I'm a lackluster blogger.

GAH!!

Sorry its been so long since I blogged my loyal friends and fans!

So much has been going on. I have a difficult time trying to figure out where to start! I guess I can start by telling you all that I have no greater joy in my life then my recently liberated free time. I’ve been camping twice at the Indian reservation, I’ve been to the bars, hanging out with friends and sleeping in. Its been a great break for me!

HOWEVER

For the last couple weeks my roommate and I have been apartment hunting closer to downtown San Diego with mixed results. We find places we like but they’re out of our price range, we find places in our price range but not what we’re looking for. The good news is that we have found a couple places that we can live with (which is key here) within our budget and in great locations. We’ve applied at one and are making more appointments for this next Monday to see some others.
Meanwhile I’d been going back and forth with the resume guru at school tweaking and re-tweaking my resume. We finally agreed on a final draft and I’m proud to announce that I FINALLY have a complete resume suitable for shipping and handing out.

whoot!

SO on top of :

resume tweaking,

free time

and apartment hunting,

I’ve been compiling lists of jewelers I’d like to work for and reading the “about us” sections on their websites trying to get a feel for the shop before I decide to walk in and hand them my resume. I’d like to be comfortable with the idea of the shop (or my perception of) before I hand my resume to the worlds most uppity store in SD.

Needless, the last few weeks have been crazy. I haven’t sat down to relax or spend even a half a day being lazy since graduation. I’ve been moving moving moving!

On top of all of this I’ve been working more hours at my Crate job and I’m happy to announce that I have so many hours THERE that I was able to make this past Wednesday my last day at the worlds worst part time job (rhymes with Nichaels) . I loved the people I worked with there, and have a deep respect for folks who do this kind of work for survival. I will never ever be horrible to a retail employee ever again in my life. Or waitresses. Because they handle the stuff you eat.

Aaaaaaaaand on top of all of THAT I had a friend in town from back home last weekend, so I spent four or five days entertaining her and hanging out (I miss you Nicole!!!!) and it was a really good feeling to see familiar faces. Its only when I see people I love and miss, that I start missing home. Most days I’m fine and focused and love where I’m at… but seeing a good friend or a family member tends to change your mind, at least temporarily (sorry guys, not coming home any time soon. But I miss you all!!)

So as you can see I’ve been quite busy. We have 2 ½ weeks to find a place, move, and get settled. There’s a career fair at my school mid September which I’m bent on attending and handing out my resume. And somewhere in there I’m trying to find the time to head to some of these shops in person.

Help.

Also: I’ve been fixated when possible on the Olympic swimming. I’m certain that Dara Torres is the reason I’m saying this (she’s the 41 year old mother of two in her 5th Olympics and the oldest woman to swim! And in the most amaaaaazing shape of her life) but I’m considering doing a team triathlon with my roommate. I would swim, she would bike and we need a volunteer for the run (Jami, you in?) . I think I operate best with goals. So there’s one. Plus I have a dear friend (Jami!!) in Israel right now training to run the Nike Human Race on August 31st!! YAY!!! ( you can find information here:

http://nikeplus.nike.com/nikeplus/humanrace/index.jsp ) and it also admittedly has me inspired to do cool shit. But right now its an idea, and certainly is last on my list of things to focus on. But I’ll keep you all posted!

YAY DARA TORRES!! if i look like this any time between now and 41 i'll be happy

SO that’s what ive been up to. I’m sorry again that I’ve been so long! I promise to keep you all updated more frequently even if its boring and short.

Until next time my friends, be well.

Random abrasions are a side affect of being bored with writing your resume

I have to say that some days I really find free time too much and crave the structure once provided me by school and work, but then I think about all of the cool stuff I’ve gotten to do and I find myself enjoying it more then I admit. Albeit enjoying on a very thin budget, but im no stranger to heisting my way through my day on a low income.

After my tubing-down-the-river-adventure (of which I am already plotting my next trip to) I spent the next three days marveling at the amount of bruises I collected on my trip, along with mystery scrapes, abrasions and a sore rear-end from sleeping on the ground. While at the beach yesterday morning with my roommate, I decided to take a picture of my leg to sort of illustrate my injuries for you. In lieu of the hand injury tally report you’ve all become SO fond of, I give you the brand new

Random Injury(s) of the Week

SO last week I was incredibly motivated to write my resume. I sat down with my notebook, my pen, my stacks of information from career services and a guide on “how to write a winning resume”. I had a cup of coffee in my hand, snacks in my left and I started….I got just about all of the basic information down, and I got to that point with the resume that I had to start writing out my “objectives” and things like that. Now, my objective, as with anyone else writing a half assed resume, is to get a job.

If I had my way my objective would say this:

“To find a half way decent job in a good location that I don’t have to commute more than 15 minutes to because commuting and I don’t get along. I would prefer that I get paid somewhere hovering above poverty level and with benefits to include vision. I would also prefer that my coworkers not be too chichi because I’ll probably not get along with them and talk smack. Casual attire preferred, bonus if I can show up in my pajamas.”

What my objective (thus far) REALLY says is this:

“to obtain and entry-level bench jeweler position working with sterling silver, karat gold and platinum”

Really. I don’t know how to sell myself like this on paper. I feel cheap presenting my objective in such a blehhhhhh blehbleh manner. It doesn’t FEEL me. I don’t feel it. It feels generic and uninteresting. So again, if anyone has advice, email me. Because I have no idea what to say. Bigkinz@hotmail.com

And yes this is the first time in my life I’ve written a resume.

So after that objectives debacle, I plunked away at the rest until I at least had something I could email to the career services lady for review. So I did that, I got it emailed and you know what, she emailed me back with like two generic questions about my “resume” (I use that term lightly right now) and suggested that I email it back to her after I “revise” it. *blank stare* I suppose I was under the impression that they were going to help me out more then this.

Let me be honest: I’m looking, I think, for someone else to write this thing.

So I’ve been dragging my feet in regards to putting this thing together, but being broke is a great motivator, so I’ll be working on it more today.

Moving on, I spent the rest of the week just relaxing, and working my crappy part time jobs. Which was nice. But I still find myself popping out of bed relatively early sans alarm and occasionally freaking out because I think I m late for school. I’m working through that.
This past weekend I went to the San Diego Pride Parade. I headed out Friday after work and went to my one of my friends place where I promptly had a drink or three and played Cranium until 2:30 in the morning on their porch. We wound up post-game at a taco shack where I spent 15 minutes in a half drunken state marveling at the size of my chicken taco, which had like, the entire chicken stuffed into it. Delicious. I spent Friday night at a friends and woke up thirteen times I swear. Saturday, fueled on three cups of coffee and two cumulative hours of sleep, we headed out to the salon where my friend works AND just so happens to have salon parking AND is a block and a half from the parade route… so I got to park my truck with no problems. In the bed of the truck we thrifty parade goers had a cooler full of beer complete with solo cups (no containers at the parade). We proceeded to pop a few open, and head out to meet up with other friends. We spent the majority of the day walking around the parade and ducking into liquor stores for refills if we were too far from the truck (FYI the stores here will give you a cup to dump your drink in, complementary!). Mid afternoon and post-parade we all found ourselves guests at a VIP hair salon party complete with food and free drinks courtesy of my hair stylist and friend who’s got the hook up. Since it was a hair salon party, there just happened to be like, 300 amazing hairstyles walking around too. It was a pretty party. I spent the remainder of the evening relaxing with my friend over at one of my friends houses watching the sun set from their porch and BBQ’ing. SUNDAY, I made it to the festival and got a chance to walk around and see booths. My roommate spent a productive weekend volunteering for a women’s health tent so we spent some time hanging out with her until I convinced her to take a break and head to the beer tent with us. Where I promptly received 5 free beer tickets from a dude looking to leave. HOORAY!

