Happy Saint Patrick's Day

I cut this knot out of scrap paper this morning. Top o'the morning to you! You can download my book that tells you my original method for really easy Celtic knot design. Its on my web site www.celticswan.com. Or you can copy this knot! I made it so it matches end to end. I think it needs some photo shop touch up, maybe needs to be a more intense green!
I am wearing my shamrock pin that has a wee light in it that flashes off & on. Is that silly or what?
I have tons of metal work to do, and am preheating the smithy. John planted cabbages in the garden today. And he fixed the headlights on the 59 Chevy so I can go to my fiction writers group tonight! Hooray! I am going to get stronger driving that truck as it takes loads of muscle to turn. Its so huge after my sweet lamented Toyota.
Off to pound on metal. Must order more silver and some moonstones.

Molly's Mitts

These fabulous and cozy mitts were hand spun, dyed, and knitted by my most excellent friend Bridgett. She has her designs in Vogue Knitting, among other places, and she is a brilliant designer. She designs the most exciting shawl patterns. Bridgett is from Bavaria and has the coolest accent!
You can buy the pattern for these mitts to make them yourself for $6. OR you can have Bridgett make you a pair of your very own, handspun, dyed your favorite color, for only $40. Lucky you! And lucky me to have my own pair in green. Contact her through her web site which I have a link to on the right, RamblingDesigns.

If you live in the Pacific NorthWest you may get a chance to take one of her classes. I will be posting about that as soon as she has a new one coming up!

The Big Six-Oh

I am going to have my 60th birthday soon!

I plan to have a tiara, fan, and lorgnette. All covered with rhinestones.

Was Blind but Now I See

I have gotten cataract surgery over the past several months. I have gone from very cloudy vision with multiple images to 20 20 vision in both eyes. This is so wonderful!!! I can see the trumpeter swans in the wetlands. I can see the birds in the trees. I can see the branches on the trees! I can see my metalsmithing so much better. It is such a gift. Thank you Dr Ellis!



Meanwhile our car died. The transmission went when we were in Bellingham to get some supplies for work & see some friends prior to my second surgery. We got the car halfway home at 20mph & turning it off to cool down. So it goes! We are now fixing up our 59 Chevy Apache. It will be a farm truck, but we need something to find a car or van with. We have a loaner beater island-car from friends. For now.



I am getting stronger. I have been able to go down the ravine to the beach and back several times recently. I even took a hot tub there once! Its great to soak in deep hot spring water on the beautiful beach. I have found more rocks there: agates, red jasper, jadeite, unakite, and a chunk of serpentine that looks very good to cut. We need to set up the lapidary stuff!



I am going to announce my next sock trade soon. No fair getting in line for that until the special date for it!



I know I have not written in here in awhile. I have recently gotten to meet my wonderful on line friend Bridgett, the fabulous knitter and knitting pattern designer! She now lives in Bellingham so is within reach! She made me some beautiful fingerless mitts which she did the dying & spinning on, plus the original design.

Interweave News & Reviews

I hear that there is a review of my work in Interweave Knits. I don't know what it says yet, but hope someone lets me know. It must be good as business has perked up!

I am just back from getting my first cataract surgery. It went well, and I am looking forward to getting my other eye done very soon. I can see so much! It is an amazing blessing.

The Thanksgiving storms are rolling through. The wind has been very wild. I hope our roof stays intact this year. I am tempted to go outside and jump up in the air and be blown away to Oz.

I have not written in here lately much, but have new poems to post. I have been smithing a bunch.

The trumpeter swans have returned to the wetlands! And I can see them!

We have some couchsurfers coming this weekend. We always enjoy them. We got to couchsurf ourselves over on Guemes Island the other night & had a fine time. They were our landlords when we rented a studio space out on Stuart Island years ago. Lovely people!

This new vision I have is tremendous! We are going out now for a walk, my first one since I had it done.

