So this weekend we had some extra robot work to do so no travel adventure, but I decided to add a post about some jewelery making I have done recently.

We had some copper wire around and I had initially tried to use it to wrap around a piece of jadeite I had found at the beach up in Seattle. It turned out very poorly but it gave me a new idea to just to wrap up nothing. So I ended up with a chamfered tetrahedron of wire and this is how it was made.

So take some 22 gauge wire and wrap 3 times around a 1/2″ rod.

After each of 3 wraps, start a new set of wraps till you get 4 sets. Clip the wire to about 18 inches of length past the wraps.

Turn the wire loops into a rough tetrahedron, then wrap a loop around each of the loop intersections. It will look a little rough at this state; you have to spend some time straightening out the wraps before it looks neat.

This is what the finished products looks like after all of the straightening. I really need to get a decent macro camera. :)

A couple of years ago, we got a bit frustrated trying to use potholders on the cast iron skillet. The pot holder always ended up in the food in the skillet so we decided that we needed a custom-fit potholder for the handle. The first one that I knit was a simple tube that didn’t work very well so I came up with a new fitted pattern. We used the second one for a couple of years, but when we moved to Sunnyvale, our stove top worked a bit differently and the potholder bore the brunt of it.

Not so functional as a potholder.

I made a new one from the pattern I used last time. I used the same yarn as the washcloth and used no. 8 needles. The gauge was 10 sts = 1 3/4 inches.

1. Cast on 17 stitches.
2. Knit in stockinette stitch for 2 1/2 inches.
3. Decrease to 11 stitches and continue until piece measures 4 inches.
4. Sew up side and wide end.

It’s not very complicated and takes about 15 minutes from start to finish.

The potholder is knit flat.

The completed potholder.

The skillet is so much easier to use now!

Future versions of this pattern will be modified to knit in the round on the double pointed needles I already own.

About 7 years ago, Jasmine and I were walking through Chinatown in San Francisco and, as a spur of the moment decision, we bought some tiny lucky bamboo.  It was 2 dollars for a 4 inch sprout so, in the spirit of Chinatown, I bargained down to 2 for a dollar.  I put them in a small pot and about a year later we didn’t know for certain if the plant was real or plastic.  In another year the bamboo was obviously growing so we actually bought a real plant!   Fast forward to the present and our bamboo is growing like crazy out of the pot so I decided to trim it back and plant the clippings.

This is the original lucky bamboo plant: pretty overgrown.

Step 1 – Cut the cane to about a 4 inch length, cutting very cleanly a half inch below a node.  Remove all the leaves but the top one.

Step 2 – Put the canes in a mix of water and perlite (fine stones) about 2 inches deep.

The cut sprout into the water before adding the perlite.

Step 3- Change the water every couple of days and wait a couple of weeks till you can see little nodules pushing out of the base.

Roots! I don’t know why, but I just think its really cool to grow your own plants.

Step 4 – Plant in soil.  And your done!  As a bonus, the original plant should have sprouted some extra canes of its own.  Next time I’m not going to let the bamboo go so crazy.

Some friends of ours were getting married and I wanted to make them something for the wedding, but I was kind of stumpped on what to get them.  Then the thought came to me silverware is traditional but no one ever has a pair of silver chopsticks so there you go.  I ended up doing a lot of research on the sizes of chopsticks, and it turns out there are many papers written about the optimum size of chop sticks, which I find somewhat hilarious.  I ended up going with a slightly smaller than average 8″ long by 0.16″ x 0.16″ square which ended up feeling pretty good to hold in your hand even though silver is much heavier than wood.

At the end of the day, the recipe for whitesmithing is easy – just keep hammering till it is the shape you want.  I would anneal the silver with a torch every 100 hits or so and then sand it down to 1000 grit in the end.  We tested them out before handing them over and they work surprisingly well; I think I’ll have to make another two sets.

The starting stock. It looks a lot like chopsticks, right?

Cut to length and then file off the top edge to its final angle and the bottom edge to a circle. If you don’t, you will start upsetting the end of the material and cracks will form.

Hammer a lot! I didn’t touch the first 1.5 inches, just radiused the next 3.5 inches, then made the next 2 inches a circle, and dimpled and tapered down to 0.1 inch diameter the last 1 inch.

The finished product was then sanded and polished and all packaged up in nice velveted box I made. I was actually quite pleased with the outcome and wanted to keep them :(