Bunches of bananas and confidence

Hmm, well that gem shopping expedition didn’t quite go as planned.

I couldn’t face the schlep down to Chinatown on Saturday so I went to Amarin mall where there were several stalls and shops peddling gem and stones. I found a lovely shop where I told the man that I was learning to set stones and wanted something cheap but pretty that I could practice with. We started with amethysts and we moved through a host of stones whose names I’ve forgotten. Each time he brought something out I got more and more panicked: so TINY, shiny and perfectly cut. In my head I saw myself trying to measure and set them with my bunches of bananas and I felt a bit sick.  I knew they could look gorgeous. But probably only if someone else made them. He showed me all sorts of stones but I’d completely lost my confidence that I could do anything with them.

I found another stall. In a basket there were pieces of agate. I bought this one: it’s 4 cm long. I think even my bananas can make a reasonable job of setting them.

(Here’s the finished crown setting from the last post. I don’t know what the disc thing is that we’ve set but it feels like resin or even just plastic. Because it’s nicer with light behind it, I cut out a mad pattern on the back to let the light in.)

Jewellery, gems and skulls

The next stage in my jewellery making career journey is learning to set stones. This doesn’t require much fire (phew) but it does demand strict precision skills. Oh gawd.

Khun Gim found me an oval piece of rhodonite, a pretty pink and black stone to begin with. You measure the circumference with wire and then cut the metal a little bit longer than your wire. I cut it too long so I had to saw some of the extra mm off. Yes, and then I cut too much off and had to send it through the mangle to lengthen it again. Sigh.

Anyway, this ring is the result. Next I’m moving on to this resin (?) disk. This is the crown setting for it. Inside the crown setting we’ll I’ll solder a piece of wire to hold the disc at the top. Last week I asked Khun Gim ‘how do we keep the wire in the right place while I solder?’ Apparently the wire will hold itself because I’ll have cut it with such precision that it will just, erm, fit.

So this is the plan: I have to buy some stones to practice my setting skills. Bangkok is a good place to buy stones. Even though I’ve never been in the market for them you can’t help but see the shops around (and hear of the scams.) I’ve often stopped and peered into windows to look at the rubies, graded, sized and sitting in little see through trays. It’s another world to buy them though. Do a Google of Bangkok tourist scams, and the gem ones are right at the top. It has always struck me that if you’re on holiday and stupid enough to spend hundreds of pounds or dollars on rubies without the help of an independent expert, you’re kind of asking to be ripped off. Okay, this isn’t the way things should be but, sadly, it is the way it is.

Now clearly I’m not after ‘gem’ gems. I’m after something pretty or strikingly coloured and well, cheap. Remember, I might butcher it. K, who does jewellery at the same time as I do it, is a gemologist and she’s confirmed that as a foreigner the prices will rise the second I walk into the shop but she’s given me some advice. She’s advised me to reverse my normal approach; instead of ‘how much is that one?’ I should ask ‘what can I get for a 500 baht?’ (£10ish)

I shall let you know how I get on.

PS: isn't this rhodonite skull just divine? I love how his stylised look makes him appear to be wearing glasses. I want... (Source)

Monday morning

I nearly got hit by a car and a motorcycle this morning. Not really nearly but almost nearly. It is partly the fault of lax road rules here but also my own stupidity. I recovered as our taxi drove us to the MRT (underground) station (Husband was going to work; I was going to jewellery) and then I realised that I hadn't got my partly prepped bits of jewellery with me. I had to take a taxi back home to pick them up. I considered getting back into bed and staying there just in case the day didn't improve.

Anyway, here is one of the latest pieces. This is the 'go to the back of the class and practise your handwriting soldering' design. One of the pebble shapes is copper (top left) and the rest are brass. It's quite nice, isn't it?

(*Ahem* I left the solder visible just so that you could see how beautifully I'd done it!)

Sent to the back of the class

I’ve been sent to the back of the class.

Yes, it’s jewellery again. Must try harder. Must conquer fear of fire and soldering. Last week Khun Chaiwat told me that my next piece of jewellery had to include lots of soldering. Oh joy; (I’d been planning to design something that needed no soldering in an attempt to avoid it. Always best to avoid all awkward things whilst maintaining British stiff upper lip.) No, alright, that’s not the answer: must conquer fears.

The truth is it’s not the jewellery; it could be crème brûlée. (Damn it, why isn’t it crème brûlée?)

So here’s the problem: in my right hand is a raging fire. I mean raging; as though flames aren’t scary enough, then we send gas rushing through to make it really aggressive. The solder sits on top of the join – or next to it – but it’s microscopic. Alright, it’s not microscopic but it might as well be; it’s tiny. And if I cut it bigger, then it makes a mess all over the copper or brass that I’m working on and then there’s more filing to do... I have to point the flame at the right part of the metal but not for so long that my piece of jewellery starts to melt… And if one side gets hotter than the other, then I’m in trouble and the solder spews all over one side of the piece, and not down the crack at all. In my left hand is a titanium stick that I can use when the solder falls off the join. Which it does because there’s that raging flame blowing a kind of Hell-like gale towards a tiny piece of silver solder… When the solder falls off the join you have to let it melt and then scoop it up on the end of the titanium stick and push it back on the bit you’re trying to solder. Simple.

