Creatures of Brain Sorbet & More Admin Crap.

Creatures of Brain Sorbet, © C. Ford, all rights reserved.

Creatures of Brain Sorbet, © C. Ford, all rights reserved.

A little while ago, I decided I needed a break from Thorns, a sort of sorbet for the brain. As it turns out, a good decision – I need something to focus on without investment because I have been a wretched heap of misery since Thursday morning. Upon waking Thursday, I discovered I couldn’t walk. My left leg went out from under me, accompanied by a scream. Trying again, I could sort of lurch if I took teensy tiny partial steps. The primary pain was to the side and down from my kneecap (outside of leg), a site well known to me, as it’s long been a sensitive one. That’s where the sciatic nerve splits off into the tibial and peroneal nerves. Standing, with no weight on the leg at all, the pain radiated down to my ankle, which was slightly swollen along with my foot, and radiated up the back of my thigh to my arse. Oh good, my sciatic nerve is on a fucking rampage. (Yes, I still went out that night to get shots of the storm, lurching and limping and dragging myself, with the aid of morphine.) Anyone who has ever dealt with sciatic pain, you know what I’m talking about, painwise. People infected with the photography bug know you have to be at least 15/16ths dead before you miss a possible once in a lifetime shot.

The last time I had sciatica, it lasted most of a year. I am just so fucked. The pain has been very near to insanity levels. There has been much yelling, a fair amount of screaming, and a lot of collapsing into a pile of sobs. Thanks to chemo brain, it wasn’t until Friday night that I did  what I should have done immediately on Thursday morning – take aspirin. The aspirin helped much more than the morphine, helping to deal with the inflammation. It’s not helping as much now, but hey, at this point, I’ll take what I can get. I did have to fucking crawl into the lav on Thursday morning though, so I was bit preoccupied. Of course, another storm hit, and the circuit breaker which controls my studio lights keeps flipping off every hour or so. That means…stairs. Interesting to navigate when you can’t bend one knee without screaming. The breaker just went again. Fuck it, I’ll get it in the morning. Apparently, the pain and humiliation of the last four days wasn’t quite enough, as I have been called back into Cancerland early.  My oncologist (first one) insisted I meet  again with Cole (radiation doc) tomorrow (Monday the 18th). Just what I need, a nice long car ride to irritate the holy fuck outta my sciatic nerve. Ought to be fun. I suppose I’ll be getting my tats tomorrow.

Poor Jayne, he’s about a wreck, not knowing what to do with this screaming one second, racked with sobs the next person who appears to have eaten his regular person alive. Thanks to the confluence of morphine and aspirin, I can get 2 hours or so mostly pain free a day, but mornings are a nightmare, because after sleeping, I’m right back to where I was on Thursday morn.  This is one situation where I’m truly thankful to be an atheist. To think or say to myself: the universe is pissed I didn’t take the hint and die, so it’s going to keep dropping  big-ass bricks on my head is obviously sillier than fuck, and can be dismissed as a pity party moment. If I believed in a god though: god is pissed I didn’t take the hint and die, so he’s going to keep dropping  big-ass bricks on my head, I think I would be in a very bad and dangerous place which would lead to very bad decisions, like stopping treatment and placing myself in “god’s hands”, going the “god’s will” route.

It’s now time to stop faking it (puttin’ on that brave face).  I’m becoming increasingly fearful of showering, scared I’m gonna fall and kill myself in there. Think it might be time for some accessories in there, or at least a plastic chair I can sit on, or fall back on. Ah well, time to face the shower. Anyroad, I will be taking Monday the 18th completely off, I didn’t have time to schedule anything, either.  Going to sleep as long as possible, take much aspirin and morphine, wrap myself in pillows, and try to get through the day without breaking the fuck down, and I’ve felt much too close to a breakdown the last few days. As far as I know right now, I’ll be back to Affinity sometime Tuesday. I know my blogging has been on the shitty side lately, really sorry about this, I’ll make it up to you all.

Sure, Macramé Your Hair, Why Not?