That’s 5 free beers people.

In any event, we spent the rest of the day there on the grass talking with everyone, enjoying music and cold beer and the atmosphere. When I went to leave the festival, my friend and I discovered that neither one of us were suitable for driving, so we left the festival, headed out into the park and sat on a blanket where we both eventually ended up napping. THREE AND A HALF HOURS LATER I woke up (it was 9:20 p.m.) to a dark sky and an abandoned park…. After laughing about it for 15 minutes, we both got up refreshed and headed to our respective homes.

me and some of my friends at the hair salon party

Monday I spent in recovery grilling out with my roommate, drinking water.

Which leads me to today, where I have decide to get busy and get some things done (finally). I’m enjoying the liberties associated with down time, and I’m feeling good about where I’m potentially heading! Carry on!

Until next time my friends, be well.

Adieu, pre-programed monday through friday alarm!

the cumulative description of the last six months is not eluding me, i'm just havng a great time trying to condense all of these emotions for you. I find it close to impossible to describe what this last week has been like for me, but I assume at this point if you’ve kept up with the blogs, you understand how emotional and out-of-control this has been for me.

bench clean out day :(

This tool box weighed like, a brillion pounds when i got done packing it.

When I started this program I set out to accomplish something for myself. I wanted to raise my personal bar of expectation and push myself to limits I only hear about people reaching. The goals I had for what I wanted to accomplish were not only met here, but surpassed. I found something here in me these last 6 months that I knew existed, but had lost touch with and I suppose it was only a matter of time before the love affair I had with metal was reignited.

I spent the last 6 months with one of the funniest, greatest group of classmates I could have asked for. The team dynamic in that room was outstanding. In and out of the classroom I met and became friends with people from Canada, Ohio, Texas, New York, New Jersey, Arkansas, Florida, California, Alabama, North Carolina, India, London, North Korea, China and Japan. My oldest classmate was 53 in for a life change, the youngest and one of my favorites, 16, and beyond gifted at such a young age. I had the pleasure of working side by side with so many talented and gifted people it makes my head spin sometimes. I learned something from everyone. Even irrelevant things like who Lil Wayne is or why people from the south start conversations with “bless her heart, but…”

Many people came here because their family is in the trade. Some came because they had to. Some came because they want to. But the ones that stand out in my mind are the ones that were as in love with what they do as I am. In the end we were all here to be better at what we did, learn, absorb and hopefully move forward in the trade as successfully as possible.

I worked a lot. I carried two part time jobs and went to school full time. I worked with one day off a week, knowing that it wasn’t forever, it was just for now. I lost weight (thanks tuna and ramen diet!), lost my mind a few times too, but I never lost my determination or my desire to be here. I would have never done this alone, so thank you all who emailed, called, commented, mailed me stuff and wished me well. Knowing there were people out there interested in what I was doing kept me going on these blogs too.

some of the amazing ladies and i at graduation!!! About the last week.

I posted some stuff. Blips if you will. But I passed everything just fine!! My family arrived on Thursday muuuuch earlier then I expected and we spent some time hanging out and catching up (via bottles of win of course). Friday was graduation. My mom and step dad were there, as were everyone else’s families. I got to meet a lot of my classmates family members which was neat. I always like trying to figure out who looks like who more when I meet peoples parents. The ceremony itself was two hours long. We had one GJ class (mine), one Graduate Gemologist (GG) class and one Applied Jewelry Arts class (AJA). Total was about 40-50 students. And the reason it took two hours is because they called us up one by one! Really. So everyone was presented with their diploma and shook all kinds of hands, and then had to SAY something at the podium.

I will say right now that I :

1) had no idea we were going to have to say something

2) am really bad at public speaking. So I couldn’t tell you what the hell I said because I saw a microphone and some words came out. It was like “i, uhhh, would like tehheplehhh aaguhhhbluhhh habababalahhhh thank you”. but my mom reassured me that it was eloquent and to the point. (which makes me suspicious since mothers are supposed to protect their young…)

After graduation we did a family dinner at a local brewery where I ordered some shrimp something or other and my beer sampler. Delicious. Yay me! And I was proud of my mom for expanding her palate a bit and skipping the hamburger in favor of a butterflied chicken breast cooked in a lemon garlic beer (brewery. Hello) saucy something or other with artichokes and capers! Yeah mom! Although I did eat most of the artichokes.

Saturday I drove the ‘rents around San Diego after breakfast which took up most of the day. We went through a bunch of small towns and then up over the bridge to Coronado and then back. Saturday night we all went out to dinner. And by we all I mean me, roomie, friend, mom and step dad. Then we came home and played apples to apples. Best game ever. aside from cranium. and pictionary, which i rock by the way.

Sunday afternoon my mom and step dad left in the early afternoon. After they left I went to one of the Indian reservations with a couple friends and went tubing down rivers and drank beer. And I think we ate somewhere in there. But mostly it was beer and river. I managed to smack my foot on some rocks, and gather about 20 bruises, but it was a blast! And it was peaceful. 24 plus hours with no cell phone, no music, no gadgets. Just the river, some beer and some friends. Perfect!!

I’m already finding that free time is over rated and I’m currently looking forward to going to work, which hasn’t happened in months, if ever. I’m already bored. But The good news is it will propel me into resume writing action quicker then I imagined it would. I just bought a brand new notebook (which always comes equipped with optimism for what you might fill it with) specifically for the task.

On to bigger things my friends! I will still be writing here, posting updates and whatnot, so check back when you can. I may not just publish on Sundays, but in a rather sporadic pattern and at will.

Thank you all again. And until next time my friends, Be well.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaand im done

Two friends of mine came over for our first and last study group last night. Knowing these two guys, i knew studying would be not only streamlined and shortened to the necessary information, but it would also involve beer and something delivered for dinner.

My hunch was correct as they strolled in, dropped beer on the table and one of them began talking about how he hadn't eaten all day. We got down to business AFTER i gave them a tour of my apartment, showed them some prior projects i'd done in college and we had sufficient time to bullshit.

fourteen books, one each, and we quizzed each other back and forth. The actual studying lasted approxamately 45 minutes, and then we ordered pizza. and then we played some Guitar Hero, drank more beer, ate pizza, played Guitar Hero, watched a special on KPBS about the Bog people being exhumed and studied, ate more pizza, beer, beer, and garlic knots.

4 1/2 hours of thier company and we studied for 45 minutes.

anyway, we were fine. I escaped with a 95%, and the guys got 95% and 96%.

I am officially a GJ!!

now i just have to pund through family weekend and graduation and i'll be soooooo done.

my next blog will most likely be posted late, as in a day or two late, as my family will be here and i have some entertaining to do.

Thank you all so much for your kind words, best wishes, love and support. You all certainly made this easier for me, and i'm glad to be able to share with you my experiences.

i love you all.
Until next blog my friends, be well.

Final bench update!!

HEY EVERYONE! I'm happy to announce that i passed my final bench exam on the first submit today! whoot! whoot! whoot! as of lunch time today there was just myself and one other classmate that submitted (and both of us passed!). I submitted at 11:30 this morning. I spent the next 15 minutes trying not to throw up or let my heart drop out of my chest, i said some hail mary's and rubbed all the good luck charms on me (you bet i had them). At 11:43 Don came back in with my grade sheet, smiled at me, shook my hand and asked me what my plans were for the rest of the day because i was DONE!!!

All i have left now is to sleep in tomorrow (teehee) and study for my written exam on wednesday! oh and shop for a graduation get-up!

a picture of my grading sheet!



