if it ain't one thing it's another

Okay, really, could I have any more mechanical problems? Come on cosmos, throw it all on me now.

I won't bore you with the details, but a fluke thing happened with some of my engraving equipment (not a grinder!) and that sets me back a bit while I wait for the new part to arrive on Friday.

I started a new piece today (as best I could, just did the transfer), and yes I'm still working on my own cat pendant. I'm not sure yet if I can show WIPs for the new one, I'll ask. Of course I could for mine if I ever got around to posting pics. Huh!

The good news is I have plenty of other stuff I can work on tomorrow, including washing chickens!

It was a pretty uneventful birthday, which is totally okay. It was a regular work day, and then I went out for a nice steak dinner with my mom and Jan, and sat around and talked afterwards. Got a couple phone calls and lots of emails. I don't care what the numbers say, it was a fine 29th birthday. ;-)

And the new graver sharpener thingy should arrive tomorrow. Woo hoo!!! I am so excited to try it out, and I have ten little blank gravers sitting here waiting to be sharpened! (Into ten different points for different uses).

chickening part 2: rethinking the rethinking

I knew this would be hard. That's why I've been avoiding it for the last few years. I've had this email all typed up ready to send out to the Rosecomb list for about a week and a half now, but I am incapable of hitting the send button. Because I still don't really know what I want to do the birds.

Let's look at the facts:

1) I cannot hatch birds until summer. That's not ideal, but that's how it has to be with my schedule. It means I have no birds to show in the fall, and can't raise many birds (because I have to keep the hatching season short, otherwise they are too young even to show in the winter, and then what's the point)
2) I don't show/raise/sell enough to justify keeping the number of birds that I currently have.
3) I don't plan on showing more than 3 times per year.

But:

1) I do want to keep raising and showing birds, just in a small quantity. All this thinking about cutting back to nearly nothing really makes me feel soooo sad, I don't want to be sad.

I have even been dreaming about this stuff lately. I dreamed I was selling my last two birds, Pablo and Diego (BBRed roosters). It was awful, I was heartbroken, I would have done anything to bring them back home. Now, in real life I've thus far parted with nothing, and those two old boys will never leave, they are keepers. But there seems to be this pretty overwhelming feeling of NOT wanting to do this, and potentially regretting the heck out of it.

Months ago, I had actually more or less decided to keep 10-20 totally random assorted birds, house them all together (no "breeding pens" of specific colors) and hatch whatever. But part of the appeal of this plan was that I actually wanted to free-range them, and have several roosters in the group. Due to not wanting to feed the local hawk population any more of my valuable birds, I can't do that. They have to be kept in, and if I'm going to do that I may as well keep them purebred.

See, two things that friends have said to me lately have really stuck. One is that if I've accomplished what I wanted out of my years of raising chickens, then it's okay to move on. But I haven't accomplished that. Oh sure, I've won shows, but I have not gotten the BBRed Rosecombs to the level of quality that I want them to be. Granted, all bird breeding programs are always a work in progress, always striving to be better, but I feel only half done (okay maybe 3/4) with the BBReds. And perhaps this is selfish, but if I sell them they will eventually cease to be my line. They become someone else's, as someone else fine tunes them toward their own ideal, which may not be my ideal. So I can hardly send them out into the world and expect someone else to do what *I* want done with them. Only I can do that, and that color in particular, well, it's kind of my baby.

The other comment was how weird it is not to see BBRed Rosecombs at the shows anymore. Yes it is! I didn't hatch any last year (because I had to outcross them to Black again) so it's NEXT generation (this year's hatch) that would produce showable BBReds again. It's really hitting me hard that I still want to do that. I want to keep working with this color. I'm not finished.

I think that despite the potential fun aspect of hatching a bunch of mixed-variety chicks, I would probably end up frustrated and trying to breed for specific colors anyway, so why not just stick with purebreds anyway, ya know.

So here's the start of a new plan:

Keep about 2/3 of the existing BBRed flock. They become the focus of my chicken efforts.
Keep about 1/3 of the existing Brassy and Blue Brassy flock, because I love Blue Brassy Backs.
Keep about 1/4 to 1/3 of the current Black flock. Genetically they are the basis for everything, therefore important, but if winning is not a priority then I don't need to be raising large quantities of them.

I'd still end up with about 20 birds, which is fine. That's less than half of the current flock. I would still end up selling a good number of really top notch breeder birds to really serious breeders who are active in showing and committed to raising them (yes I'm going to be REALLY picky). I could still sell eggs in the spring. And raise birds in the summer. And show a couple times in the winter. And rethink it next fall or in the early spring of 2011 if need be.

