Wednesday July 13, 2022 Guerneville CA.
Barry shows up for a dirt bike ride
I was headed out to feed the chickens this morning when I heard Barry in the blueberry patch. He had his dirt bike in his truck so we were going for a ride up in the forest.
We rode up in the hills all over the place.
Eventually we ended up at my cousin’s place who lives up on the top of a hill at this spot.
Top of the World
We shot the bull for an hour or so, then went up to the Top of the World with this view. Fog seems to be creeping over the hill tops from the ocean .
Fog bank
That fog is over the ocean and trying to sneak in a bit. It usually waits until night time to sneak in, in the dark.
Barry enjoys his hammock which helps keep him here longer for a nice break.
After a good break in this spot we hopped back on the dirt bikes and rode around some more.
We stopped here at the spring for a drink of water.
Armstrong Valley Farm
On the way home we stopped at Tom’s garden for a few veggies.
I picked another one of these things, only in purple this time. I’ve already forgotten how to spell it’s name. :O)
From there we headed on back to my house and my brother Tom came by and joined us in a bull session for a spell, then Barry headed on home to his place and I did some fertilizing and watering for the rest of the day.
Judith wants to know
Comment:
Is that a lovely silver something chicken in the header photo? WAIT! It’s gone. Looked like a tureen or something. And a head-on view of a pecking chicken made of metal. It as great. Where did it go? I’ll go back to yesterday.
I said:
I think I know what you are seeing and I’ll see if I can get some photos together and answer your question. I have over a hundred header photos that are served up randomly each time you visit my site.
Judith says:
Looked like a piece of dinner serving ware, or something…made of silver, which the view of resembled a chicken to me. Well, never mind. It was not an actual chicken. If you’ve got more than a hundred photos on the circuit, you probably don’t even remember it. Ha. I will just have to live with my curiosity. As usual.
I think it was this thing
This is likely what she saw. It’s a sea urchin dish I made out of sea urchins and is cast in silver. The urchin’s have a beak that has five teeth in it. The top knob is the beak with five teeth and the five feet are each of one of the five teeth. It’s really made of two sea urchin shells, one slightly larger than the other. It’s made using the lost wax process.
Sea urchin dish silver casting.
For awhile I thought I might want to do this kind of stuff for a living, but in truth I was really move interested in doing all the processes to make this kind of stuff and I spent a lot of time making the equipment to do this process.
I started casting in bronze first but decided as long as I had to do all the same work I should do it in silver so I switched to that.
Here’s some of the stuff I made. The big crabs are about 5 inches across and they are solid silver. There is one bronze dish, the open one and one bronze crab on the right.
You can see the detail in the inside of the dish of the urchin shell.
Another view of things.
And a little closer shot of the crabs.
I did sell some of the objects but eventually decided against making any more as the process to make them took a long time and I didn’t figure I could make much at it.
At that time I looked at all the things I could do for a living and decided that the thing that I could make the most money for the least amount of work was doing electrical work so I did that just enough to get by until I reached retirement age.
That’s the story on the chicken looking things and I could see how Judith could see a chicken in there from only seeing the dish briefly.
Felt better just giving them away
Oh and after stopping selling the stuff, I enjoyed giving them away more. I sold a number of crabs but no one would pay for the expensive dish. It’s two parts so needed twice the money for a sale. I’ve given two of the dishes away to two special people I know.
Nice day.
You’re a man of many skills. Glad Judith asked. These are exquisite, the urchin especially.
Yes! That was it. And now I see what it really is. It is a lovely piece of work. And SHOULD be a pricey piece for the hours/labor you must have put in. Well done, and thank you so much for responding. The angle of the photo does look like a chicken pecking away, with only a little tail sticking up. A rather impressionistic chicken, I must admit. Having never seen a sea urchin in real life….I made stuff up. Ha. What a good idea you had to do it!
I could have written Patsy’s comment :o) especially about the crabs.
I remember commenting on one of your header pictures a few years ago and you told me about the 100 you have in the file. :)
That looks like a very interesting craft but I agree that unless you found the right market, you wouldn’t make the $$ for all the work put into it. Doing it for pleasure would be a better bet. The crabs are cool, nice job!
I’m glad you ride with someone up in those trails, unless you have cell phones to call for help.