A final update on wednesday my friends! be well!

sanity check cleared! whoot!

My second to last week. Unreal.

and no, i did not ride the ferris wheel last week for all who may be interested......

Since things were sort of grinding to a halt as far as projects were concerned, the week started out fairly uneventful WHILE building pressure in regards to the bench final. Monday we were given some “free” metal and allowed to root through some REAL stones (topaz, garnet, citrine, opal etc) and pick up to 7 stones (depending on size) to do a “creative” project. In other words, we’ve run out of things for you to do so find something TO do sort of thing. Since I already had a ton of my own silver already in ingot form and some rolled down, I opted to keep the bag of silver shot they gave me for some future endeavor. I thought about making it into an ingot and rolling it out anyway, but this way I have the option later on down the road to cast it if I feel so inclined.

Meh.

Long story short I just took the free stuff and squirreled it away in favor of practicing the ever loved freeform. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning were spent practicing.
that’s all I did.

It went like this for two and a half days:
-Heat up ring (previous freeform from week whatever)
-Remove heads.
-Clean up.
-Solder in new heads.
-Heat ring up
-Remove heads
-Clean up
-Solder in new heads.
-Repeat
-Repeat
-Repeat

Wednesday after lunch we started tool prep for the final bench exam on Thursday. I spent two hours cleaning my files, re-doing my sandpaper sticks, installing new pumice wheels in multiples, cleaning up my pliers, refreshing my firecoat and flux, cleaning tweezers, and rearranging my bench so that only the tools I knew I would need would be exactly up front. I certainly didn’t want to be rooting through there looking for something when time is not on my side, you know? But you guys should have seen it. It was like we were prepping for battle or surgery by the way we took care to clean and line our tools up juuuuuuust so. It made me giggle a bit. About a half hour before the end of class, Don jumped in and we spent some time reviewing all 18 quizzes in prep for the final written exam this next Wednesday. This was the last time that we would have a regular class! So it had to be done a week early.

Final bench exam, attempt #1.….

Thursday we were allowed into the class 15 minutes early to start lining up things and setting up our benches. At 8 a.m. the head GJ honcho came in and told us the requirements of the exam and what specifically he’ll be looking for when he grades these. He spoke for about 5 minutes and congratulated us on meeting all of the academic requirements to be allowed to take the final exam. When he was done, Don stepped in and read the criteria for the actual exam, pointed out that this was a ONE day exam and briefly went over what Honcho had just said, and then he reminded us that he under no circumstances could answer any questions we have until AFTER we submit for grading. The minimum requirements that needed to be met by the end of the day were to have the ring sized, polished to a tripoli finish, four heads soldered in to the ring tastefully and in harmony with the structure of the ring, and the stones tacked into place. That was the minimum. And then he wished us the best of luck and put out the job box!

Our free form final bench exam bag consisted of one freeform ring, four stones (one oval, three RBC’s) , four heads and a chunk of sizing stock. I started by filing off the casting sprue, and sizing it up. I don’t normally have issues with sizing up, but I’ll tell you what… I was nervous. And when I get nervous, my brain farts and I cant think. Once I got myself calmed down to where I wasn’t shaking the solder off my pick, I got it sized and began clean up on it. By morning break I had all of that done and my goal was to have the heads soldered in by lunch. When we come back from break we only have an hour and 15 minutes until lunch, so that’s roughly an hour to get the four heads in place and accurate. Now if you have ever tried to slam heads into a ring, it doesn’t happen. You cant rush it. Not at least at my level. Every move is calculated, every piece of solder is places juuuuuuust so, and if the head is soldered in even the tiniest bit off, the whole ring looks stupid and you have to pull it and redo it. Well I got the oval head in (which was the biggest) just fine, and worked my way down to the smallest (which would be the first to melt you know). I wasn’t running into TOO many problems until I got to the last small head. Now, the requirements for this ring also include minimum contact for the heads on the ring. For example, a round head has to have 25% minimum contact with the ring OR 2 points of contact. Which wasn’t a problem until the last head. I got what I would say is 15% contact. So I obviously needed to get another point soldered in there. The problem was that the location of where I could add more solder was inside, underneath and around the fucking bend right near where the oval and the medium round head sort of met. Now, in order to get solder to flow you have to heat some stuff up. But you don’t want to melt things either. So getting what you want out of the ring involves some critical thinking and creative problem solving. So how DO you solder here here and here without melting the other heads?

Heat sinks. ridiculous ammounts of heat sinks........

Tweezers act as heat sinks and will draw heat away from whatever you’ve clamped them on to. So I dug around and brought out the arsenal of tweezers and clamped everything and their mother with these things. And about 10 minutes before lunch I had all four heads on! Wahlah!
Here’s a picture of what I mean.

By about 2:30 I had all of my seats cut and my stones tacked in, and decided that I would in fact NOT look a gift horse in the mouth and push through finishing in a half hour, but instead opted to get approval for meeting the minimum requirements, which were met, and I will be allowed to finish the final touches on Monday morning and submit for grading. So while I have MET some criteria, I will not know if I passed or not until I submit on Monday. I’ll try and post a tiny bonus blog Monday for you all!

My friend Domo Arigato Heather Roboto and I were so psyched that we all (WE ALL!!!) met the requirements that we did a happy robot chair dance. i have a video of it, but since i'm technology impaired, it's not going up. i tried. sorry.

Not one person in my class submitted for grading Thursday. We will all be back on Monday to tweak up some things and hold our breath while they grade. Wednesday we have our written exam and Friday, my friends, I graduate. My mom and step-dad will be here on Thursday and I’ll be super happy to see some family out here. They will be in town through Sunday so I may not get a blog up for you all until that following Monday. We’ll see. But there will be one!

Onward to my very last week my friends! This trip sure has been exhilarating, huh?
Until next week my friends, be well.

One sedative, please.

You know when you know you’re getting close to a big change? A move, school ending, new job, major life change of any sort… and all outward appearances point to calm and collected but inside you’re a raging sideshow circus?

Welcome.

And as much as I would love to write about all of the things swimming around in my head regarding what I’m feeling, I’ve decided to save some of that for my last school blog in a couple weeks! (and again, never fear my dear public reader, I will continue to write about my job hunting adventures, albeit maybe a little more sporadically)

This week officially ended our steady stream of graded projects. Our very last one was called Trudy’s Trillion. We were given 2 days to fabricate this pendant, bezel and set a trillion stone, for which they graduated us to a CZ! The fabrication of the actual pendant was standard issue construction for us at this point, but fabricating a bezel for a trillion was another story. A trillion is a three sided (think triangle, with bowed sides i kept refering to as "big hips") faceted stone. The tricky part of making the damn thing was getting three sides identical. Not one millimeter smaller or bigger. Exact. And once that was done, I cut into it and remove some of the side walls and leave three “V” prongs for the corners of the stone. And then file beveled edges on the side walls. And THEN I got to cut the seat and set the stone. As it turns out, my seat was a t-a-d off center, and it seemed that I may not be able to set it. Luckily, they have also taught us crazy modification skills, so stubborn Betsy plowed forward and a-modifying I did. I brought this bezel within and inch of its life, but I got that wide-hipped stone saran-wrapped into that bezel. Yes I did.

HOWEVER,

if you check this thing out under a loupe you may or may not discover the stone is mildly crooked and the v-prongs could use a bit more stone contact, but other that that, MEH! Its done. it’s the last one. I certainly got to a point where that’s all I kept saying in my head. And since it was the last one, Don told us we could do whatever we wanted to the finish. And since I may or may not have had very mild fire scale *gasp* near the bezel, a-texturing I went. Here’s some pictures of the front and back of the pendant.