Hmmm, yes, something to think about. It doesn't solve the problem of me being rather tied down with the birds (you know, if Prince Charming rides up and says let's go to the castle, I'd be like "but wait, I need chicken coops there so I can take my birds!") but, I don't seem to be ready to do anything more drastic than sell more than half of the birds without turning into a blubbering blog of regret, so for the time being this may be a plan I can live with. And well, Prince Charming or otherwise, I'll just have to cross that bridge when I get there.

Oh, who's Pablo? This is him. He won Reserve Champion of Show at the Gold Coast Poultry Fanciers show in January 2006. Diego is his son. That was an awesome amazing win, but between you and me (don't tell the bird) I've never thought he had a very good head. See, he's not *my* ideal bird. That's why I want to keep trying. :-)

working in the barn

I spent a lot of time in the barn this weekend. I like being in the barn. The barn on the ranch where I grew up was one of my favorite places to be. It was huge and there were all sorts of nifty old gadgets in there... some of which I wish I would have brought here, like a couple of old horse harness collars. They were not useable, but were cool. Why didn't I bring that stuff? Probably was told not to I guess, hmm.

Okay, total tangent there, sorry, that just popped into my head.

So there's been this big saga with me and bench grinders. I don't know how much of this I've blogged about (versus mentioned on facebook so I'll just recap):

I need a power tool of some sort to use for sharpening engraving tools, because it takes me HOURS of precious time and makes my arm very sore if I have to get a graver from square to super fine pointy all with hand stones. Me no like. Now, the proper thing to do of course would be to get a power hone, which is made just special for that job. But I'm a tightwad and I don't really want to fork over several hundred dollars to buy one.

But I know it's possible to use a bench grinder also, and since there was an ancient one in the barn I thought I'd give it a whirl. I knew it was wonky, it was welded to a stand and if you wanted to use it (I think I used it once in the last 12 years) you had to actually put your foot on the stand (or ideally have someone else to it, because you kinda had to lean all your weight onto the stand) otherwise it would rotate itself in circles. Inconvenient, no? I thought it was a problem with the stand. So I bolted it to the workbench, flipped the switch, and it shook the room. Stuff fell off the workbench, tools on the walls vibrated madly. Um, not good. That's a problem.

So I asked for a bench grinder for my birthday (which is this Tuesday! Now you can't say I didn't warn you!) and off I went to Harbor Freight to fetch one last week, a bit early, yes... Got that thing all bolted down to the bench, turned it on, and it hummed to life. Nothing falling off the table. Ahhh. But then I swapped out one of the wheels it came with for the diamond wheel (what I need for sharpening gravers) and suddenly it was the same problem with tools falling off the wall. Crap! I think the problem is either that the diamond wheel is soooo heavy that it's throwing the whole thing off balance, or the diamond wheel itself is out of whack (doubtful, it's brand new). Anyway, bottom line is that isn't going to work with the diamond wheel, and I've about had it with machines lately.

I will likely keep the new grinder simply to replace the old one, which had some problems to begin with long before it ever met the diamond wheel. Meanwhile, an engraver friend has a tiny grinder set up with a diamond drum, tested, confirmed to work, no shake, very small and light weight, so I'll be getting that in the mail next week and if I like it I'll buy it... or I guess it'll be my new present. Whatever. I just wanna sharpen gravers! Waahhh!

Anyway, after I threw in the towel on that I still spent a lot of time out in the barn this weekend with other sorts of power tools because I decided to build a barn owl nest box. I'd been seeing a female barn owl around sometimes, and lately there has been a pair around the barn in the morning. The downside of owls is they are super messy, and I really debated if I wanted to do this. And I suppose they could be a predator if I had chicks or ducklings running loose. But I already have such a hawk problem I really can't do that anymore anyway, so I think that's not such a concern, and I think their mess will hopefully be offset by their expertise with rodent control. When you have animals, and hay in the barn, and live along a creek, you have rodents...

Unfortunately I have not inherited any of the construction skills that some members of my family possess, and that whole "measure twice and cut once thing" will always elude me when it comes to this kind of thing, but nevertheless I whipped up the ugliest darn barn owl box EVER entirely from scraps and managed to hang it all by myself, so I'm rather proud of that. And sore. Very sore. I hope the owls use it, and I hope I don't regret inviting them to move on in...


scrap lumber................................zero dollars
leftover hardware.........................zero dollars
hours of my own labor..................zero dollars
ugly but functional box.................priceless

it was a good show!