I got distracted. Again. Seems my brain has been having a bit of a vacation too, I’ve been quite the space case lately. Anyroad, came upon these um, attachments? Extensions? Falls? (Does anyone else remember falls?) I’d love to have some of these done with my hair, if it ever achieves thickness again. These are from 1840. Click for full size!

Making a Rondel Dagger – Interlude

The now finished blade came out really nicely, so I will not be ashamed to be associated with it. So I will definitively sign it. However I mentioned already that I do not currently have my own maker’s mark, since the one I used from 10 years age is now used as bluetooth logo. I am not sure whether continuing to use it could lead to legal trouble, but I guess it would lead to confusion. “That knife has a bluetooth? What does it do?”.

I tried to design a new logo, but all designs I came up with either do not appeal to me, or they require quite precise etching process to be made on a blade. And that would definitively not fit this blade, where I aim for as authentic medieval look as I can achieve.

An idea came to me to use my initials, but not in Latin script, but in Glagolitic. At least for this particular dagger. It has the advantage that not only is it a very simple design, it is also thematic – Glagolitic script is the official script of the Witcher 3 game from which the inspiration for the dagger originated. And I am not appropriating other people’s culture.

So today I set out to try how it looks and also to refine/remember my etching process, since I did not do it for quite a long time. For that I yesterday polished a piece of steel from my failed broken machete.

In the past I tried different materials as masking for etching and the best results I have got with material that does not look appealing in the least. But do not worry, it does not smell like what it looks like. It smells actually very nice when worked, because it has been made from equal parts of beeswax, bitumen and spruce resin, all boiled together and poured into water to solidify. I formed it in sticks and for last ten years it collected dust. But it does not spoil and it is just as usable as it was when new.

When heated with heat gun or even with hair dryer or a candle it quickly gets very sticky and adheres to the de-greased steel quite well. So I heat gently both the steel and the stick and rub them together to transfer some of the sticky material onto the blade. Then I use the air flow from the hot air gun to make an even thin layer. It is important for the layer not to be too thick, because it would be difficult to draw the design in it, but also not too thin because then it could delaminate during etching around the edges (delamination was a huge problem when I was trying to use paraffine btw.).

Next step is to draw the design. The layer remains fairly soft and plastic for long time and can be easily scratched through. For this I am using an old compass needle, but for finer design a razor blade or very sharp wood carving knife tip can also be used. It is important to keep the needle clean after every scratch, since the stuff adheres to it too. It is also necessary not only to scratch through, but more like scratch/chisel away. Minor mistakes can be repaired by pressing a piece of the mass on desired place and pressing it gently against the spot until it connects again. After just a few minutes of work under a magnifying glass I was ready to try etching.

For just a small logo I did not want to prepare whole big etching bath, so I used the masking mass to glue a bottle cap with cut-out top as a barrier for the etching fluid to remain in place. As a source of electrical current I have used a DC power supply from an external hard drive that has died on me a few years ago – it has an on/off switch which comes in handy. Anode (+) is connected on the steel and cathode (-) on a piece of graphite (a pencil core works too and I used it for very fine etchings in the past). As etching fluid I have used ordinary kitchen salt solution in the past, but today I have tried ferric chloride because I reasoned (correctly) that it will work better. It is solution for etching printed circuit boards diluted approximately 1:10.

It is important to not use too concentrated solution for two main reasons:

  1. The current that can go through the solution depends on concentration. Too high concentration can mean too high current and that can burn the DC power supply (lesson learned in the past).
  2. Too concentrated solution also etches too quickly and that is not desirable because it makes uneven “burned” looking and spotty etch.

After that I turned the switch on and waited for ten minutes. It was not complete success because towards the end the bath evaporated too much, it got warm and the masking layer delaminated around the whole logo. So I repeated the process once more with only five minutes etching time. I am satisfied with the result, the etching is clear and has nice black color that I know I would not get with table salt. Now I will play with the letters a bit in Photoshop to get the proportions right.

©Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.