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.

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.