Except my hands don’t seem to work together properly. It’s just like learning to drive… It should be straightforward; it’s only my hands I’m asking to cooperate with each other. Like eating, yes? I manage that all right. NOOOOO, actually I don’t manage that very well. I have a familial reputation for dropping stuff down my front. (That’s all invitations for social engagements retracted…)

I’ve thought and thought about what my problem is. Years ago, I found an old school report from my piano teacher. It said ‘Jenny seems to have problems sending messages from her brain to her fingers.’

Indeed.

*Sigh*

These cufflinks are my latest piece:

Abandoning writing for jewellery

I’d been harbouring the details of the jewellery school for quite some time but it took the crisis I outlined yesterday, and the total despair I was feeling about my writing, before I plucked up the courage to email the contact. Now, five or so weeks in, I can’t imagine what all the fuss was about.

None of the anxiety was about the jewellery making; rather finding the place. And would I like it? Would there be any other students? Would I be able to make the things I wanted? Would it solve my creative crisis?

It didn’t ever occur to me that I might find it difficult. If that sounds arrogant I do apologise. What I mean is that since I have a fine art degree, tucked away at the back of my brain I thought ‘how hard can it be? It’s simply a different material…’ During my degree we were expected to turn our hands to whatever material the project needed. (For my degree show I learned some advanced ceramics: to make my own mould, to make the negative, then the positive and to slip cast from the mould but I know none of the processes that might lead up to that!) I am then, something of a dilettante. Oh dear. Still, I thought ‘how hard can it be?’

The answer to that, dear reader, is BLOODY HARD. Not only is metal really, really tough but also everything you make for jewellery is TINY. And not only do I NOT have biceps on my fingers but also my hands, it turns out, are like bunches of fat bananas. And that isn’t even getting involved in the delights of the old lady eyesight I’m developing. There are really scary processes like soldering which involves flames and gas and heating things that you’ve spent hours cutting (badly) and filing (to put your mistakes right) and you might melt them if you do it wrong. And that's not to mentioning the potential to set the studio alight. 

So the second lesson I went to I took a cup of tea in a flask for the stress and big bag of humility. And things got a bit better. I stopped breaking the saw blades quite so frequently but I was still scared of soldering or forgetting that I could only fish things out of the acid with the copper pincers.

Now, several weeks on I have begun to learn (some respect.) I can solder with more confidence without Khun Gim standing next to me. (Update to say: apart from today when I kept losing bits of solder. I couldn’t seem to coordinate my two hands to hold the fire in one and rescue the microscopic piece of solder with the other!) I break fewer saw blades when I am calm and if I am careful to cut things neatly, they require less tidying up. Attention to detail is really important. Slap dash doesn’t do. (Slap dash is part of my personality. *Sigh*)

Here’s what I’ve made so far (including the dodgy stuff.)

You can find out more about One Form One Piece Jewellery School here and check out some pictures on Facebook here.

Sunday confession

Back in January I made the decision to stop writing. I gave up; retired. It was a relief. Writing (or failing to get my novel what I wanted it to be) had begun to make me really unhappy.

I thought about why I’d begun writing a novel in the first place. It was something I’d always wanted to do but like so many people, I only talked and thought about doing it. Then one day, I stumbled across a blog that invited anyone writing a novel to join a race for support and camaraderie. It wasn’t easy but it made me happier than unhappy.

I have a not-so-secret confession which people rarely believe - I don’t have any burning desire to publish. I wanted to write the best book I could just for the sake of it. There’s something about the process of writing (and making art or craft, come to that) that does it for me. And having to turn my creation out for anyone’s scrutiny (publication or exhibition) brings me out in hives.

And so I did write a novel: 107,000 words of story, a beginning, a middle and an end. Most people spend their lives saying they want to and never do it. I did it and I should be proud of that.

Over the five years that I’ve been writing I’ve had breaks from it; periods of laziness or frustration and even though I’ve longed to give up, I haven’t been able to stop; not completely anyway. There has always been something inside that I identified as a need to write. However miserable it made me I had to continue to do it.

Two months ago, for the first time in four or five years, I felt as though I had a choice. I don’t know what had changed, except perhaps that the unhappiness outweighed the pleasure and I felt as though I’d been released from something and that I could stop writing. It was liberating. There was some grief too but mostly there was relief.

I began to attend jewellery-making classes instead. I feel that making uses a totally different part of my brain from writing (although maybe it doesn’t or shouldn’t) but when I draw or make I go to a place where nothing intrudes. I struggled to find that place in writing… I’m going to come back and tell you about the jewellery course tomorrow but here’s the funny thing:

I have begun to think about my next writing project.