Wire Weaving – “Fall off a log” simplicity from a kit

From the center of your universe

For anyone who has yet to explore the creative area of wire weaving this post is for you! As I mentioned in another post the other day, I picked up a wire weaving kit from DeSerres. I write product reviews for a site and every so often I purchase products for no other reason than to review them, so that was one of my ulterior motives – the 2nd motive was to see if the kit was actually as “simplistic” to complete as the box indicated it was. Well, I think I can say that would be an emphatic “yes!”

In just under 10 minutes I had the wires set up, and several courses weaved without any problems at all. Although I work with wire, weaving isn’t something I’ve actually gotten into – until now.  I rather enjoyed this kit and it is an excellent primer for those who may have wanted to attempt this type of wire work but weren’t certain they wanted to go to the expense to discover whether they would enjoy it.  This kit allows you the best of both worlds – inexpensively and is so easy to do you may just fall in love.

Make mine one-of-a-kind

Make mine unique

For artists and jewelry designers alike, 2009 is going to continue to be a strong year for those whose creative endeavors have no boundaries in the area of  One-of-a-kind items – those items that are so unique and often hold mystery as to how they were actually made.  There are a lot of designers today who are really pushing the envelope and one area that has suddenly intrigued me is the area of Origami jewelry. Although it’s been part of the jewelry scene for awhile, miniature Origami work is starting to really come together in a number of mediums.

A beautiful book dedicated to the subject of Origami jewelry is written by Ayako Brodek: Origami Jewelry: More than 40 Exquisite Designs to Fold and Wear.  There are also a number of artists who are incorporating Origami designs into miniature beauties cast in Silver, bronze and gold metal clays.  One such designer, who works in silver clay is Nana Mizushima.  Also available  is a book written by her, related to Metal Clay Magic available directly from her site or from here.

Defective Laptop Delays & Terrific Creative Finds

While I’m on an “update” kick, some of you may be wondering where the tutorial I mentioned that was in the works has gone to – it’s still here, on a laptop that  since I purchased it Oct 2007, has been a royal defective pain.  It  has a defective motherboard which HP knows about but like another company I know of, they don’t seem too interested in dealing with it and I’ve had untold issues with it.

Sometimes a typewriter would be nice!

Anyway – the tutorial is tucked inside that sweet little machine and as soon as I can encourage my husband to retrieve it via means other than USB connection (they have been malfunctioning during attempts to use them ), I’ll be able to transfer the data to a desktop and complete the information as it should have been completed weeks ago.  On the agenda is a shopping trip to find a replacement laptop as soon as I can but this time, I intend to do my homework.  If you’ve had the unfortunate experience of owning an HP DV6000 Pavilion you may know what I’m talking about – if you have one and it’s working well – consider yourself very fortunate and whatever you do, don’t search on the Net for complaints about it – you’ll be on-line for days (if the laptop allows it) and what you read will not be very encouraging. So, again, looking very much like someone who can’t keep a promise – I sit – and I apologize profusely to anyone who may be waiting for this tutorial to appear – it will but unfortunately for now I’ll simply have to bear the brunt of embarrassment for its delay.

Hydro Ottawa Smart Meters – keep your eye on the kws

**Should you suspect your Smart Meter is defective and you’ve not gotten anywhere with the utility you may wish to contact Measurements Canada before you request the utility remove the meter.  Measurements Canada offers an area where you can register a complaint and have your issue looked into.  Be aware though that there could be charges involved in this process.  If you are facing a possible faulty Smart Meter issue please feel free to share your story so that others may benefit as well.  Good luck!**

I know…I know…this is off the blog’s overall topic agenda again but I can’t resist – if this post helps even one single person who may have a similar issue – then it’s definitely worth the off topic mention so I appreciate your bearing with me on this one.

Defective they'd probably even read these!

As we’ve just gone through this situation and are still attempting to complete it, I wanted to ensure that the word got out that Hydro Ottawa is actually aware (but not admitting publicly) that 1st Generation Smart meters installed from 2006 to 2007 can be subject to motherboard failure.  This results in the meter calculating kw use at double (if not more) than has actually been used by the home.

Indispensable tools for the Writer – for free

There are several tools I find almost indispensable as a writer and for the most part, I’m quite happy with the ones that I use.  Still, that doesn’t stop me from going on a hunt every so often to see what’s new out in the world of the Free because in my world according to my husband I can never have too many open source software programs to explore.  Perhaps you’ll find a few that you can throw in your own writing tool box for good measure.

Voice recognition software

Technically, this first program doesn’t fall in either the “open source” or “free” category but if you are a writer with carpel tunnel syndrome (CTS) you’ll know where I’m coming from by putting this tool at the top of the heap.   For anyone who suffers from the pain that CTS can generate, a voice recognition program is definitely indispensable – even if you don’t make your living from writing.  As much as I’d like to take on the expense of King of the Hill software such as Dragon Naturally Speaking, I’ve decided to use the program that I’ve already paid for in my Operating System.  Vista hasn’t done a bad job with their Speech Recognition feature.  It was quite simple to set up and train and over all it doesn’t take too long to get use to using it adeptly.