Well, the reception for my "Among Animals" art show was Friday evening. I'd set up the work on Tuesday, and then hauled in a bunch more little stuff for the reception on Friday. The weather was decent, the turnout looked pretty good to me! Huge thank you to those of you who came to visit, it means a lot to me. :-) It was great to see some familiar faces (some of whom I had not seen since high school, OMG! The wonders of Facebook!) and I got to talk to a lot of new people. People seemed to enjoy the art (and all the desserts I brought!), and I heard people commenting about the variation of work all from one artist; I had drawings, paintings, hand-pulled prints, and scrimshaw on display.

I had to explain what hand-pulled prints are: artwork that is printed by hand, not with a machine, from an "original" created on linoleum, wood, metal, limestone, etc. And I had to explain about ivory a few times. There's a common misconception that ivory is illegal. Ivory that has been in the US since before the ban in the early 70s is legal to buy and sell within the US, but there can be no import or export, and I buy from a reputable dealer who can verify their sources.

Anyway. The setup looked really nice. The gallery space is a dance studio, and is where I take bellydance lessons every Thursday evening, so I'm quite familiar with the space and get to see my work every Thursday this month, ha ha.

I took these pics before anyone showed up:






And here are some that CS took when people were around:

another scrimshaw Sheltie dog!

Heeeeere's Trevor! :-)


"Trevor"
scrimshaw on pre-ban elephant ivory
22mm by 30mm

I couldn't do work in progress stuff while I was working on this one, had to keep it secret. So I ended up being pretty lax about taking photos while working on it... I think I took one... I think.

I wish you could all see this stuff in person. The pics are darn good, but they are soooo much cooler in person!

I think I might have to change the business name to "Scrimshaw Shelties by Katherine Plumer." Or maybe just scrimshaw dogs... ha ha. (I'm kidding). However, the next project after my cat is yet another dog! And a cheetah. Not together, that's two separate projects.

I've been busy getting ready for Friday's art show opening. I set up everything on Tuesday and it looks great. I will have small items down there for the reception on Friday, plus I'm responsible for bringing dessert (YAY!) so I need to do a bunch of baking.

Oh and I got a new bench grinder today! It's an early birthday present. It replaces the OLD one that shook so hard it rattled the tools off the wall of the workshop (yes, really, it did). Sweet. I'm not quite done setting it up yet, because I need my brilliant neighbor to help me with something, but soon I will be able to sharpen gravers, woo hoo! I ordered another pack of blanks and one more template, so I'm excited about being able to try out different graver geometries. So far I've been abusing practice plates with a, uh... I think it's a 126° graver. I'm getting a teensy bit better, but definitely want to try some other things to see what different tools produce.

dragon scrimshaw pendant redone

Remember how I said I picked up my Chinese dragon pendant and looked at it under the microscope a couple weeks ago? And how surprised I was by what I saw? The dragon was originally done when I was working in my neighbor's barn, hoofing it across the field every day with a bag full of supplies. I knew that people were using colored drawings inks for color scrim, but I wanted to blaze my own trail and was determined to use etching ink. I'm stubborn like that. It didn't work out as planned. Mind you, it had turned out cool even then, but I didn't have the technique down like I do now, so I didn't get the real saturated color, plus trying to "layer" the etching ink was #$%& hard and I lost a lot of detail in the process.

I've come a long way, baby. ;-)

This is how it looked upon completion in the fall of 2007:


It was kind of a dilemma, figuring out what to do, but unlike some of the early B/W stuff (which is fine) this color piece wasn't up to snuff. If I'd felt anything was unsatisfactory about the composition or design, I would have simply kept it, but that wasn't the problem. So even though it represented my first color piece, I decided to rework it and bring it up to my current standards, therefore keeping it on the market. You know how sometimes you watch old movies that have been "restored to the artist's original vision?" Well that's how this is. This is what I meant for it to look like when I originally scrimmed it, I just didn't know how to do it back then. ;-) Since the original was done with a different type of ink, I ended up really scrimming it quite deeply to remove all the old ink. You'll see...

First I redid all the black areas. Of course this made everything very very dark! That's okay.

Because then I really dug into it and removed all the old red etching ink.

And re-inked it with liquid drawing ink, sealed with microcrystalline wax.

And then I finished up the belly and face and here it is all finished!

chickening part 1: what I got

If you're not into the chickens, you should skip this post.

