taken back to the shop for repair around 1980, and they fix it "under warranty."

Businesses that hold reputability and reliability in such high regard are called Mittelstand, "small and medium-sized enterprises in German-speaking countries," many of which "focus on innovative and high-value manufactured products." 

We here at Millennium General Assembly (and by "we" I mean "I") recognize aspects of my own business plan (and by "business plan" I mean "general policies") in these tenets. I use mostly old, antique and vintage, parts to make my stuff, but I strive to make it as lasting and strong as possible, and I offer free adjustments and repairs for the life of the jewelry.

And now I want to go buy German appliances.

My stuff, you can buy here.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

NaPoWriMo time

I just found out it's National Poem Writing Month! That's long for NaPoWriMo, which I'd never heard about, though I know about NaNoWriMo, the month of writing a novel, which happens in November (which, I realize, is the date of my last blog entry, around the time I also wasn't writing a novel), which I've participated in several times, unsuccessfully, though I do have a T-shirt commemorating one year. I thought, Well, this is far superior! Here, I have 30 days to attempt 30 poems, and even if I only manage to write one poem, I'll at least have the satisfaction of having finished one thing instead of nothing. Since today is April 16, I've clearly not succeeded at half the poems so far, but I took the prompt for the day from this year's day 16, "write a ten-line poem in which each line is a lie," and wrote a poem. Here you go:

This Poem Doesn't Know How to Tell a Lie

Of course it's Tuesday.
except when it's Tuesday—
then, it's any other day of the week.
This Tuesday, like any another Tuesday,
will be followed by a succession of Tuesdays, 
succeeded only by chance with a Wednesday.
And Wednesday's child is full of woe,
not bones and blood and guts and good intentions, 
rather, empty of all that is not woe. 
Woe, and also, contradictions.
She was up to her eyeballs in those.
Woe was also a cockatiel she knew
who belied his name by acting chipper.
Child of woe met bird of cheer and thought, 
Just once, can this be a bird who won't bite?
Of course Woe did.