The Dragon Knife!

I finally got the photo a couple of days ago! When I'm working on the William Henry knives, I never have the whole complete knife in hand, so I can't shoot my own photos. I LOVE how this turned out, and if someone doesn't buy this real quick... they are seriously missing out.


TITLE: The Dragon Knife
Knifemaker: William Henry Knives
Engraver: Jim Small
Scrimshander: Katherine Plumer
DATE: © 2011
SIZE: the ivory scales are 2 and 1/8 inches in length
MEDIUM: scrimshaw engraving on ancient mammoth ivory
PRICE: contact William Henry Knives

Photo above by William Henry Studio. Photos below by me.

May 17 work in progress, and catch-up

Gaaahhhhh, sorry about that. Bad me for not blogging. Where do I even begin?

Dragon knife: It's finished. Pardon me while I toot my own horn and say it looks awesome. I won't be showing you the finished pics for a little while. See, I don't have the whole knife to photograph, so I have to send my part back to the William Henry company and then they'll send me a photo of the whole thing. But, since I was showing WIP photos, here's one from a couple of days ago:


Blade Show is in just over three weeks. I'm excited! But also not ready yet! I seriously can't believe it's been a year since I was there. Lots of changes this year for me, it really feels altogether different. Flying instead of driving has a lot to do with that, but my table will look different, I'm not sharing, I opted for a different part of the show (I still don't have good shoes, eek!), etc. I'd like to do one more pendant before then to take to the show, and actually there's a lot of prep work that needs to be done. Everything has to ship out about a week before I leave, so there isn't a lot of spare time. And I need to come up with something to work on at the show... that won't need electricity, light, or magnification.

Barn Owls: I haven't seen her for days, and there is no noise from the box, nor any fresh owl pellets in the barn. I need to climb up there and look in the box, but I'm sure that there are no babies, for whatever reason.

Hatching chicks: last batch went in the incubator on Sunday, so the last hatch will be the first weekend in June. It's been a crazy crazy season, and didn't go at all as planned. Fertility problems, weird colors hatching, etc. Ugh. I barely ended up with any BBReds, and ended up outcrossing them to Blue and also Brassy Back because I think they're getting too inbred. What a mess. And now my Blacks (which I SWEAR I have never outcrossed to my other colors) are throwing a high percentage of red offspring, so I guess at some point a mis-labeled Black Red ended up in the breeding pens, and goodness knows how many generations that goes back, so I'm really up a creek with them now. I won't be selling any eggs from them anymore. Maybe this is the universe reminding me that I said I was going to focus on BBReds....

May 9 work in progress

Outlining all those scales was extremely arduous. Next up is shading to give it depth and tonality.

May 4 work in progress

First off, let me say... MAY THE FOURTH BE WITH YOU!!! :-) Oh how I love to say that every year!

It was stinkin hot today! Over 90, that's too much too soon, take it back, I want spring again!

So, after completing the background on the dragon knife (it's darn near solid black, and soooo many engraved dots that the background is actually somewhat relieved now (no, not like sigh of relief, but lower than the surface relief), love it!) it was "back to the drawing board" so to speak. In case you haven't figured this out, I opted for a black and white design. It either had to be color dragons on white or b/w dragons on black, and I think this way has so much more "pop." So I knew the background would be black, but I've been pondering all along exactly what I'd do with the dragon. I have to actually put it on paper to figure it out, and this is where I love photoshop. I scan it, enlarge it, print it out, and work on it with pencils. See, there's no erasing scrimshaw, there is zero room for error, so I have to be exactly sure what I want to achieve before the needle hits the ivory. So, deciding part way though the piece how to scrim the dragons is about as close to flying by the seat of my pants as I'll get. It's gonna look awesome!

May 1 work in progress

The background is finally *almost* dark enough. Not quite there though! I'm looking forward to working on the dragon itself! :-D

April 25 work in progress

That background is going to be DARK. I'll probably have to go over it 3-4 more times to get enough dots on there to make it as black as possible. That's a lotta dots... just sayin'...

April 4 works in progress

I'm working on my taxes. Blarg. Hate those.

I have at least 5 more coats of varnish to put on the big secret project, plus the finishing touches, but oh my it is soooooo cute. I can't wait to show you! :-)

I've been working on the dragon knife but there really isn't much to see because nothing is inked, so you either have to see it through the scope or from the side with the light on it like this:



I also just started work on a bison pendant today, and I'm considering that a "rush" job so it'll take priority over the dragon knife. I don't want to get into detail but I had expected to have this done a couple of weeks ago. Murphy's Law intervened, not my fault at all. But it's all okay now and I want my client to have it in hand as soon as possible.


And that is the excitement that is my life on a Monday night. If I say I have to go to the feed store and pick up chicks tomorrow you know that means I'm going to buy baby chickens to replace the layer flock, right? Maybe I'll pick up some guys there too.

Probably not. ;-)

March 23 work in progress

There are a whole bunch of projects that are on the cusp of existing, and I seem to be waiting for a lot of things. Waiting for confirmation. Waiting for approval. Waiting to order supplies. Waiting for a pendant to come back from a jeweler. I guess I really am fairly patient. But seriously... I get tired of waiting.

Anyway, I've started work on another knife, because there's no waiting to be done there. I am really enjoying doing work for the William Henry company! Things move along quickly, decisions happen fast, communication is excellent. Two thumbs enthusiastically up!


This is a terrible photo of a beautiful knife, but of course it's late at night as always so the picture sucks. It has mammoth ivory scales and the engraving (by Jim Small) is wonderful. I don't have the blade, nor do I know what it will look like. I had a few possible subjects come to mind, and W.H. gave me a list of possible subjects, and one of theirs was dragons, which made me go "YEAH! Why didn't I think of that!" So, dragons it is! This'll be a European dragon, not a Chinese dragon.


Boy are they fun to draw, but talk about a lot of work! Not exactly a lot of reference photos out there, so I'm piecing together ideas from studies of birds, bats, dogs, dinosaurs, and of course other people's interpretations of dragons. So far I've got a pretty solid sketch for the front side, still need to sketch out the back side, and work out the color scheme (which may well be grayscale, I'm actually in favor of grayscale right now).

Stay tuned!

In other news, we're having a lot of rain. It's been muddy since, oh, November? I'm tired of it. I've had enough of muddy dog feet. Not ready for summer, just tired of mud.