A Birthday of Note

Happy Birthday Time..... now this is an unfortunate thing that seems to crop up once a year with committed regularity, unless you are like a friend of mine who is a Leap Year baby.

Now I say it crops up once a year which is probably very good any more would be cause for severe problems for my wife Pam.... reason for this; she never has a clue what to get me, and I'm no help because I don't know what I want either, I'm more into experiences than gifts.

So comes along 2016 and Pam has a brilliant idea, lets turn my entire birthday into a bit of time away filled with experiences.... 

This was done in the form of 10 days away in Kwa-Zulu Natal - 8 days at Ballito and 2 days in the Natal Midlands.
So it started with a nice relaxed drive from Johannesburg down to Balitto approximately 615km which should take about 6 hours - we push closer to 8 hours - got to stop and see everything along the way, I think we were dogs in a past life.... got to sniff every blade of grass we pass.

But now to the main event.....We stayed in a stunning rented apartment right on the beach front called Ballito Sands, it couldn't have been better if it tried hard. You get up in the morning wander out onto the balcony with tea and rusks and watch the sun come up and watch the dolphins swimming past or watch the shark net guys out on their boat checking and repairing the shark nets, then off for an early morning walk along the beach before settling down on the beach for a day of sun and swimming.
I must explain something at this point, we go to Ballito during Autumn/Winter as it is a bit cooler than Summer; summer is incredibly humid with temperatures in the 30-35C while Autumn/Winter is about 22-25C.

But back to the birthday:- Pam's gift(s) were in the form of daily vouchers (sometimes 2) for something that I would really like, and the great thing about this is that she could participate with me, so each morning I would receive my voucher for the day to be redeemed that day or at some time in the near future.

My first Voucher

Sunrise from our balcony

Pod of dolphins swimming past

Then it was off for a long walk along the beach to a rocky outcrop to again sit and watch for dolphins, watch the sea birds and maybe have another cup of tea and coffee.

Beach walk - looking back the way we came

Beach walk - where we are going

Beach walk - our destination

Building Cairn's again

When doing our beach walks no matter where in the country we always take along a plastic shopping bag or two and pick up bits of flotsam usually in the form of plastic that we find along the beach - every little bit helps.

Picking up rubbish on the beach

15 April 2016
Dinner at Fiamma - A short walk from our apartment saw us at the Coco De Mer Boutique Hotel and the Fiamma Grill restaurant for the most excellent seafood platter we have ever had.

Seafood Dinner at Fiamma

On one of the nights we also went to another great restaurant for one of my favorite foods ..... Crab!! OMG it was incredible, almost to the point of usurping the famous one and only Singapore Chili Crab

This was our activity pretty much everyday, autumn and winter on the North Coast of Natal is for me probably as close to paradise as I can get, the weather temperature is just right around 25C and the sea water is perfect for swimming at least three times a day.

View of our swimming spot from our balcony

Boardwalk stretching the length of Ballito

Our beach tent with our apartment block in the background

Apartment swimming pool

18 April 2016

on the day of my birthday it was off and onward to the Natal Midlands for 2 nights at Granny Mouses, but not before stopping at the Beverly Hills hotel in Umhlanga for a bit of lunch.

Granny Mouse's is one of THE iconic country houses in South Africa and has long been a place we have had on our bucket, and I can assure it did not in anyway disappoint.
We had originally booked for a garden room, but when they heard it was for my birthday we were upgraded to one of the river gorge view chalets.

Our dinner on the first night was up in the Eaves restaurant, it was a sumptuous dégustation menu

Granny Mouse Country House

Granny Mouse Country House - Chapel

Granny Mouse Country House -Surrounds

Granny Mouse Country House -Surrounds

Granny Mouse Country House - "Other Residents"

Granny Mouse Country House

Granny Mouse Country House - Our Chalet

Granny Mouse Country House - "Other Residents" visiting our chalet

Granny Mouse Country House - "Other Residents" visiting our chalet

Granny Mouse Country House - "Other Residents" waiting to see what they can snatch for breakfast

Granny Mouse Country House - from the pool

Granny Mouse Country House - from the pool

Granny Mouse Country House - from the pool

Granny Mouse Country House - breakfast

Granny Mouse Country House - dining room

Lunch at Caversham Mill

On the next day it was off into the Midlands meander for a drive around - that's why its the Midlands meander - you meander from art place to art place and try hard not to buy every bit of art you see, but we did stop off at Ardmore Ceramics where we were given a personal tour of their workshops meeting the artists and then we just had to choose a piece to add to our art collection

Lunch at Caversham Mill

Lunch at Caversham Mill

Finally the holiday came to an end but not before a final stop off at Piggly Wiggly to do some shopping and pick up some beer for me (an excellent 12 pack of craft beer) and some wine for Pam.

