What a great weekend! Lovely weather, so I got out on my bike a lot and re-visited a site I had found some time ago, the wonderfully unhinged paintings on a house in Tollcross, Glasgow. In September 2012, it looked like this:…

Waa!

My wonderful, indispensible, reliable, cheerful, friendly, unflappable workshop technician, Fiona, is leaving on Thursday. She's found a better-paid job with more promotional prospects and she'll be superb. The students will all miss her and they arranged a lunch for her today, which was great fun.…

I've never channel-set round stones until today...

I'm genuinely surprised that it is easier than channel setting square stones, which I have done before on many occasions. I had always imagined that the round stones - not fitting so squarely into the channel - would rock about, but they don't. The problem…

One of the publicity images for Ferrous, the joint Crafthaus/VdV show at Velvet da Vinci, San Francisco...…

First of all, a belated "happy new year" to my colleagues and friends on Crafthaus. I returned from my festive break to a 'flu which completely knocked me for six, to the point that I was in bed and unable to move... feverish, coughing, weak and aching. Horrible, in short. 

2013 has already started off to be busy. First of all I had a quick-fire commission to make a ring "with fish that have a bit of life about them, something in blues and greens" but which had to be…

I am now winding the workshop down for the end of the year. I'll be shutting-up fully on Thursday for two weeks, back again in 2013 with new projects to tackle.

Although I've not been quiet in this holiday season, I have been dealing with people who have been startlingly organised and this has meant that for the last week and the week to come, I don't have any rush-jobs to complete, no last-minute dashes to the post-office. The last Commission for the season was sent out on…

(I'm just back from a weekend in Edinburgh, which is why there was a hiatus.)

The last day in Chicago was one of pure tourism. I woke up very early and as the show opened at 11 am and my airport  shuttle was at 11.30 am, I thought that a walk around the area to see some more of the city would be in order.

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By Saturday, I had the programme sorted: I wanted to hear the talk about "Mr Imagination" at 4pm, had to meet a friend for lunch at 1pm and knew that I wanted to see a bit more of the city and the amazing architecture of the place. 

One of the things I love about American city architecture is the way that…

Things have been incredibly busy at work, setting up the new students, returning all the Diamond Jubilee work to the makers, making some new pieces, preparing for the "ENOUGH: Violence" show at SCC next August as well as helping a friend of mine - Wing Mun Devenney - write her new book, a technical manual on soldering. 

One of the aspects of my practice which I've not really thought about properly and which I don't document…

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been really busy with family matters as well as learning to use the new mill and the associated software, so I've not really had a chance to make any of my usual work. I've been forced to make quick projects and have also been using the products of the mill as it is always so much more encouraging and interesting to be teaching oneself something with a real goal at the end.

As a result of this, I've been working largely in more conventional…

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 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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Fairly easy day today. Spent the morning in the workshop and the afternoon with my students with learning difficulties, all of whom have studied with me before: gratifying to know that they wanted to come back again! A lovely group to end the week with, I think. The workshop is proving a little bit frustrating at the moment, as I am between several projects, all of which need some serious time spent working through the details on paper, or 3D models need to be made or I am waiting for…