Summer Ending, Sea Cave, and Nettle Lasagna

This is inside the sea cave looking out. The cave is at Iceberg Point, and is 125 feet deep into the sea cliff.

John and a friend found it some years ago. No one seemed to know it was there! It cannot be seen from the water because a few large boulders obscure the entrance. You can only get in at a minus tide. There is a pond inside, and the cave forks at the back. The accoustics are amazing.

We took our last HelpX volunteer to the ferry yesterday morning. Her name is Emily and she was wonderful company. She painted the trim on the house. She gathered salal berries, rowan berries, blackberries, mussels, clams, oysters, and nettles. We had some great nettle lasagna. We made it with home made pasta. By making three big pieces of pasta the size of the baking pan and putting them in without precooking them, it came out perfect. We really miss Emily. She 'got' all our jokes!! She is very smart & funny.

Microwaving an oyster for 4 minutes cooks it just right.

I am in the depths of making silver double pointed knitting needles for The Loopy Ewe. Sheri Berger has a great on line shop and is really so nice I like doing work for her. I think John & I will have them all done and out to her before the end of the month. I am really needing John's help with this order. I am working on doing all the hammered and twisted patterns on the size #2's today. The size #1's are all twisted and marked. They need to be straightened with a wooden mallet next. Then pointed. Lots of work!
The stock market problems have impacted our little crafts business. You wouldn't think it would, but it surely does.

The lilac leaves are turning maroon. The moon was fullish and caught in a sea of fish-scale clouds last night.

I am reading Charled deLint now and wishing I could live in one of his stories. Tonight is my fiction writers group and I do not have anything written. I am going to rewrite Selkie. It needs all sorts of tinkering & tuning done to it! P'raps I will post a link on here when I am happy with it again.

Wonderful Company

We have had wonderful company of all sorts since the last week of May, but are now on our own again. The guests have been HelpX volunteers, CouchSurfers, WOOFers from years past, and some people in no category at all. Its been tremendous fun. The photo is in our kitchen & I'm baking pie with lots of help. From left to right is: Me, Alexis Morgan, Collin Cavote, and our dear Louise Hanavan. Louise has been a welcome visitor in summers past, and she plays guitar & banjo and sings wonderfully well. Collin is living aboard the sloop Grace now, out in a nearbye harbor. Alexis, who is a terrific artist, is soon back to school on the east coast. We have a few more guests from HelpX and CouchSurfing coming soon. More new friends! Yay!!

Meanwhile we are printing my book again, Design Your Own Celtic Knots. John is running the printer and refilling the ink. Soon I will do a how-to on YouTube.

We have both been smithing a bunch. I have gotten a commission making three silver & abalone clasps for a button-blanket garment. That will be fun! I plan to make them look a little like bull kelp. All sinuous.

I am gearing up to make downloadable PDF chapbooks of my poetry. I will be putting it in to groups of 10 to 12 poems per book. I think I will print some too. We shall see.

Six Years Since the Wreck

Its six years today since the wreck. My parents were driving to see the wild yellow orchids that were blooming in a Revolutionary War cemetary. They had been instrumental in saving this stand of rare orchids. It was 7:45 on a Sunday morning, and they were hit by a drunk driver. The drunk had been celebrating his 18th birthday & was blind drunk, coming out of the woods to the right of my parents car. My father was killed. My mother nearly was. Just before the moment of impact she pulled her legs up in front of her to protect her internal organs. And so she survived, but broke nearly everything else.
I was very close to my father & miss him terribly. We had to wait a year to have a memorial that my mother could attend. It was at the cemetary with the wild yellow orchids, and we scatterred my father's ashes. Well, everyone else scattered them. I hid under a big fir tree and drew a heart with his ashes. At the memorial I recited Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle in to That Good Night". He liked that poem, and I had memorized it in case he ever wanted to hear it.
My father wrote wonderful letters full of wry humor and awful handwriting & spelling. I have never thrown out a letter from him. There weren't many. After he died I saw a file of letters and cards I'd sent him over the years.
My father was the president of the Connecticut Botanical Society for 10 years. They loved him. Then he was the president of the local chapter of the historical society at the Hart House. He was the town botanist in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. People enjoyed his talks. He was a good looking man in his 80's. I did a Google search for him and there was no mention of him. How could that be? Maybe me writing this in my blog will begin to redress that lack. A teensy bit. Lord, I miss him.
Donald M. Swan July 11th, 1919--August 4th 2002

