Rain and Fire

So this weather has been doing some weird things to my plants.  It was raining so hard the past few days that it made the soil jump out of the pots.  When the weather stabilizes, I'll add more soil to the pots.  Hopefully they aren't in shock or anything.

On the bright side, I splurged a little and bout a few new tools.  I now have a steel and nylon hammering block, a pair of  pretty good quality cutting pliers, a small chasing hammer (ball-peen), a junk pair of flat pliers (for picking up fired objects to quench) and a short length of 12 gauge sterling silver wire.  Let me tell you, even with a discount, that wire was expensive.  I'm all for buying local, but ouch. I got so anxious, I ran home and soldered together a few rings just for fun.  They don't look very good, but it sure took the edge off of my craving to work with metal again.  I showed my friend Matt how the general process works, but I guess coordination with a torch isn't a natural thing for everyone. In my "down time" while we were talking, I tried my hand at "forging" a short piece of silver wire.  Earlier that day, I had talked to Amanda, one of the girls who works at Bead It, and she said I could give it a try if I wanted a thicker banded ring. It was actually pretty fun, but because I was working with such a short length of wire, I slammed my fingers one too many times.  What resulted was a slightly thicker band than I had achieved with my 12 gauge wire, but very very thin.  I would post pictures, but I can't find the charger for my camera, and I don't get very good definition with my phone.

While running around on the internet, I came across Bead Gallery Honolulu, a shop near Ward. I really want to check it out. As much as I love Bead It and the people there, I am dying to make as many connections as I can and of course, find new stuff to play with.  In my browsing, I also came across firemountaingems.com. It has tons of supplies and tools and at really good prices.  It gets even cheaper if you buy massive quantities of stuff, but how many sets of files do I really need? I haven't ordered anything yet, but once Christmas passes, I may go a bit nuts on ordering materials.