Tiny Pod Knife

Here’s a tiny version of the Fish Pod Knife that is on my Knives webpage.  The design is taken from a beautifully forged 19th century antique Chinese fisherman’s knife that I bought a few years ago.  This one is only 2 1/4 inches long and is forged from a 4″ cut nail that was divided into three pieces to make the pod, blade, and rivet.  It was just an experimental piece and doesn’t have a fancy finish - it will probably adorn a fabric bag or a bell chain.  Now I want to try making the pod out of silver or copper.

Morning Trumpet

While walking on the beach at Cape Hatteras Point - our pilgrimage to the “utter East” or the “end of the world” - I found two large whelk shells.  Three species of whelks are commonly found as broken beach shells on the Outer Banks.  The Point is one of the best places to find whole shells.  Shown on the left is the Lightning Whelk (Busycon contrarium) which is unusual in having a sinistral spiral - a left-handed opening.  Most snails are “right handed”.  This particular shell retains some of its natural colors.  On the right is its heavier cousin, the Knobbed Whelk (Busycon carica).  This shell is more wave-battered and is stained brown with iron oxide and gray with iron sulfide.

As soon as I picked it up and shook the sand out in the surf, I saw that the larger shell would make a good trumpet, as is done with conch shells.  I didn’t want to saw off the beautiful terminal spiral, but one of the knobs on the shell had several small wormholes in it, so I drilled that out and flared a piece of copper tubing for the mouthpiece.  The fringe is white silk, and the bead is a rusty iron beach pebble.

Picture Jasper Pendant

Here’s my new picture jasper pendant, strung on hemp cord with copper tubes and African cast-glass beads.  The bag is made of two different pomegranate-dyed hemp/cotton fabrics, hemp drawstrings, silk tassels, padded with cotton batting.  The stone is a volcanic pebble from Lake Superior.

Picture jasper comes in many varieties, and each locality has its own characteristic colors and patterns.  I’ve made a lot of picture jasper jewelry, including a couple of pieces that I wear all the time.  Most of them don’t appear on my website (though a photo gallery of the stones I’ve used might be pretty).  I am very picky about the patterns, and have been known to pass up an entire room full of fancy cabochons at the Tucson gem show, then come home and buy an inexpensive stone on ebay.  But I usually find one or two stones each year at the show.  The shape of the stone doesn’t matter, as long as it’s well cut, and the colors are of secondary importance to the pattern - the scene has to be geologically convincing, emotionally compelling, and (ideally) remind me of somewhere I’ve been.

The stone in this pendant is quite large, about two inches long.  It won’t be for sale, since the polish on the stone is uneven and less glossy than the high-grade material that I usually use.  This is a common problem with picture jasper, since it is weathering, fractures, and increased porosity in the stone that allow water to deposit the colorful iron oxides.  But the scene reminds me of the waves and shifting sand at the Cape Hatteras Point, and the shape of the stone accentuates this effect, though it’s awkward to set, as the photo shows. 

Shaman’s Belt

Here’s part of my shaman’s belt - well, it’s more for maze dancing than anything else.  It’s finished enough to wear, though I’ll probably add more things to it.  There are twelve triangular bells with cone clappers, two small chains of flared cones, and (not shown) a set of five curly cones and some iron fringe.  The belt itself is an undyed Guatemalan cotton sash.  Heavy but nice and jingly!  There is a picture of the whole thing on the BELLS page of my website.  I’ve updated the site with a few new iron things - a bell, knife earrings, and photo of eight wands.

A couple of days ago, I walked past the hole in the dirt bank where the great horned owl nested earlier this year.  The birds are still around - I sometimes see them perched in a tree or flying up the wash on my morning walk.  This time, in the grass below the empty hollow, I found an egg.  It was cracked but still whole.  A bit larger than a chicken egg, and more round, with a much thicker shell.  It smelled like limestone and appeared to be nearly empty - it was probably infertile and had simply dried out.  I’m still pondering its meaning - a dried-out cracked owl egg, rolling into my path so close to the Full Moon, an object that I’ve been unknowingly walking past every day since the bird nested.  Is there something in my own life that should have hatched this summer, but didn’t?  Or is there something that I had been ready to throw away that should be treasured and given more time?  Might be a good time for a “moon pebble” reading.

New Moon: Circle of Bells

This Moon I have continued to work on several large projects - the Xerophytic Ferns Guide now has photos of 21 species, so the webpage is more than half finished.  I wasted a couple of weeks on a sewing project that didn’t work out, so I put it away for awhile.  Unfinished drawings of pomegranates, cats, and plants are scattered on my desk.  In honor of the Perseid meteor shower, I forged A DOZEN small triangular bells with cone clappers and sewed them on my new shaman’s belt.  I’ll post a photo when it’s done, but for now I’m working on more cone bells- it’s not heavy enough yet

Here’s a series of cone bells in progress, showing the steps in forging them:  The blank (1) is a 1″ triangle hot-chiselled from 1/8″ thick mild steel.  The wide end is hammered flat (2) then hammered into a tube (3).  The narrow end is “drawn out” or hammered into a square-sided point (4).  The point is hammered round and the cone is flared (5) with pliers.  The point is filed smooth and curled into a loop, and the cone is given its final shape and quenched (6).  The gray firescale is removed with a wire brush, and any rough spots are ground and polished smooth (7).  The bright shiny cone is returned to the fire and quenched in peanut oil to give it a glossy black finish (8).