Lost in Space

I have not posted in here because I was daunted by losing my password. Yes, that is no excuse. How about that we have had guests continually since the end of May? We are down to one guest right now, a very nice HelpX volunteer name of Collin. He likes to bake! The cherry harvest is over, alas. The apples are scarce on the bough this year. Such a dark springtime we had. Soon the salal berries and the blackberries will be ripe. We have more company coming this week, and then more the week after.

I have been smithing slowly along. It is hard sometimes with my bad back and my weakness from being laid up in the autumn. But I like smithing.
My first brand new ShopVac died entirely. Whats with that? I have lost faith, and will replace it with a used one from the free store.

John & Collin rowed out to the sad sloop Grace today & began the huge task of cleaning her out. She is such a sweet boat, but needs so many repairs. Still, she floats happily. The otters have used the decks as a party spot. Oh, those messy otters! Plus seagulls pooping like mad. But it can all get scrubbed off. One day we will sail her again. After we replace the bent boom, the dinged mast, the torn off spreader, the ripped mainsail, and, oh yeah, the motor. She needs a long shaft 10 horse outboard. Some day we will sail her again, wing on wing, out in Rosario Strait.

For now I am land bound. I have been working on a set of cabinet handles in hot wrought bronze. (among other things!) I got them nearly all done & then went to drill the holes in them. I managed to drill them off center & ruined the whole shebang. I have started from scratch with heavier stock. The person who ordered them is being very patient.

Soon I will post more photos & poems. Oh, we decided it was not the right time to get the ram. But I sent her the needles anyway. So I have half-credit for a ram!

I am to receive the nice floor loom that my sheep-to-shawl team out on Stuart Island bought years ago with the shawl raffle money. I guess I am the only weaver left. Of course, there were only 35 people on the whole island then, so there were only two weavers to begin with. I am happily spinning the warp threads for a project using Petunia's fleece. Oh! We finally got them sheared a few weeks ago. They are happy to be out of their heavy hot coats, and have been galloping around. They are very fast! And their fleeces are very nice this year! Thick & healthy. One of our HelpX guests is a knitter & dyer of yarn. She & I are going to have fun!

Junuary in the Pacific Northwest

It is ostensibly June here, but it sure is acting like winter. In the mid 50's and lots of rain and wind. While the rest of the country gets mid-90's, tornadoes & floods!

However, the cherries are getting fatter on the bough, and just a few days ago the baby swallows on the back porch hatched! They look like they are grinning, and are so cute.

The next news is that I have found a handsome Shetland ram for our ewes! His name is Monty.


I have to go fetch him from the mainland in two weeks. He is partially a trade. I am making a pair of bronze and silver knitting needles set with paua shell to trade for him. Hooray! The woman who owns him already has one of the spinnings hooks I make from bronze.

So we are going to get serious about building some fences around here.

Meanwhile we have a HelpX person coming in by floatplane to Fish Bay tomorrow. We are looking forward to his arrival as he sounds very nice! We also have two women coming in the same day. They are WWOOFer volunteers we met because they volunteered on a nearbye farm several years ago, and we became good friends. The two women have wonderful singing voices! We hope to record some MP3's while they are here.

I have been working on an order that has lots of triskele-carved bone cabochons in it! And John is doing the carving this time. He is very good at it & likes doing it.

I have been spinning Petunia's fleece to make yarn. And also spinning some alpaca from a farm over on San Juan Island that some friends live at.