I was waiting for a sunny and non-muddy day to sort birds. Today was sunny, but still muddy, but I decided to go ahead and start the "what to do with the chickens" process. See, I can't really figure out what to do til I know what I got, right?

FYI, C= male over a year, K= male under a year, H= female over a year, P= female under a year

Here's what I found:

4 large hens in egg layer flock (all will stay)

10 "pet quality" Rosecombs to either take to auction or sell as pets, mostly young, various faults make them non-breeder birds (all will go)

Of the following listings, at least a dozen will be kept, the rest sold. All are cream of the crop birds, my breeding pens, the best stuff I have.

BLACK:
4C (two are 100% my line, 2 are 50% my line)
3K (all 75% my line)
5H (2 are 100% my line, 3 are 50%)
6P (all 75%)

BLACK BREASTED RED:
3C (two are sentimental old "keepers" that have faults that should not be bred from)
6H
(I hatched no pure BBReds last year, only BBRed X Black, see next list)

BLACK BREASTED RED X BLACK:
(this was done to improve type, all are "Black Red" in color and need to be bred back to BBRed, or to each other)
3K
6P

BRASSY BACK:
1C
2K
2H (1 is "keeper" due to being extremely old)
1P

BLUE BRASSY BACK:
1K
4H
2P

BLUE (not purebred, he is from Blue Brassy Back X Black):
1C

BLUE SPLASH (may throw brassy genes?):
3P

GOLDEN DUCKWING-ISH:
1H (high % Old English)

------

So.... now I need to figure out how they would best be paired/penned for breeding (can do this on paper) and then figure out what I want to keep, and what to sell.

Here's everyone getting sorted (no they don't normally live in little cages!)









Oh yeah, and I went down to what used to be my "home" poultry show yesterday for a couple hours to drop off some birds. It was weird. I enjoyed visiting with a few good friends (who I seem to be able to count on one hand these days) but over all really didn't feel comfortable. I was amazed how many unfamiliar faces are there! Wow. Thank goodness for a few friends, and a good dinner and conversation after leaving the fairgrounds. :-) To REJ, I'm sorry I forgot the cream puff!!! You were sweet to save it for me, unfortunately I didn't remember it til I was halfway home. :-(

Upcoming Art Show!

Come visit me at the opening reception of "Among Animals." I am the featured artist in the month of February at the "First Friday Art Hop" in Lodi, CA. The reception is held in the Thomas Theatre Gallery at Hutchins Street Square, 125 S. Hutchins Street, Lodi, CA. February 5th, 6pm til 8:30pm. Hors d oeuvres, wine, and desserts provided!

My show will feature 30something art pieces: drawings, paintings, and hand-pulled prints. I will also have a few scrimshaw pieces for viewing on the night of the reception.

Stop by and say howdy!

stacked

Tee hee!

I'm not even going to caption these, they speak for themselves. :-)

Reno recap, and a mind full of stuff

I'm never sure how to begin trying to recap the adventures of a weekend in Reno at an engraving show, but words that come to mind are: amazing, inspiring, friendship, competition, determination, and intimidation. There is some of each of those things.

Every year I stay longer, for one reason or another. This year I was there for four days. I thought it might be overkill, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It made the trip feel relaxing, like I didn't have to rush around to see everything but could take my time perusing the items on display and chat with people in a more leisurely fashion. And of course it helps that I had a very sweet roommate, big shout out here to Emily from Tennessee who said she would read this... so I won't say anything embarrassing about her other than I got a kick of her accent (or "ack-see-uh-int" as she says). Emily, "we are here." ;-)

I took the bus again this year, not the greyhound but the casino bus that picks up in Elk Grove. Love it! Can't beat a $32 round trip ticket, plus it's warm and comfy and I can take a nap and let the driver mess around with tire chains! Plus I had some company on the bus, as fellow engraver Rod C caught it in Auburn to avoid having to drive Donner Pass.

Pretty pic from the ride to Reno:

Baby it's cold outside! There was snow on the ground the whole time:

You can't tell from this pic, but it was snowing when I took it. Emily and I were walking back from In N Out burger. They don't have those back east, so I had to introduce her to it. As a person who doesn't live in snow and has nearly no snow experience, I'm completely enthralled with it and had to resist the urge to run and jump and roll around in it. I know that in much of the country they get rather tired of it though...