Piggly Wiggly to give a bit of background is an awesome little arts and crafts village located in the midlands, with interesting shops and nice eating spots, but above all has the most excellent wine shop that also has to best craft beer selection I have ever seen in one place.

This should read 12 pack, the variety for sale was just too good to only take 6

Piggly Wiggly

But it doesn't end there .... on the way back we stopped off in the town of Howick specifically to visit DragonFire where they make and sell lampwork glass beads, I am going back there to do a short course in lampwork.

And then finally the last two voucher's  are an IOU.

I have a desire to learn chocolate making so I still have one more voucher to go - for a day course at Lindt to get a "taster" for making chocolates and also Macaroons.

And last but not least - The final voucher which we didn't get to do - the weather was just too good to leave the beach and drive inland - is for a zip-line canopy tour, this will happen on the next trip when I go for the lamp-work course

Pink Jade Ring and Pendant

I had to re-work a Pink Jade pendant into a pendant and a ring  - yes it sounds odd but it wasn't - the pendant had two stones in it.

The original pendant was almost in the shape of an inverted egg (fat side on the top with the big stone and pointy side with small stone at the bottom) I unfortunately, much to my chagrin didn't take a photo of the original pendant before chopping it up.

So, how I started off was to remove the small stone and chop off the bottom of the pendant and then make a ring with the small stone inserted into it.
Then I would move onto reworking the main part of the pendant with the large stone 

The ring was easy, but the stone while small in the circumference was quite a tall stone and not having any access to lapidary tools I could not take the height down a bit, but it still made for a nice unusual ring

Pink Jade Ring

Re-working the main pendant now proved to be a bit of an issue, the pendant had a twisted wire finish around the edge that I wanted to try and save, but trying to get the edge of the pendant nice and even and also replace the twisted wire all without damaging the stone was to prove to be an exercise in futility or stupidity - you pick.

As you will see in the photo below the twisted wire just did not look nice and the more I tried to correct it the worse it got, so a decision was made..... redo

Silver is melted and rolled, patterns drawn and glued to the metal in preperation

And a little while later out came a fresh new pendant, I didn't add the twisted wire as I thought it looked fresher, crisper and more modern just plain.

Pink Jade Pendant

Infinity Pendant

To say I've been lazy is an understatement, well maybe not only lazy but also a bit of makers block, now this is very similar to writers block but different in that writers don't know what to write, I on the other hand hand tons of ideas oozing from the primordial swamp that is my brain but couldn't bring my self to go down to my workshop and put fingers to metal.... okay okay so maybe laziness had a bit to do with it.

Well It has finally come to an end.... I Hope......

I also have to catch-up with my blog which has also stagnated since our trip to Singapore .... may this is the writers block of the whole issue.....

Which brings me to new pieces of jewellery made:

My cousin Andrew and his wife Val had a baby, well lets not get too far ahead of ourselves..... at the time of designing and making the forthcoming pendant they were due to have a baby ...... in February ........ but then as quoted from: 
“To a Mouse,” by Robert Burns - “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft  a-gley.” ..... but I digress a bit.

The baby was due in February a month that just so happens to be the birth month of Val, so the design went something like this:
Andrew wanted to give her an infinity sign pendant
With an Amethyst stone in it... February ...... birthstone......

And here is the first laughable attempt at drawing a design on a Samsung phone, neither of us it turns out is making any serious attempts to unseat Michelangelo or anyone's 3 year old child for that matter....

So I start seriously putting something together and I came up with a design incorporating to bars on one side of the infinity representing Val and Andrew, the Amethyst then represents the baby...... being born .... in February
And here comes the schemes the mice and the gods..... 

Infinity Pendant sans setting and stone

So work continues on the pendant, the stone is 3mm by 4mm pear shaped - really really tiny and I am not a setter, but as it is with bumblebees  who can fly........

("Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway."-Mary Kay Ash)

Start of the setting with stone

Rough setting before neatening up

I made a small setting for the stone, well actually a few small settings, one was the wrong size, one did a flight of a bumble bee off across the workshop never to be seen again and one was just right although it also tried a half-hearted escape attempt as well, but it duly got soldered into position, the stone got set and the pendant got its final polish....

The days ticked past and yes you guessed it February became March, but unfortunately the Amethyst did not become an Aquamarine... maybe one day....

Completed pendant

Completed pendant being worn by Val