John made a gold 14 Karat yarn needle with a bent end. Its for someone in Washington State and should arrive at her door tomorrow. Or maybe even today! The US mail is wonderful. I am a big fan of it.

And an even bigger fan of libraries! I have volunteered to help be part of the library's web site advisory crew. Our library here on Lopez Island is really terrifically nice. Here is it.

Happy Spring

Happy Spring!
Happy Easter!

I had fun dying eggs and then hunting them. John hides then for me. What a pal!

We have found some sheep on San Juan Island which are close to ours in looks & breed. We will take the ferry over soon and have a look at them. How will Petunia & Lillibette like having more sheep here? A ram?? Lambs??? We shall see.

We put a new page on our web site. It is of fan mail, and can be accessed by going to our newsletter page. Those kind of letters keep me going! Many thanks to those who write them.

Trading Knitting Needles for Socks

Fabulous Socks!
We have begun posting photos of the socks I traded for in 2007. I traded my sets of hand wrought bronze double pointed needles for them. These socks were knit by a woman in Halifax. You can read about them on my web site news page.
Meanwhile, I am about to make a silver Celtic brooch with amethyst faceted trilliants. I am also about to make a pair of custom knitting needles set with faceted sapphires. It amazes me that this is what I get to do for a living! What fun! Plus I get to trade for these great socks. Check my web site for more. http://www.celticswan.com/photo.htm
The daffodils are starting to bloom all over the place in front of the house. Petunia has been eating them as they bloom! Bad sheep! But undeniably cute.

Psychic Sheep Warns of Earthquake!

On Friday Petunia was bahhing like mad at the front door. Then suddenly everything began to shake! The bells we hang on the doorknobs all rang. We ran out the front door, but it stopped. We thanked Petunia for her timely warniing!
On Saturday some dogs were running loose on the farm. The sheep were very upset & John went out with a 22 and fired some shots to scare the dogs off. Then he stood and watched to make sure they did not come back on the farm. We called the other sheep farm in the valley to warn them.
That night the sheep slept right near the house instead of under shelter us usual. In the morning they had thick frost on their fleece!
Petunia is showing her age. She has white below her nose and above her eyes. John is out behind the house now in the sunshine feeding Petunia sweet feed and patting her head.
I am going to teach John how to spin! He wants to spin our sheep's fleece and crochet thick warm hats like the one I made for him years ago with fleece from the Mill's farm out on Stuart Island. (We lived out at Stuart for 5 years aboard the sloop Grace, and helped Norman with the shearing on his farm.)

The photo of Petunia shows her in her full 'psychic mode' in which she bahs for you to 'cross her palm with sweet feed'!

Snow, Sheep, Life in the Slowwww Lane

It snowed about 4 inches here. Those of you in snowy climates will be unimpressed, but on Lopez Island life grinds to a frozen halt! We have no snow plows here. Here are Lillibette (white, or perhaps ecru?) and Petunia (dark brown) under their apple tree where they go to groom their fleece. And a bicycle which is quite ancient.
It snowed more. I think I have the flu. I got a bit of carbon monoxide poisoning yesterday from a leaky stove pipe on the woodstove. (a cautionary tale!) and have not felt quite right since. I got out to the smithy today & did some hammering & twisting and marking & sanding, but ran out of energy entirely & went to bed. Now it is time to mix up & roll out the flour tortillas for dinner. I got as far as posting this entry to my blog. Ungh! Right now my life is totally Mollitropic. I had a cup of home made chicken broth.
Hey, my friend Louise in Halifax has three fine chickens and the city is making her get rid of them. The 'reason' is that they draw rats. I ask you? Do three chickens & their feed draw rats any more than the average bird feeder in someone's yard? Lets urge them to outlaw bird feeders in Halifax!! Ha! And get rid of the pigeons too. People are always throwing food to them. Rant rant, rave rave. I feel so bad for Louise. She wanted those chickens for a long time.
Tortillas? Or not tortillas? We made a pot of chili from scratch yesterday. That will be the main filling.
I am so glad John got in a quantity of firewood before this snow & arctic outflow came. Its so nice to have a warm house on a cold day! And a cold night even more so. It was bright & sunny this afternoon. We hiked down to the mailbox by the road. A woman came skiing through the farm. Only a very few tire tracks on the road.
I wonder if I have a fever? I sure am blithering on........ Its supposed to keep snowing & freezing until Thurday.