The remainder of the week was spent on a two day bench exam. This is the one I mentioned that we got to pick the piece to make. I will start by saying this was the bench exam of all bench exams to date. Inside the bag were three patterns for us to choose from, one flat sheet of metal, one strip of metal, once piece of wire and TWO marquise stones, of which we were to bezel set and incorporate into the design. I initially was going to do this pair of earrings that swoop around and had the stones set near the bottom of them. At the last minute I decided that it was way too organic and curvy for me to want to polish it, so I detoured to a very geometric pendant. My reasoning was that straight lines are easier to clean up then curvy ones. No matter which one you chose, they all had their challenges. Had I stuck with the curvy earrings, I would have been blessed with trying to figure out how to fold and polish them without tearing them up. And there was minimal soldering for them. Instead I chose the queen of all things solder-able and began construction. For this particular pattern I had to cut out two pieces, one of which would be soldered onto the top of the other for a layered look. I also had to modify the design to accommodate two bezel set marquise, fabricate a bail, make the bezels for the stones, set the stones and then solder the whole thing together which turned out to be extremely labor intensive. By the end of Friday I had managed to get the piece within basic polish and was in the process of burnishing the insides when my burnisher slipped and make a nice fine scratch on the surface of my piece. So I got it 95% done.

I was a little irritated that I didn’t get it done, but I was relieved that over half the class wasn’t done either. Monday I will be finishing it up and turning it in. here’s a picture of the piece mid construction ( post-pickle, so it’s a bit on the dull side)

Monday next week they’re giving us metal and REAL stones for us to make a “creative” project, which we get to keep. I have no idea what to make or even the kind of stones I will choose, but its not graded and he’s not collecting it, so he said if we want to skip it and keep the goods, we can. Which I am. Free gift with minimal purchase of one class? I’ll take it. And if I have time, I will make something. Tuesday and Wednesday we get to practice free-forms AGAIN, and Thursday we will have the final bench exam attempt number one. No class on the 4th! Whoot! And they have decided that because it’s a holiday weekend, we wont find out if we passed the first round until the following Monday morning. So I will have to go in, and if I passed, I can leave and come back that Wednesday for the written, and if not, I get to stay and attempt again. Good times!

So we’re winding down. As of today (Sunday), I have 12 days until graduation! I have decided to keep my crappy job schedule in favor of spending my days writing my resume and researching jewelers I can mail said resume to. I have no idea how to write a resume and will be in contact with the schools resume assistant via email to get this thing put together. Ideally I’d like to take a couple weeks to relax and write and research, and then maybe once I’m sufficiently bored with free time again (which wont take long) I will start mailing this thing out. If anyone has tips on how to write a jeweler resume, or ANY resume for that matter, email me.

Please.

This weekend I’m going to the Del Mar Fair. I haven’t been to a fair in yeeeaarrrs, but I’m looking forward to crappy fried fair food and 4-H club pigs. And maybe a nerve wracking ride on a ferris wheel, which I am notoriously and ridiculously pansy about riding. I’ll spend the entire ride peeking over the edge while death gripping the seat and inspecting the bolts on the ride to ensure that they’re attached and focusing on how far away the ground is from my feet WHILE freaking out about how often it stops to let people on and off. So I may have to investigate a beer garden before my ride. Maybe I’ll bring my camera and shoot a picture of me having a nervous breakdown on the ride. Hilarity to come!Until next week, my friends, be well!

Pt 78 pronounced plat-nem, and the consequences of large torches.

I was driving Monday morning, feeling more or less exhausted (less exhausted with every slug of coffee), and at this intersection I pulled up behind a car that had the following messages adhered to its back windshield:
1) party naked.
2) pursue insanity
At that moment with the mild post-weekend fatigue and the cumulative stress of the past five months of school-work- sleep I truly laughed out loud . And I thought: Done and done.
This week was another one of those blurry ones I’ve been writing about for the last 4 weeks. For those of you with short attention spans : ring, ring and lasers, lasers, platinum, platinum and lasers, large torches, fireball, stab wound. For those of you interested in hearing about the whole story, read on.

Monday we revved up the week with the completion of that free form ring. The good news is Don figured out no one was on schedule and gave us the entire day to finish it, instead of the half day he had originally planned. Which set us back a half day on the schedule, but no one was angry about it. Here’s the great thing about being behind on the schedule: Don gets to decide if we skip a project to stay on track or to shove forward and freak us out. His decision was to skip a project. Wanna know what it was going to be? Anyone? Guesses?

Here are some choices, and you may only pick one answer.
1)chain repair
2)chain repair
OR
3)chain repair.
Anyway if I could hug the guy I would, but I’m sure it’d violate some rule or something. NO CHAIN REPAIRS! Whoot! *does tiny victory jig*

Tuesday (and Wednesday) we headed feet first into Harry and Shari’s Wedding ( the project names kill me). This project was probably my favorite lately. It consisted of an engagement ring with an emerald cut stone flanked on both sides by tapered baguettes, and a wedding band that hugs up on the engagement ring with 2 tapered baguettes as well. It was a really pretty set, honestly, and maybe its because I’m a fan of emerald cuts and baguettes. I just like the way they look. Not having ever set baguettes in my life, this took a second to figure out though. The first one’s the hardest for me because I’m so paranoid about doing it right that I forget I don’t know HOW to do it right. So I sit there with my burs and *ehnn-ehn-ehn-ehn* push the metal around, check with my loupe, push, check, swear, cut and MAYBE like a half hour later (seriously) I finally got one stone in. but here’s the thing: once I got that one in I knew exactly how to set the other three, so three went in about a half hour total. Again, seriously. And the emerald cut was easy to set, except the prongs on this puppy were thicker than my skull so it took a few minutes for me to chew through them. But here’s a picture of what it looks like 90% done (I have to finish it still)Thursday and Friday was what they like to call “The Platinum Experience”. Since platinum is more expensive then a kidney transplant, they only give us two days to play with it. Wednesday afternoon we had to break out some cleaning supplies and clean our benches out for the platinum work. We could have no gold or silver dust on the tops, in the trays, in our files, on our sandpaper sticks etc etc. so we spent a good 45 minutes cleaning. Reason being platinum’s high melting temperature. Gold and silver melt at a far lower temperature, thus, if you had all of this junk laying around, you could contaminate the platinum. Makes sense. Thursday morning we were greeted by larger torches, and their resident platinum tool kits and a job bag with platinum stock, head, a piece of gold wire and a stone. Basically an engagement ring with gold trim. Also, In our tool boxes were the safety glasses you HAVE to wear when working with platinum, and they are essentially what you would see on a welder, smaller scale. And any time you give overgrown children a new toy, you have to allot ten minutes for the excitement to wear off.

After we all came down from newtoybuzz, he started the most excruciating three part video series on platinum EVER, which was a buzz kill right off the bat. All I have to say about those videos is they were informative, but the narrator spoke so fast I felt like I was at an auction, so most of it went in one ear and our the other. And I fought my droopy eyes the entire time.

Post-video wake up consisted of Don lecturing us on eye safety (you can jack your retinas up if you don’t wear the goggles.) saying “No one wants to hire a blind jeweler, so wear the goggles people”. We were also shown how to adjust our larger flames for different platinum applications and how to weld and solder it (I had no idea you could weld it. But then again I have never done more that polish it before this week) with the torch, and how to laser weld (there’s a difference) it on the machine.
Me on the laser welder!!!

