My Etsy shop

I put some of the chainmaille stuff up for sale about two weeks ago on an auction website in Finland. It's a pretty small site, being available only in Finnish, so not surprisingly, nobody even looked at the items. Fortunately, the site is completely free to use.

I've heard some good things about Etsy, so I set up an account there a couple of days ago and put some stuff up for sale. If you liked the chainmaille rings I wrote about in my chain rings post, I suggest you go take a look at the stuff I have up. There are some rings, a bracelet and a necklace available. The address to my Etsy shop is:

http://squigglebird.etsy.com

If you like what you see but can't find a ring in your size, don't worry. I can make you any kind of ring you see there in whatever size you want. Just let me know.

Riding the monkey

So, a couple of weeks ago Gin and I went to Finland to visit my grandparents. It was nice to see them again, it had been a couple of years since I had been there. They have a nice little red house next to a lake, far from everything. It's a very quiet and relaxing place to be. There's a big workshop where I spent a lot of time as a kid. I learned a lot about woodworking there, always building all kinds of stuff. I once made this little wooden submarine. It was hollow and had these little fins on the side that were angled slightly downward, and it had a little hook in the front so that I could tie a string to it and pull it behind a rowboat on the lake. The little fins would pull the sub down under water if I pulled it with the rowboat, and when I stopped it would float up to the surface again. Loads of fun if you're 10 years old. :)

My uncle is always building stuff too. He's good with cars and motors, and he always has a couple of more or less odd projects going on. He recently bought a monkey chopper motorbike. A monkey bike is like a motorbike, but tiny, like if you took a full size bike and just shrank everything on it down to a smaller size. There used to be these monkey mopeds that were quite popular for a while too. This monkey chopper that he bought now is not street legal, I'm actually not really sure what it's for, but it's hilarious to ride around the garden. It's like a real chopper bike with a fairly long front fork, a low seat and pretty fat back tire, but it's much smaller, so you look pretty ridiculous sitting on it. I have no idea what he's going to do with it.

Chain rings

Due to popular demand, here are some pictures of some of the chainmaille rings and other stuff that I've made. I've been meaning to put these up for sale on eBay or something, but I haven't gotten my ass in gear yet.

This first one is a ring made out of titanium, bronze and silver. I made up the pattern and used three different metals as an experiment. I think I like the way it looks.

This is a bracelet made of titanium and steel. I found the pattern for this online, I think it's called Dragonback or something like that. It's a pretty dense weave, so the bracelet took forever to make and is quite heavy, even though it doesn't really look it. The chain is about ½ inch wide.

This third one is a ring made out of stainless steel. The chain is called half-persian 4-in-1, I think. It's not very difficult to make once you get the hang of it, but joining the ends to make it a ring is really tricky. It's a very dense chain, so you need pliers with very thin tips to pull it off. The engagement rings that Gin and I have are made out of this chain, but they are titanium on one edge and rose gold on the other.

Gin has started making rings and stuff too, and between us I think we have around 20 rings, and a couple of bracelets, earrings, and necklaces. It's fun stuff to make. :)