april 23rd through the 25th i went out of town with my mom and sister to the quilt show in paducah, kentucky. on the way home we stopped in a small town, germantown, to visit the tiny cemetery where 2 of my mom's ancestors, august tunze who was born in 1826 and died in 1906, and his son who died at the age of 8. the headstones were mostly over a hundred years old and were deteriorated, and had deteriorated so much over the last couple of years since my mom's last visit, we were not able to locate august's son's headstone.
thankfully 'tunze' was boldy carved at the bottom of august's headstone, so we were able to do a rubbing for each of us.
we did a rubbing of the entire headstone. the top part we did separate from the bottom.
i decided that i would solder the rubbing we did of the bottom of the headstone that has 'tunze' on it, since it is my mom's maiden name, as a mother's day gift for each of us...and also as a way for each of us to save a memory from our trip.
i needed to cut glass that was 17" long and my glass cutting table is not set up to cut glass that size, so it was a challenge. i have also never had to tape and solder anything near this size either. i really wanted to just give up after the first piece of glass i cut was a mess....but i decided failure was not an option, and giving up would mean failure.
i backed the glass with copper flashing. the copper flashing is cheaper than going to an art supply store and buys pieces of copper. the flashing has a not-so-sticky-sticky-backing to it. nail polish remover would not unsticky it, so i figured i could remove the sticky and give the copper a nice patina all at once by taking the torch to it.
during the soldering process.....the piece had to hang off the end of my soldering table at times so i could reach the middle section to solder. a couple of times beads of molten hot solder bounced off my thigh. ouch.
the next steps were to patina the solder, rub off some patina off the raised areas to give it a nice aged look, and then add polish to clean it up.
the chain was added and done. i was able to get all three done and have plenty of time to make homemade cheese crackers, sugar cookies, gooey butter cake, and yeast rolls.
i was so very grateful the meniere's beast was behaving, but the rocks in my ears have been out of whack, which causes positional vertigo and that can be scary while holding a hot soldering iron in your hand. i have never had vertigo attacks from the positional vertigo this intense before, and i am so very grateful that these attacks last no longer than a couple of minutes.
kind of felt like i conquered another mountain with this project.
i managed to do all of this without even so much as a broken finger nail....then while putting foil on a cookie sheet i nearly cut my finger off....ok...not totally off...2 hours later it was still bleeding.
during the week i also got myself back in the habit of making art as soon as inspiration hits and not saving a tab on the computer to do later or jotting down notes and a sketch.
inspiration hit and i did this
i love all things science related. i love the look of old museum mounts. someday i am going to have a cabinet of curiosities. i just need that bigger house first so i have room.
when a combination of stress and menopausal pms hit hard....a bit of zentangling was in order to calm the nerves and get my mind centered again.
i am also getting ready to assemble some bits to make what i am thinking will be called the birds and the bees.....i emptied and cleaned a chicken egg and one of my african grey's, jilly, eggs.
felt someone, or something staring at me as i was getting dressed after my shower.....found we have a peeping tom....or peeping squirrel!
saturday night my hubby came home with these for me for mother's day. they are so beautiful. i am trying to decide if i am going to hang them to dry in a day or so, or make beads from them. i have been wanting to give that a try for years and just recently came across the recipe again.
yesterday we went to my sister's home for mother's day. i rarely drink alcohol. i figured i had done enough of that in my younger days. i had my first mimosa. i am hooked. now i know why my daughter was able to down 6 of these last week at a wedding reception.
i have been saving bottles to make a bottle tree. i want to save blue and green bottles. up until yesterday i had a whopping 2 bottles. green....from my olive oil. now i know how i am going to get some of the blue bottles.....the muscato used for the mimosas. i am thinking once a month we can play mother's day and have a mimosa or two.
my mom brought over files she has from doing research on our ancestory. my aunt had started doing this years before she passed away. it was so exciting to learn about who and where we came from.
we found out we might be related to people down the street from us we have known for almost 20 years. small world, huh? i can not wait to learn more.
we had lots of cranky, and scary looking, people in our family tree....this guy looked like he would have been an awesome grandpa type guy.
i am getting ready to start a big and exciting project that i will tell you about next post. the hubby just got home, so i gotta run....and i need to start on my big project.
have a beautiful day.....lots of love to you.
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