A Poem for Winter Misery...

Yes, it is the time for winter misery, and so here is a poem I just wrote about that. I may change the ending if my mood gets better.

Winter

What a cruel caul is winter,
dark charcoal clouds
clustering over the long view
of the wetlands.
The trumpeter swans dip and slurp,
moving like dreams of Avalon
on the hemetite water.
Though trees and shrubs
make optimistic buds,
you and I, with our tea cups
steaming in our talons,
look over our shoulders
at the rush and gnash
of the ghost wind.
Our calendars tell us
that time will cure, with the
lift of daffodils and the swoop
of nesting swallows.
Our chillblained hearts
tell us this winter day
will be forever.

Molly Swan-Sheeran copyright 2008

I bet you can tell we are not into winter sports? Ha.
I ordered more alexandrite and peridot. And more heavy silver wire.

Celtic Brooch with Alexandrite

Here is a Celtic brooch, a penannular brooch, which I just finished making. John helped me set it with

10 mm alexandrite, lab created gem stones. These stones change color according to what light
they are in. In full dalight they are a royal blue. Indoors, under electric lights, they are purple.
Sometimes they seem to be both colors at once! I think its really amazing.

Below is a photo showing it pinned to a hand woven silk scarf.
To fasten, you push the straight pin in
and out of the fabric, swivel the circle so that one end goes under the exposed point of the pin, and
the pressure of the fabric on the pin is what holds it fast.
Very clever, those ancient Celts!
This pin is about 2 inches across. I made it for a woman who weaves, but is entirely blind. She is giving it as a gift, with something she has woven, for a very special friend.

Ewes Not Fat, Ewes Fuzzy

Here is Petunia, in all her splendor! She has on

a year and a half worth of fleece, and glad of it.

She is so cozy in the miserable north-wet weather. She is a Sennybridge Welsh sheep, as is her pal Lillibette. They have gotten two apples each this morning when they came bahhhhing at the back door. When they hear John's voice they know its time for a morning treat. If the apple has a worm in it they will not eat it. They are strict vegetarians!

Look how nicely groomed her fleece is! She & Lillibette use the apple tree to rub against for grooming and back-scratching.

And we have noticed that they have begun to chew on the bottom branches of the Christmas tree! We'd better bring it in the house!

I am working on the very-fancy sterling silver Celtic brooches today. One has given me trouble with the settings, but I have one setting done. And am hoping it all going easier today. I cannot wait to see how it comes to look when it is all formed and polished and set! Making magic things is ever so fun. I will surely post photos when they are done.

Views in the Smithy

Here is a huge old fir stump. We got this stump on Stuart Island when we lived out there at anchor in the sloop Grace. A huge storm had brought down some big trees, and a park ranger in Prevost Harbor cut the trees up. When the ground began to thaw, one stump got rolling down the hill and chased John down, on to the ramp, and all the way out to the dock! He decided we should bring it to the smithy which was then on the far end of that harbor. We loaded it in the 6 foot dinghy (!!) and rowed it to the smithy. Its a good solid thing to work on!

On the stump you can see our light cross-peen hammer, a T-stake, and my graver and jig for holding bone cabochons to incise them.

This is a tray of sterling silver crochet hooks John is making. They are all different sizes and designs. And not spoken for yet, if you would like to to order some.

Here is our lovely anvil. It weighs 170 pounds, and we bought it back east from a man whose father was a smith from Sweden. Since we are living on an old Swedish homestead here on Lopez Island I think the anvil approves. Our favorite hammer is on top.