So what did I do for four days? Well, three of those were the show itself, so I talked to a LOT of people, enjoyed catching up with old friends, enjoyed meeting new ones, and spent a lot of time ogling the amazing guns, knives, jewelry, and other items on display. I wish I could take some of those things home to study (note to self, forgetting to buy castings was really stupid). The fourth day was seminars and show-and-tell, and that's one of my favorite things, educational and enlightening!

If I could, I would exhibit there in a heartbeat, but unfortunately under the rules of the organization I cannot do that. Best not get me started on that subject. I had a great time anyway. ;-)

Mirrors mirrors everywhere! It actually got a little confusing with all these mirrors...

I finally got to meet Mike D! We've done a couple of collaborations on Colts in the last year but had never met, so this was a real treat and honor:


Carl B, me, and Roger B. These are two of the nicest and most helpful guys ever. They rock my little world:


On Saturday I had the surprise opportunity to go see the Safari Club Internation show over at the convention center. Oh. My. Gosh. I have wanted to see this show soooo much so it's pretty awesome that I had the chance to go there, even though it was a scant three hour tour and I didn't manage to see everything. I tried, but it is sooooo big. There are guns, knives, fine art, amazing taxidermy (how are there any animals left in Africa? I think they were all stuffed in Reno!) and of course LOTS of people selling safari trips all over the world. It was seriously amazing, the kind of place I could have explored for days and still not seen everything. The art was pretty impressive. And the prices blew me away. Man I'd love to show in a place like that! Thank you Scott for the chance to check it out. :-)

This is the sort of thing you see at SCI:

Okay yeah I'd like a few of those...:


I actually went to the banquet this year. That was definitely the most expensive dinner I've ever had, but it was really good, I haven't had steak for ages. I didn't stay for the auction afterwards though, because evenings at the show are all about the jam session. I'm musically inept, but I sure enjoy hanging out with the crowd and admiring the musical talents of others.

One of the important parts of this show for me is getting to talk to people who are experienced engravers, who have been doing this since before I was born, and asking them for advice. Sometimes it's hard to hear it, not because it's bad in some way, but because it's hard for me to believe in my own abilities. That's why it always feels so important for me to attend these sorts of things, it inspires me, and I seem to need those pep talks, even if the pep talks make me feel a little bad at first. The big question at these things is always when will I engrave metal, and my answer always seems to be that I will, but this, but that... I have a lot of excuses, some of which are better than others. My bench was not set up right. Now it is. I didn't have sharpening equipment. I kind of still don't. The old bench grinder is in bad shape and won't do the job, so I will get a new one very soon (how many women want bench grinders for their birthdays?! Lol).

I think the big hangup comes down to some sort of intimidation, like there's a million miles of distance between where my abilities are (with metal engraving) versus where they need to be, and it feels like an unreachable distance. People are so confident that it will be an easy transition for me, but I have a hard time feeling that confidence myself. I am really really bad at engraving metal right now, I have practically no tool control and get very discouraged. Now the bulino dot thing, that's a different story. I can do that. But I don't like the Italian style, where you can only see the engraving if it's angled just so, in just the right light. I don't want to do that, even though I can. I want my work to be visible, and that is something I have yet to figure out how to do, though I have things to try and new tools on the way. There just seems to be this giant mountain of tool control that I need to get over, and I have to plow through it without getting discouraged by it. This'll sound weird or snotty probably, but I'm not used to being bad at art stuff. I pick things up easily most of the time. There was one time, one thing I never could do... throw pottery. I tried and tried, it shouldn't have been that hard, I knew how to do it but it just didn't work and I'm not sure it ever would have. That is what I'm afraid of. But... I have to keep trying, otherwise I'll never find out if I can get through that mountain. :-)

I DO want to engrave metal, if I can get it to look how I want it to look, I really do. I love the scrim, and I don't want to give that up, but I definitely see the need to do the metal work. It commands a better price than scrim, and an increase in income would be a very good thing! That's unfortunate that there's such a discrepancy, but it seems to be the way of the world and the perception of scrim. Why do I pick the hard things? You know, it's like colored pencil versus oil paint. Galleries want oil paintings, some of them won't even look at colored pencil.

I digress. :-)

I have the potential. I know it, and a whole lot of people reminded me of that this weekend. Thank you to those people, I needed to hear it and I need to get to work so that I have the confidence to do the work that people want expect me to do. I'm sure I'm going to ruin a lot of practice plates before I get there.

Determination will beat intimidation.

To my friends in the engraving world, you are awesome. I wish this happened more than once a year!

Now, I know you want to see more pics than this, so check out Rod's photos here.

And Sam's photos here.