The Ring

No, I don't mean the American remake of the Japanese horror film Ringu, though the horror film title is very appropriate for this blog post on Halloween. I'm talking about the ring I made this evening at my jewellery class.

We made sterling silver bands – sawed, hammered, texturized, annealed, and soldered bands of our very own. I pressed mine with some lace and antiqued it, giving it great texture. After all that, I have to say that I'm not crazy in love with the final result. If I were to choose a ring for myself, I would choose something much simpler with less detail, but I love playing with the different techniques. Besides, I'll probably still wear the ring every day because I made it with my own two hands, plus I stamped a little hidden symbol of love into it. Can you see it?

You say solder, I say solder.

Last night was my first of eight Beginner Jewellery Making classes at Nanopod. Our first project was working with copper. We drilled, we sawed and we soldered, and it was a lot of fun! My piece didn't turn out a well as I'd hoped, but I really enjoyed the process. So much that I'm thinking about all the tools I can buy to continue creating metal works of art at home!


my piece from last night that I cut out of a small piece of copper with a saw, filed, and soldered with my very own hands!

Random conversation about the class, had about a month and a half ago at my home, went something like this:

me (showing my cousins and the boy the nanopod website and the description of the class): I get to work with all these metals, and I get to solder!
cousin: it's "saw-der"
me: what? oh. I thought that "sole-dering" and "saw-dering" were two different things.

Sometimes, I'm really dumb.


In other news, look what I found at the cafe next door to the studio! Hell ya! Apparently they also sell a chili pepper one, but were sold out last night. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they have more next Wednesday night!

Baby Balcony Birdies, Day 22

Flax + Crackers = Flackers

Breakfasts for the past year or so for me have been:

• oatmeal with flax
• rolled barley and rolled rye flakes with flax
• smoothies with fruits and veggies with flax

It's become boring and I need to shake things up. Enter The Thrive Diet by Brendan Brazier, which I purchased in the hopes of learning how to eat better overall. He has a section in the book of recipes for crackers, and I modified one to fit the ingredients I have in my home at the moment. I hope to make this my current breakfast trend, especially since ingredients can be varied to create very different tastes. It is made with of flax, hemp and Salba, providing lots of omegas, plus nuts and seeds, adding a good dose of protein and other nutrients.



Flackers

1 cup ground flax seed
1/2 cup ground Salba
1/4 cup raw cashews
1/2 cup raw, unhulled sesame seeds
1/2 cup raw almonds
1 carrot, chopped
1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes, rehyrated in 1/4 cup boiling water
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoons hemp protein powder
3/4 cup of water
oil (canola, sunflower, coconut or your preference)
salt for topping (optional)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees fahrenheit. Blend first 10 ingredients, including the tomato soaking liquid, in a food processor. Blend at medium speed, drizzling in extra water a little at a time until the mixture is of packing consistency (like packing snow!). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and grease with a small amount of oil. Spread mixture on paper, pressing down to cover entire baking sheet. Score lines into the mixture to desired cracker size and shape (unless you want to get fancier than a square/rectangle, in which case, I can't help you). Sprinkle salt over top and bake for 30 to 40 minutes. When cooled, use scored lines to break into individual crackers.



These came out of the oven a short time ago, and got rave reviews by 3 people. Success!

You can't handle the cute!

Look at what the momma bird on our balcony created!



You can follow the egg-citing egg-sperience (sorry - I hate myself for writing that, but it had to be done...) in flickr format right here. Be sure to read some of the info that the lovely and extremely knowledgeable quagga posted in some of the comments.