Here is my system for making sets of double pointed knitting needles and not confusing them.

Yes, those are popsicle making molds. They work great! You can see a nearly done set of sterling silver dp needles , and some bronze I cut up to make size #1 dps needels. I also have a shawl pin and a sleying hook in there, waiting for the final polishing.

The Ring of the Anvil

I guess my neighbors can hear the anvil ringing again! (Well, John has beeen smithing all along, but not both if us.) I have been able to get some good time in at the smithy again. What a long hard haul its been.
Monday's mail should have a load of late orders sent out in it, hooray. I forgot how much strength it takes to buff metal. You really have to lean in to the wheel to get the bronze all shiny & smooth. I am working on penannular brooches and shawl pins and a pair of knitting needles set with malachite today. The needles just need cleaning & rouging & setting. Each thing I send out is a customer who has written saying "where is my stuff?" So it is very enjoyable both to do it all, and to let them know it is on its way.
The Easter lily is blooming on our kitchen table. It has a very tall curved stem and three white blossoms in a cluster. Heavenly! Plus the cactus...I guess its a Halloween cactus? is still blooming bright red right next to it. The flowers look like nudibranchs.
Back to the smithy with me now.

Triskeles, topology, and Celtic knots

Hey everyone. I have so much missed being in the smithy doing all that metal magic stuff. I really feel amazed by metalsmithing, even after , ohhh, 25 years! The things it does!!!
John and I have been playing with Celtic knot ideas. He is so brilliant..always coming up with new ideas to try out!

Today we are musing on triskeles, topology, and Celtic knots. A triskele is a Celtic design of a triple spiral. Which means three spirals. The spirals must all go in the same direction. Clockwise or counter clockwise. (Or sun-wise and counter sun-wise.) I feel intuitively that these spirals have to do with time and the progression of things, but thats just me musing.


My 'magic method' of Celtic knot construction uses paper folding & cutting to create symetries of interlocking pattern. I invented this method in '86 while playing with kirigami, a Japanese paper folding & cutting method.

Since a triskele is a-symetrical in that it goes around only in one direction on its spirals, it cannot be made by folding & cutting. However, one can take a circle of paper, slit it, and fold that piece into equal thirds. If you draw a spiral on that and cut it out then one of the three resulting spirals will face the wrong direction.


OK. Here is that design.

See how the two right sprials face

other. Not good.

Next thing I did was do the same sort of slit & fold circle BUT then I cut the folds away so they are, in essence, just three stacked fan-shaped pieces of paper. These I drew a spiral on & cut out carefully. When I had done that I laid them out. One still faced the same way as another, but now I just was able to flip that one over to make them all go in tha same direction. I hear you saying "So what?" Well so you can use this method to design very pleasing triskeles. Like this one I just did

Yes, I cut off a wee bit on one side.

But it is a nice symetry, eh?

I have been doing other knots too. I cut a trilaterally (three sided) symetrical one a few days ago. Traced it on to paper, scanned it in, and then bucket-filled the backround blue behind it. Doing this one needs to only make sure that all the 'cells' of the design are closed so the color does not run over. Go ahead and take it to your photo-art program and play with it! Color, distort, have fun.

I am going to do a tutorial on the basic knot method on youtube and/or google soon. Keep your eyes open & google me!

OK, I also did a quick pentalateral (star shaped) knot this morning, and hand drew five separate triskeles in to it after I was done making the design. Here is that. Its hard to see the triskeles on the five end things, but they are there. I like the star formed in the middle...

As you can tell by the uneven nature of the paths of this knot, I cut it out of paper. I drew the little 'over and under' lines which make it a Celtic interlacing pattern, in fact a two dimensional representation of a three demensional design. OK? Then when done I hand drew the triskeles in. But they do not look nearly as nice as the ones above that I cut out! Cutting stuff out gives you a crisp sort of symetry. Plus its sort of magic, you know?
I have nattered enough for the nonce. My brain is going in spirals.