After numbing our brains, we were turned loose with instructions to “have fun” with it, because SURPRISE, its not a graded project. We were all immediately relieved and happy for the break, so the platinum experience was truly and experience. I loved working with it. I loved even more that the pressure to produce was lifted and we were allowed to have fun with it. I found it easier to set stones in it, it filed like butter and the clean up wasn’t as bad as I thought, just more steps. So I’m officially in love with the metal! Its just unfortunate that its so damn expensive and different to work with.

At some point on Tuesday my 16 year-old prodigy classmate and I were eyeballing our new torches for platinum and putting on appropriate tips for annealing the metal. And im in the process of digging out my torch sparker when I HEAR the gas on hers flowing next to me and then I hear “sparksparkspark” as she grinds her lighter a few times her torch to life…. And as I turn around slooooooowwwwwly to tell her to ease up on the gas, this fireball *KA-BLOOOFFFS* out of her torch and freaked both of us out sufficiently enough to sort of squeal in unison. Which made everyone laugh. But I FELT THE HEAT from that thing! So I teased her for the rest of the day about trying to burn me down. This is the same girl who lit my project book #9 on fire accidentally.

We have two weeks of class time left for this course. The third week is of course dedicated to the final written and bench exam. With July 4th being on a Friday this year and the campus closed, we’re (from what I understand) starting the final bench on Thursday the 3rd. I could be wrong, but that’s what I heard. Also, much of that previous week we’ll be getting to practice the exam so we can figure out how we want to do everything in ONE day. This week on Thursday we’ll have our 8th and final regular bench exam, which I saw a picture of. We get to pick on of three exams to do, but any way you go, there are two bezel set marquise stones. Refer to the heart pendant I did while back. But Monday we’re going to get to do lots of practice stone setting for the exam so we can refresh for it. I took Tuesday next week off to head in to night lab so I can get caught up and will probably be spending Tuesday evening rereading bezel set marquise information. From here on out it just seems like we’re being prepped for the ending. Which is cool. For all practical purposes, we’re done with projects, save for maybe one more. And since we’re the soon-to-graduate class, we have the showcase.

I hope you all are doing well, and I wish you the best of weeks. Start sending me some good vibes!
Until next week my friends, be well.

listing, lasers and project pile-ups

dork

Once again, this week was just a bit more hectic then the last, and finding a way to inhale what I’ve accomplished in a week and exhale it back out in breathable pieces for my grateful public sometimes becomes difficult. Especially at this point.

My brain is frying. My body is exhausted. But I couldn’t be more fulfilled if I tried.

Monday (if I remember correctly at this point) we were allowed to finish up that three-parter project, Mrs. French’s Gifts. After lunch we were introduced to channel set earrings, completely hand-fabricated channel set earrings, mind you, which didn’t look all to difficult, which is usually a sign that something is about to go horribly wrong because overconfidence will kill your work immediately. In that job bag were two strips of metal, one silver, one gold, a piece of silver wire for the posts, two pre-manufactured gold posts and some friction backs for the earrings. Oh, and four fake diamonds. Making the settings for the stones beckoned my precision filing skills, which were rusty. Which became evidently clear after I made the first setting, which listed to the left. Lesson here is if you do not file exactly straight and your file even so much as angles the wrong way for a fraction of a second, it changes the way the metal folds. Anyway, after my first failed attempt, I managed to get four heads to agree and be uniform in size and measurements. I soldered on the posts just fine and prepared to cut the seats. Now cutting seats for a channel set involves taking not-so-much metal out of the side walls of the earrings and snapping the stones into place. I just want to say that the seats I cut for these stones were unnecessarily huge on the first earring and consequently my stone danced around in the seats like soul train when I tried to hammer the walls down. I have also discovered that my reciprocating hammer (for the uninitiated, its essentially a tiny jewelry jackhammer) sucks ass and is worn out. So I borrowed Dons hammer and let me tell you, the soul train dance party ended. Those stones aren’t going anywhere unless I release them from the headlock I placed them in. Im still not done with the earrings WHY you ask? Because …

Wednesday afternoon (which is half a day before the 7th bench exam p.s.) Don launched us into YET ANOTHER fu**ing freeform remount project never mind that NO ONE was done with the earrings. None. So Wednesday we got to sit through another video and lecture on remounts while side-eyeing our still unfinished earrings. After the lecture he turned us loose to start the freeform, which no one checked out because we wanted to finish the earrings. Which I STILL did not get done by the end of class because I had some decent clean up to do on them.

SO

Thursday we had bench exam number 7, which was ANOTHER mothers ring. This ring wasn’t too bad because it was only four rounds, and the setting we were given for it was burnish finished, so the clean up on the ring was easy. We only had to size it up, clean up the ring and set four stones. We were given 4 ½ hours to complete it, and I finished mine in three hours and ten minutes. WHOOT! It was a really simple bench test and we were all pretty grateful for the break. Here’s a picture of the thing (in the bag because once its in the bag, its done)
Friday I went back and forth as to what I should be working on. Do I finish up these earrings or do I start in on the free-form? Being at 100% completion allows me at this point to decide if I want to even DO a project because I can afford to skip one if shit hit’s the fan. I discovered I could literally skip every project from here on out and still get out of here at the minimum 75% completion to graduate. But then I remember how much I spent to get here, and I forget that idea. But the options nice. So I set the earrings aside in favor of the free form, since its relatively similar to our final bench exam. I figured that I could use this time to get more acquainted with the freeform and get over my fears of remounts. So that’s what I did on Friday. I started the free form and by the end of the day I had two of the three heads soldered exactly where I wanted them. but its still not done and niether are the earrings....

The bad news is he’s only giving us the first part of the morning (up to break) on Monday to work on these and then heading into project 51! So I am prepared to call into my job on Tuesday to go to night lab if I feel like I may fall behind.

In other news we also started lasers this week. OMMMMGGUHHHHH they are the coolest things I have ever had the good fortune of touching. The laser welder can fix anything. I cant do much to describe then in detail because I’m still thumbing through the 3000 page handout on laser frequencies and trying to figure out all of the knobs and buttons. But damnit I think im in love. Its like a harmonious blend of art and science. And I can weld stuff together. So this week we’ve just been getting to play with it to see what it does, but the next three weeks it’ll be in the class and from what I understand we’re going to be using them for a few projects. I’ll keep you posted and try and get a picture of it in action for next week!

Oh friends. Its so hectic. Its stressful right now because the heat is on us, we’re the senior class and its just crazy the expectations of the instructors at this point. We have a few working weeks left and then finals. And somewhere in there we start platinum. Which im looking forward to. I don’t know. Its nuts. Totally nuts but I truly love it, and love what I do. So the journey my life has taken me on to figure this out has been worth it. Totally.

Until next week, my friends, be well.

Time management skillz: learned.

“Patience: A minor form of despair disguised as a virtue.” ~Ambrose Bierce

I have found that over the course of ,oh, the last five months, that I have been completely loosing track of time. It occurs to me in revealing moments here and there that a normal calendar abiding person wouldn’t find as fascinating. I was reading my friends blog the other day, who’s busy in Israel doing some schooling of her own, and the first couple sentences of her blog went like this “We’ve sneaked into a new month and I barely noticed its passing. Israel has the wonderful ability to wave a magic wand of blissful ignorance to the changing of seasons. I’m beginning to find it…well… ignorantly blissful.” and as I read that I kind of felt like I just had an ah-HA! moment… the one where ,thanks to her blog, I was reminded that I have no seasons changes to guide my internal calendar like we do back home. Here, every day is pretty much predictable, and while nice, can really mess with you. Anyone with me? No real spring (okok, things go from green to green and flowery here) no real winter, no fall (okok, it goes from green and flowery to green) . Summer, well, summers here most days. Anyway, long story short, its way too easy to lose track of my days. not that i'm complaining.