Unlike my curly cones, which are made from cut nails and have fairly precise, symmetrical shapes, this group is more freeform and each one will be a bit different.  The “traditional” iron cones found on Siberian shaman’s costumes and West African ritual staves usually have a larger, flattened loop and are not flared or curled.  It’s a simpler style consistent with cones shaped entirely by hammering, without the use of pliers.  But the basic method of construction is the same.

Still Copper after 15 Years

ABOVE - Copper wire jewelry.  Triskele earrings with African iron beads (2007), wirewrap pendant with tumbled hematite (1992).

This summer I can celebrate 15 years of metalworking.  Not continuous work, but slowly evolving anyway.  In 1992 I began making jewelry from recycled copper.  No jigs or specialized tools, just ordinary jeweler’s pliers, coils of 14 and 16 gauge wire, and a handful of beads cut from old evaporative cooler tubing.  It was what I could afford, it was portable, and it seemed appropriate for the desert.  Recycled copper was cheap at the scrap yard, and copper ore surrounds us in the mountains.  I soon added inexpensive stones (including the turquoise “donuts” that I still love), leather cord, and silver earring wire.  I bought a forge and started blacksmithing in 1994, and got a torch and began working with silver in 1997.  Now, many pieces of jewelry later (some remembered and a lot forgotten), I have decorated my yard with blue-green stones - copper ore from half a dozen mountain ranges - and I still have days when all I want to do is curl up in a corner of the shop (sitting on the floor, of course) with a coil of copper wire and my battered pliers, and make spirals, triskeles, and chain links.  I also enjoy the challenge of hot-forged copper, when I hammer my favorite iron motifs out of the softer red metal.  The necklace below (finished today) is cold-hammered 16 gauge wire and hot-forged heavy 8, 6, and 4 gauge wire.  

Here’s a “copper ore” bag - green for malachite, purple for cuprite, light blue lining for turquoise, and dark blue embroidery for azurite.  Even has copper cord for drawstrings!

Eye Bowl

A simple eye-shaped bowl forged from scrap steel:  a 3″ disc and a large washer.   Both halves ring like bells.  Uncovered, it pours water.  Covered, it is for burning desert incense - brittlebush gum, mariola leaves, osha root.  A bowl for purification by sound, fire, fragrant smoke, and rainwater, bringing new visions and clarity of sight.

Two Bells

In the past couple of days I finished these bells and put them on my website.  Both have a nice sound from a tiny, sweet-ringing bell and a large, darker one.  These are very time-consuming to make, but I love them and each one is different.  They are balanced for hanging or for carrying in a ritual or procession.  The bells start out as flat, industrial-looking steel triangles.  I cut them from strips of 1/8″ steel that we found dumped on a dirt road a few years ago.  As I hammer over the tool hole in the anvil, they begin to seem more alive as the domes and curves take shape, until they really do look and feel like the wild ginger flowers that inspired them.  I started making them in 1995, when we lived in Kentucky, and I went for a walk along a railroad track and found some triangular scraps of steel plate.  By the time the first bell was done, I knew that this was one of those peculiar little things that I felt “called” to make, like the curly cones and pods.   Most blacksmiths seem to have some odd item that they forge over and over - an early challenge becomes a trade item or signature piece, and finally a comforting form of meditation.

The High Summer Furnace

This year I’ve seen two gila monsters, the ashes-and-embers dragons who shake the ground when they walk.  I found the one shown above while hiking in a gravel wash.  They are most active in the early morning and at dusk.  Their colors are the essence of high summer, the living fire in the earth.  In the morning I work at the forge, and at noon the white desert air holds that same purifying blast of arid heat.  It is also Fire Season, and a primitive part of my mind believes that if I work with the fire - walk in the desert and work at the forge when the temperature is over 100 - that it will be enough, and none of my favorite places will burn this year, and I will store up enough of the sun’s strength to get through next winter.  This idea inspired a project - a series of sixteen spikes forged from cut nails, all different, to be used in protection rituals.  The spikes (wands, pins, transformed nails) represent Fire, as they do in my tarot deck, and draw energy from the agave stalks that are rising and blooming now.  They are some of the first things that I learned to forge, so they are comforting and familiar to make. 

A double-ended spike curled into a circle becomes a torc, an ancient kind of necklace.  It feels cold when I first put it on, but quickly absorbs body heat and begins to feel alive, like a small snake.  The photo shows a nearly-finished torc (still needs a bit of tweaking, and still covered in gray firescale), some finished spikes that are being polished, and two finished, blackened spikes.