Valiant Attempts

After my thorough enjoyment of recaning chairs, I went poking around the Caning Shop for other crafts. I had found a woodburning tool for $1 at an estate sale, so I decided to give gourd pyrography a go. I had visions of making calabash cups for my nesting partner to use with his yerba mate. After doodling on a gourd for a few hours, I set the materials down and didn't pick them up again. Thinking it might be the tool, I picked up a different one at the White Elephant Sale to no avail. There are still three gourds in my closet.

In late 2019 and early 2020, I was tooling around for a new artistic medium, which led to some experimentation with classes at the Alameda Art Lab. I found glass flameworking incredibly satisfying, but wasn't in the mood to outfit my home with a ventilator hood and oxy-propane torch, so I went looking for other glass and fire options I could more readily set up at home, so I tried torch enameling. I usually struggle with processes that don't have a lot of precision to them, and torch enameling made me feel fiddly, obsessive, and neurotic. I wanted a specific outcome and that was a tall order for powdered glass and fire. I made these bacon and egg earrings and haven't felt tempted to return to the butane torch since.

Unsurprisingly-in-retrospect, I wouldn't find mosaic work any more precise than stained glass, and I wouldn't like it any better than the next quarter's torch enameling. I wanted to work with negative space in my pieces, but the instructor advised against it. I tried it anyway in a couple pieces not pictured here and, well, she was certainly correct. That said, I did get a number of holiday gifts out of this workshop, so I'm counting it as a success even if I'm unlikely to ever try my hand at it again.

Stained glass should have been the warning I needed to stick to precision crafts. This was the first of three classes I took in hopes of finding a new medium. I quickly discovered that I couldn't be anywhere near as precise as I wanted to be. Mushrooms are a very forgiving shape, but I found myself fussing endlessly over them in a way that wasn't fun. I did find the grinding very satisfying, though.

This is exactly how far I got on this process before mailing the whole kit off to a friend. I really didn't like how often I poked myself with the needle. Textile crafts have never been my jam; the fact that I can tolerate bookbinding's needles still impresses me.

I cannot tell you how much I want to like stamp carving. By every metric, it should be exactly the kind of thing I love, as it's highly precise and requires lots of fine motor control. Each time I come back to it, though, I end up frustrated with the gap between my vision and what I can achieve with rubber.