This week was interesting. And by interesting I mean I’m having to sit here and sort through the blur and try and get everything in the right order so I can properly write about it. So I’ll break it down by day.

Monday: We were graciously given the day to finish up Lars, the enormous pearl necklace enhancer. I do have to say here that the stone for this thing was so large I could have probably set using my toes and a tree branch to hammer the prongs down. Speaking of prongs, they were the size of support beams in a warehouse. So cutting them and setting the stone was like, easy, and i didnt even need my optivisor! So grateful me finished up the double-wide pendant and tossed it in the job box. Also: We also got our class pictures which we spent most of the day laughing at it. We all look so professional, which, made us laugh more. Looks: deceiving. We sure do clean up well.

Tuesday: we launched right into Mrs. Whatsherface’s ring. This one was a 7 stone channel-set in yellow gold. All that was required of us was to hi-grade all 7 stones, clean the casting up and set the stones. I have to say that this one went exceptionally well for me and I nailed this ring before I left the building at 3 p.m. *throws up victory sign* total job time: 3 hours, 10 minutes and every single table on every stone lined up like a military formation. WHOOT!Wednesdaythursdayfriday: Some folks were still working on Mrs. Whatsherface’s ring in the morning so I got to fiddle around a bit and spent the morning sharpening my gravers, slapping new sanding paper on my sanding sticks and touring the room chatting with classmates. Which I’m good at. Which makes me wonder if I shouldn’t be in the hospitality industry sometimes. What a nice break. The calm before the storm I like to call it. After break we were greeted with a dry erase board full of jewelry illustrations for our next project “Mrs. French’s Gifts”. PLURAL gifts. I thought this was a mistake and double checked the book. Sure enough. Gifts. Three. Here’s what I saw:This was a time management exercise for us. Three pieces of jewelry all requiring different things to complete them, three days to complete. The first piece was a simple heart shaped pendant, clean up the casting, set the stone, polish. Which an first sounded easy until I tried to cut seats for a heart shaped stone with awkward facets and an uneven girdle. So my first attempt at this was frustrating because my stone kept spinning to the left every time I pushed the prongs down. Which turned into a game of tweaking the prongs ever so subtly until I got it set straight. Which took forEVER. And it was so tiny I had to hold it with my fingers to do all of this which was a challenge unto itself. The second piece was an engagement style ring with a prong set marquise. At each end of the head was a v-shaped prong and two regular prongs on each side. The V-shapes don’t do much more then protect the points on the stone, so scooping out relief (deceptively easy sounding) for the points was easy. It was lining up the seats on the other four prongs and getting the stone level that was the challenge. And I thought I had this thing nailed until I went to do a final polish on it and realized that when I pushed the stone into the v-prongs I must have done it with more gusto then necessary and managed to crack the point on the stone. So I got to pull the broken stone and set a new one. And why did that happen? Well, too much gusto for sure, but also when I pulled the stone I looked at the broken point, and then at my relief hole through my loop to discover that I just hadn’t made that hole big enough, so the tiny hole plus the pressure shattered the point. So I re-drilled it deeper and reset a new stone. Glad it wasn’t real! And then we had to size it. Now the third piece was a hideous little number with a pear shaped stone, engulfed by 10 tiny channel set stones. Two of those stones were not only pink, but a hair smaller then the white stones. This was the pièce de résistance of the group. First, we had to clean it up, then size it up. Then we had to set all three thousand stones. Setting all of those tiny stones in the channel and doing it level and well was an event. I’m pretty sure some of my stones are sort of listing like a sinking ship, but since I decided that at that point that I was ok with that. Once we had all of the stones set, we got to size it down to a 6. Which, ok, not too big of a deal, but when sizing down a ring with this many stones in a channel, can prove to be a test of will and patience. So before I sized it down I made sure I tightened the stones really well. And that size down went beautifully. I only had three moderately loose stones. One of my classmates watched in horror as five of her ten stones clinked out after sizing. See, when you size a ring down, you change its structure, and it affects the seats of the stones. So too much too fast stretches it out and those stones fly like out of there like its on fire. By the end of the day on Friday I had two of the three pieces done, and was re-tightening the stones on the big-ugly. We’ll have half a day to complete these pieces on Monday!

All in all I’d say its going really well. I’ve said before that this guy grades really hard, and I welcome the criticism. I have gotten a couple projects back with C’s instead of CS’s because of little things wrong with them, but I’ve had great dialogue with Don about where I can improve some things and don’t particularly mind the grades, so long as I learn from it.

Its down to the wire here and while we’re all looking forward to moving on and getting out of here, we know that the next four weeks will be some of the hardest we’ll face. In the next four weeks we still have to complete two more JMA bench exams, 8 more projects and then tackle a final bench and written exam. Its a lot to think about and try not to stress out about. But that’s why I’m here!

Bring it on, I say.

Until next week, be well.

remounted remounted remounts and nightmares

No. I did not meet any celebrities this week.

No update on the hideous Aztec Spaceship pendant either. Sorry.

No picture either because it hasn’t been graded or returned.

The good news is I snapped a few shots of the freeform migraine that I had to work on for the bench test. Story to follow!

This week was the longest short week ever. We had Monday off due to Memorial Day, so my school week was only four days. Which was nice, but we packed so much into those four days that we could have used that extra day. They do this every time we have a day off. Whoever writes the syllabus for school forgets to consult any calendar and never accounts for holidays so when we have one, they have to cram an extra day of stuff into the short week to keep us on track.
As long as I had that extra day off, I decided to head to downtown San Diego with my roommate and take a tour of the USS Midway (PRIDE of the Pacific!). The aircraft carrier was commissioned in 1945 and decommissioned in 1991 and has since been turned into a museum and is anchored in the harbor. Now, I spent four years in the Navy and worked small crafts the entire time. I never had the experience of being stationed on an actual ship, a part of my service I am completely okay with. So being able to take a tour and “see what I missed” was really cool. Let me tell you something…I was a Boatswains Mate and did my fair share of dirty work, but when I made it into the space on the ship where the BM’s dealt with the anchor chains of this massive ship and saw that the links were the size of tires, I silently thanked every high deity that I never had to mess with anything that size. I also have not stepped foot on non-skid (it’s a non slip surface that’s slapped on the decks of ships to help keep your footing) in roughly 9 years so walking on the ships stairs and decks coated in this stuff caused unnecessary flashbacks. I was also grateful that I never had to lay down nonskid on a flight deck that’s three football fields long. Amen. But what really killed me was touring around the main deck just below the flight deck and noticing where the lifejackets were located. And then I remembered that not much in the military makes sense. And it made me laugh.

So here’s my roommate trying to reach them.

I could write an entire blog on my experience on that ship, but I wont. So in lieu of that, here’s a picture of me on the flight deck!

Back to business. So Tuesday we jumped right into KiKi’s Mothers ring. It was a five stoner. We were given a day and a half to set five ovals in a mothers ring, then size it up then retip three prongs. I didn’t think that this ring was going to be too hard at first, but we’re talking about 20 total prongs in very close proximity to each other, and the settings for the ovals were a bit different. It was pretty difficult to get the seats cut the same and set the stones because of this. I got four of the five set well, and the fifth, which was the “peridot”, made that thunderous “clicksnap” sound as I brought the (tight) prong down. which indicated to me that one of three things happened:

1) one of my knuckles popped

2) someone snapped their fingers

3) my stone cracked.

You pick.

So mid-Wednesday when absolutely none of us were done with KiKi, we shoved forward to Lars Larson, which is an “enhancer” for say, a large pearl necklace. SO we sat through the lecture and demo for that one, and the second he got done we all chucked Lars aside in favor of finishing Kiki WHY? Because our 6th Bench exam is the next day and it’s a one day exam and no one wanted to be behind in the event that the exam rolled over in to Friday.

