Despite the best intentions of the last post, I've not posted anything for a week as I've been embarking on a commission from a customer who does not want any of the details published online until she has received the piece.

Since I last wrote, I've been asked to have a solo showcase at the Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre in Wales. I've exhibited there before - in their Re:Collect show in 2009, so it is nice to be invited back to exhibit a small collection of new works. This…

I can't believe that I've managed to get three weeks into the year without posting anything on here. It is not as if I've not been busy in the workshop, what with making a new spiky mace in silver and shibuichi:

1) A Christmas tree bauble filled with wax:

2) Hollowed out:…

Off to Brighton on Friday for the festive holidays! Today I had hardly any students in, had finished the charms for the SCC show and have nothing that I can really be doing on my two big projects ("Fashion:Victim" and "Future Legend") so I picked up a nut from the old West Pier in Brighton, a beautiful Victorian pier which had a theatre at the end and which has been allowed to fall into disrepair following an arson attack by a company which didn't want it to be restored:

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I received an email from Sharon Massey earlier this week, inviting me to submit some pieces for the third "Charmed" exhibition at the SCC in Pittsburgh, to which I happily agreed. Some time ago, Bob Ebendorf and I had been talking about me making a series of charm bracelets which I started but which never got anywhere as I couldn't get over the hurdle of creating a complex piece with essentially no "narrative". (The original plan was to create 10 bracelets and 100 charms which would be sold…

I made a piece today from bits left over from Supercollider and a boar's tooth:

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Finally finished the Supercolliderpiece today. Not really in my usual style, but I'm fairly pleased with the way this worked out. Off to the photographer now!

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Nice day today; the students were either busy working on their Christmas sale or they were held up by the snow, so I spent a very relaxing day chatting to them and setting stones:

One of the students said that this looked "like something to control a spaceship"!

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Disaster...

Trying to cast the last - and largest - in the series of spheres made from old sewing-machine needles, I had to use a gigantic flask which I had never used before and which cooled down too much before the full vacuum could be drawn under it, so the metal chilled and the…

The Supercollider piece is progressing apace. I managed to cast the central torus element today:

I got really fed-up cleaning it! Overall, I'm pretty pleased with this, though it still presents the problem of how I am going to get all the investment plaster out of the inside of the hollow…

On Friday, I was sent to the most annoying meeting I've ever been forced to go to. It was given by a moron, an idiot who thought that it was enough to pompously declaim his unvalidated, ill-researched opinions on things relating to "sustainability", yet was hypocritical enough to brag about his "frequent visits to Greece" and his "two weeks in the Maldives", presumably all involving flights. Well, it is nice he can afford these things by selling his services as an advisor on…

Having now had a couple of weeks where a combination of loads of things on my plate and general late-autumn lethargy have conspired to prevent me from making any blog entries, I'm back to it after a week in which I saw an opera featuring a depressed singing egg and created a seriously dangerous structure.

Having seen the Call for Entries on Crafthaus for the "Hot…

I wanted to have this piece finished for Hallowe'en but things got in the way, so here is my Spoon Skull Cross, a bit of fun made from iron wire from a building site in Brighton, a rusted bolt, some flat ground tool steel from a derelict workshop, a silver souvenir teaspoon, silver, copper, rubies, sapphire, garnets and carnelian:

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It's been a week where I've not been able to proceed as I am waiting for other people to do things, thus Fashion:Victim is waiting for a piece of jet to be carved and Future Legend is waiting for some fresh acrylic enamels to be delivered. Instead of working on those, I've spent the last few days dusting off half-completed projects and finishing them, largely to restock my Etsy shop.

Some of the completed pieces:

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I left the workshop tonight, fully intending to spend the evening engraving but found, instead, that my bike had a puncture and, worse, that I had packed the wrong pump (Presta not Schrader) in my rucksack, so it took me almost twice as long to get home and now I have no time to engrave... Still, I've got the piece (a part of Future Legend) in the vice, ready for tomorrow, then I am going to have to patch my inner-tube. Bah!

The somewhat odd title of this…

I didn't really get a lot done today. Too busy dealing with other things and the students!

I did make a mould of the pewter hawk's foot, using a 2-part silicone rubber compound and making it into a 2-part mould by a very rough-and-ready technique:

I used this stuff before and it is…

It struck me today that I have been using a tip bench trick for ages now which I have selfishly not shared with anyone, not out of malice or self-interest, but simply because I use it so very regularly that it never entered my head until one of the students mentioned today how unusual it was. The idea originally came from another one of my students who asked me why there are no tube cutters for jewellery of the sort plumbers use to cut pipes. Her partner is a plumber and he gave me a…

Just back from a long weekend in Brighton.

And back into the workshop for more on Fashion:Victim. Both the ball elements are nearly ready for development into finished pieces. The hinges are completely on one and the other has the main structural elements for the hinge in place - should be hinged…

One of the other lecturers at work found this hammer in a cupboard in the engineering department:

It's a bit rough-and-ready, but I can easily dress it and make it into a decent raising hammer. I especially like the label on it:

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I finished another bell today and made a video of how they sound.

Apart from that, I didn't do too much except for making another corroded nut ring to see how it would sell on Etsy:

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But not in a bad way. 

I received an email from the editor of 18kt website today. The editor, Marta Sanchez, had just written an article on my excellent friend and colleague in Italy, János Gábor Varga and he recommended her to contact me, which was generous as well as flattering, so there will soon be an interview on the…