Kiki: done.

Thursday we had the 6th bench and were greeted at the door by a mischievously smiling Don who simple wished us well and set out the job box. Inside those exam bags we found that damn freeform remount, three new heads and three new stones. The instructions for the exam were fairly similar to the original project we did with this ring, the only difference was that we had to take this down to a 5 from 7 ¼ on a ring that was previously half-shanked. So we had to make a cut on the side of the ring on one of the solder seams and size it there. We also had to pull the three existing stones and heads out and replace then with the new ones. Getting the heads and stones out was no problem. Three seconds. But the clean up I had to do prior to soldering the new heads in was an event that took me most of the morning. My idea was to get the ring back to its original look and THEN get everything soldered in to avoid lots of cleanup. Which, while labor intensive and made me feel like I was dragging behind everyone, turned out to be the best move I could have made. While everyone was slamming the new heads in on top of old solder and whatnot, I sanded and polished. So while they were trying to get tool marks out of hard to reach areas AFTER the soldered their heads in, I was doing nothing more than using some tripoli to clean up. Yay! So I avoided disaster to some degree. Around 2 p.m. I started sweating bullets because we only had one hour left and I was still cutting prongs. So was my 16 year old prodigy classmate, who was the one that kindly pointed the clock out to me. So we both shot each other that look you give someone in panic, turned up the volume on our respective MP3’s and proceeded to haul ass. In one hour I managed to get all of the seats cut, and stones set. Awesome. However, I did not get the prongs styled or a final polish. And I though I was going to get a finger wagging from Don for not finishing until I saw that exactly one person finished the exam in one day. The other 14 of us were allowed to complete the exam on Friday morning. I’m proud to announce that I only needed an extra half hour on Friday to style and do a final polish. Which made me the 3rd person done with the exam. Which I’m fine with.

Friday after I got done with my exam I started in on the fabrication of the Lars pendant. I was in the process of soldering assorted microscopic parts together when I heard the very loud “PANG-CLANG-Clunk” of someone’s project getting ripped from their hands and thrown mercilessly into the back of the rouge machine. Which I have stated before is one of the most sickening sounds you could ever hear. What this does to the entire class is causes us to stop what we’re doing and look up in horror and wait with mild panic to see if whoever is polishing is going to start crying or give us the thumbs up that their project survived. Much to my sadness I looked up to see my 16 year old friend at the machine doing a final rouge before turning in her bench exam.

Here’s what I saw in one minute flat:
1) turns off machine.
2)picks up ring tentatively
3) reviews potential damage
4) places ring off to the side
5) stabilizes herself with both hands
6) dips head in defeat
7) takes deep inhale/exhale
8) picks up ring
9) turns around slowly
10) looks directly at me and with the biggest blink-blink baby deer eyes I’ve ever seen shakes her head side to side and hold up the ring. I think her lip quivered. Or maybe that was me because I had that sick feeling in my stomach?
11) brings the ring to ME! Drops it on my desk to look at and leaves the room to walk it off.

Here’s the wreckage:

Luckily, only the shank was mutilated. The stones survived and Don felt so bad for her that he straightened her shank out the best he could for her while she was out walking off steam. Unfortunately the shank cracked at one of the seams so she had to resolder it back together and try to clean it up. I felt so horrible for her. But she got it done. And that’s what matters. But it’s one of those things that reminds you that nothing is “done” until its in the bag and back in the job box.

But I did get a picture of mine right before I turned it in. For your viewing pleasure, I give you Gigi’s freeform remounted remount headache inducing bench exam #6: So none of us are done with Lars obviously, but that’s not stopping Don from launching into another project on Monday. Game on! Intensity: check. Sanity: check.

In other news I am the proud mother of a brand spanking new Bodum double walled borosilicate glass French press. I’ve always wanted one, but decided that the one I wanted was too expensive. So when the opportunity to get the one I wanted at a ridiculous ridiculous discount at my job came up, I ran with it. All I’m going to say is I got a $100 press for about $24. And I love love love it. Thanks for sharing this moment with me.

Until next week my friends, be well.

Teenage awkwardness: over.

My teenage weeks have come to a close! I kind of feel like how I (vaguely) remember the day I left teenage awkwardness behind and entered into my awkward twenties. Which never actually changed anyone physically, but admit it! Something liberating happens that day.. Its that feeling I have right now. It feels good, except I’m not quite home free YET. We’re trotting around a well worn home stretch curve here, the finish line in our sights, but we’ve been running so damn long that we’re all somewhat exhausted. Desperately trying to find that eighth wind to propel us to that line. Its one of those moderately momentous feelings that maybe only holds significance for those of us caught in this particular race, but it’s a good feeling.

Don Hughes is our newest and final instructor who will see us on to graduation in about 6 ½ weeks. He’s been teaching here for about 10 years roughly. Its always a different experience adjusting to a new way of teaching, but I couldn’t be more pleased with his methods. Not only is this guy GOOD at teaching, he’s really hands on to the point that he’ll get you out of your seat and either sit down at your bench and show you new tricks, or drag you to the dry erase board to illustrate it, or to the computer to show you things or just give you a short one on one lecture about how you can improve what you’re doing. Its pretty cool. In one week I’ve already had the light shed on me four or five times. I dig the interaction he gives.

One of the first projects we did this week was simple band with a tiffany head set in it. Does anyone know what a tiffany head is (Kristy is exempt from answering)? I’ll try and explain it simple terms without launching into the history of it. Ok. It’s a talllll setting that launches your diamond way up into the air. Its tall. Really tall. Almost to the point that its impractical for most people to wear because it WILL snag on anything and everything at some point. But it’s a great setting if you have an amazing blazing fire and sparkle diamond you want to show off because setting is elevated and open between the prongs which allows the maximum amount of light into the stone. *lesson over* Anyway. So we had to set this 6 prong tiffany in the shank, set a 5.25 mm stone and get that checked. Then we got to heave that stone out and set a SMALLER stone, about 4 mm. which was interesting to do because you had to adjust the prongs to accommodate the smaller stone, then re-cut them juuuust so. Pretty cool, but sort of standard issue work for us!

The second project that we were given this week (number 43) was the “Aztec charm” moreaffectionately referred to as the Aztec hubcap. Or Aztec spaceship. Or ugly-ass pendant, depending on who you were talking to… Nothing in particular attracted me to this project other that the fact that it was hand fabricated, which I enjoy doing. Otherwise it’s sort of an ugly design, and ugly jewelry is uninspiring to work on. And for whatever reason, they gave us three days to do this thing. So I took my time trying to get this thing to look good. I even took some creative liberties on the back of the piece because I disagreed with its chunky backside. Hope I don’t get this one back for non-compliance. I reasoned that this is one of my keepers and if I have to have this thing in my portfolio, I don’t want ugly, you know? I also reasoned that I only have to be at 75% completion to graduate and I’m at 100% now, so I can afford to side-eye this project if I want to. I don’t have a picture of it because I was so happy to have it done and off my bench that I skipped the pictures. Maybe when I get it back I’ll take one just so you can all see what I’m talking about. All I could think about when I was working on this was how I’d like to be the one to redesign this pendant. Seriously. Ok so it’s a round domed pendant with a bezel set black stone. It has this hideous Aztec pattern pierced around it. I don’t have anything against the actual pattern, but it was a very unharmonious design. Keep you posted on the design deviations and non compliance!

I DID however, get a picture of that man ring I burned my finger working on. Enjoy!

This week we also discussed our next bench test which is Thursday. I like that the last few exams we’ve been briefed on what to expect. It gives us plenty of time to get panic and crying out of the way before we work on it. Who read my blog on the free form remount? Remember the curvy flowy ring with three heads I had to set? Yeah. Our bench test is THAT remount. Here’s what he said: We get that ring back, we’ll have to pull the stones, remove the heads, clean it up, solder in three NEW heads and set three NEW stones, which of course will be completely different sizes than the originals. Awesome! I can already guarantee that next weeks blog will include a lengthy and colorful paragraph on it. Stay tuned!

We also discussed the final bench exam a bit. Which of course isn’t happening for another 6 weeks but again, its handy to have a heads up. Ok, so when you look at the syllabus it shows three days for the bench exam. Three. So we were all sort of thinking that we’d have three days to complete it. No. no, we’re wrong. We have three attempts to complete it. It’s a one day bench exam. And he showed us a rough cast of the ring we’ll be setting ohhhhhh 5 or so heads in. Yes kids, it’s a fu**ing remount on speed. One day to do this! And here’s the best part! If you jack this ring up, mangle, mutilate, melt or disfigure the ring, you get to leave and come back the next day to attempt it again. Why? Because you only get one day to do this. There’s no point in starting over at noon when you’ll only have three hours to complete it. No roll-over-to-the-next-day on this. GAH! And they have a team of instructors that will be grading the ring RIGHT THERE so you’ll know if you need to come back the next day or not. And this isn’t including the final written exam. I cant tell you how instantly stressed out hearing that made me, but they do it for a reason. They’re trying to stress time management and quality here. In this field, sometimes you have to be fast AND good at the same time and the luxury of taking you time isn’t always afforded to you. So they’re trying to turn the heat up in regards to how long projects take you and whatnot. I felt bad for some of the people in my class because you could TELL what they were thinking. These are the people that are 4,5 or 6 projects behind and work incredibly slow. A one day exam will be a challenge for all of us.

In other news, I met Don Johnson yesterday at my job when he came in to shop. Anyone over the age of 27 remembers Miami Vice right?


Until next week my friends, be well.

flippin the bird to burns

Roses are Red,
Violets are Blue,
I burned my middle finger. Appropriate.

A few days ago I was rooting through some stuff looking for something that still eludes me and I ran into a stack of “roses are red” poems an old flame (and amazing friend!!) of mine used to write for each other . Which pretty much go like that. They don’t rhyme and the only prose requisite its seemed was that they had to start with the first two lines of the poem and you can pretty much write whatever you want after that. Anyway, it may or may not be funny to anyone else but me, but I laughed myself to tears the other day reading them.

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Moving on.

book charm from last weeks blog!

Channel set!Week eighteen. Monday morning came equipped with a new concept to wrap our weekend foggy brains around. Remounts. A remount is exactly what it sounds like. You’re the customer, you have grandmas diamond ring, a loose ruby, and a couple worn out rings and you want all of the stones yanked and reset in one ring. Remounts. Wah-lah. So we learned about how the process works, lectured on remount , how to approach it blahblahblah and then we were given a very curvy (sooo curvy) freeform ring, three heads and three stones: one pear shaped fancy and two different sized round brilliant cuts. The goal here was to modify the ring to accommodate these heads so that the stones were set in an aesthetically pleasing manner. When all of that was completed, we got to cut it up and half-shank it. I wish I had a picture of this ring because the thing looked like a tiny rollercoaster with its dips, curves and swoopy parts. Getting a head to sit upright and not tilted involved careful filing, some flex-shaft cone bur action, soft quiet tears of pleading, three Hail Mary’s and one stone setting bur to get a cozy curve cut for the pear head. Pear head. Ha-ha. So here’s how it went down. I got the pear head soldered in. Then I moved to the larger of the RBC heads and got that soldered in. It was when I was juuuuuuuust getting the solder on the third head flowing that the second head heated up just enough and dropped off the ring and clinked across my solder pad. I just sat there in disbelief for like thirty seconds looking at it. Much to my budding professional pleasure, I’ve eloquently moved from belting out “What the FUCK??!???!“ to: “you have GOT to be KIDDING me!” when something goes wrong. I got the second head in again, but I had to do a little maintenance on it to get it back in. Add half hour to work time for clean up, re-filing, and re-soldering. We were allotted two days for this project which came and went far more rapidly then we anticipated. By the end of Tuesday I had the heads in, the stones set and prongs shaped, but didn’t have the half-shank done. *sets project aside* Completed this one later on Friday after I completed the next project. Pictures next week!

Wednesday wasn’t too bad. Our next project was a men’s ring with a 9 stone pin plate soldered on it. This one was pretty easy since all we had to do was solder the plate on, size the ring up to a 12 from a 9 ½ and then set the stones and do a Florentine finish on specific parts of the sides of the ring. I’m finding that all of the projects we’ve been working on lately have involved us making this beautiful piece of jewelry, all shiny and glossy diamond-ness AND THEN having to willingly destroy parts of it to “simulate” wear and do the appropriate repairs on it. (Which is cool, but it inevitably leaves you praying that you don’t F*** up the repair because if you do, you get to roll back to square one. No good.) Once we got done setting all 9 stones in this ring and had a high polish on it, we got to file two prongs flat and re-tip them. Ok, now, 9 stones with 4 prongs each equals 36 prongs to choose from. I took the easy road out of hell and did two of the outside corner prongs. I reasoned that these would probably wear first AND they’re the easiest to get to. *taps noggin with finger and smiles*

Higrading stones!

Bonus injury side story: so when I was soldering the plate into the ring, I was using these large tweezers to sort of steady the plate so when the solder flowed I could just give it a little pressure and guide it down. NOW... When I was adjusting the tweezers position I noticed that they kept sticking to the plate because the ends were sorta gunky from the flux. This is not OK because I do not want them to pull the plate up AT ALL EVER, So I spin them around to use the wider, non-gunky, non-business end for the plate pushing action. Solder flows and I am happy. I put the tweezers down without incident and shut off my torch and hang it up. It is then that I absentmindedly grabbed the 1,567 degree handle of my just heated tweezers with my right hand. One “HOLY F**KING SH**!!!” and some burn cream later I was pleased to discover that it only really affected my middle finger. I was sharing my burn story with some classmates when my buddy V raised his right hand to show me the burn outline of the entire handle of his tweezers singed on the palm of his hand. He had done the same thing, only worse.

If you look close, right above my ring you'll see burn indents.

Thursday we took our class picture. It is one of the rare days I dressed up because I had to, and certainly not because I was willing, but because it was required. It’s like wrestling a small child into eating brussel sprouts, I always like being dressed up once I am, its just getting me IN to the clothes is an issue. We took two pictures, one serious businesslike picture and then one funny picture. The funny one found me in a luxurious white feather boa, my buddy Chuck in a coconut bra and grass skirt, O in a princess hat with flowing purple tulle, R looked like she was heading to the Kentucky Derby in a large brimmed hat and elbow high white gloves and H’s face was jammed into a large Statue of Liberty full face foam hat. Doug, our instructor was forced to wear my feathery pirate hat while V, who wore his notorious bike helmet and held a fake parrot near Doug’s shoulder. It wad a lot of fun and once I get the pictures back I’ll try and post them! Until then here’s some that I took.









Next week we gain a new instructor. I don’t remember his name but I believe that he’s the one that will see us through to graduation in 8 weeks! So I’m nervous again about another set of eyes on my work, but looking forward to the stream of critique I’ve come accustomed to the last 18 weeks. I only hope that my work continues to live up to expectations! Thats all i got!

Until next week, be well my friends!