Making

Going from working with words to working with my hands.

For years, my creativity has always centered around writing. I started writing in my early teens — fiction, back then — and managed to turn my writing skills into a career starting in the early 1990s. I wrote books and articles, mostly about how to use computers. Later, I wrote about flying and, most recently, about boating. And, of course, I’ve had this blog for nearly 20 years.

Building Solutions

But it was around 2014 that I started branching out into other creative endeavors — actually making things with my hands. It started when the building that would become my home was under construction and I had a need to make things for it. I think the first thing I might have made for the inside of my shop was my workbench, a sturdy affair made of 2×4 lengths and plywood. It’s ugly, but it’s sturdy as hell, mostly because it weighs a ton.

Shelves
This is the first set of garage shelves I built. It’s 8 feet tall, 8 feet wide, and two feet deep. I put Penny the Tiny Dog on a shelf for scale. I built this on the garage floor and needed help getting it upright.

Since then, I’ve built various other solutions for needs I’ve had, including a number of other work surfaces, storage shelves for my garage and garden shed, and three chicken coops. (It was the third coop, a 4 x 8 foot building with a metal roof that’s large enough to walk into and has four perches, six nests, and a brooding area, that finally did the trick.)

I did a bunch of the work necessary to build or finish my home, too. I wired the whole place, laid down Pergo laminate flooring and tile, built stub walls and a shower stall, constructed deck rails for my outside deck and inside loft, put down the Trex decking on my 600 square foot deck, and added trim around doors and walls. More recently, I worked on a bathroom project that required me to lay out plumbing drains and vents, install insulation, and put up paneling. Although none of these activities called for much creativity, they still involved making things with my hands.

Along the way, I’ve accumulated a pretty respectable collection of power tools — certainly more than my father, stepfather, or wasband ever had. I have a chop saw and a table saw. I have an impact driver, three drills, and a pair of battery operated screwdrivers. I have a circular saw, a reciprocating saw, and a jig saw. I have an angle grinder and a Dremmel. I have two nail guns and a big compressor with enough hose to reach anywhere in my home or garage from the garage. And hand tools! I have just about everything I need. As my wasband used to say, “Any job is easy when you have the right tool.” Hell, yes!

And I’ve come to realize, after nearly 10 years of doing this kind of work, that I like it.

Making Jewelry

Elsewhere in this blog, I’ve already discussed how I got started making jewelry so I don’t want to rehash that here. Instead, I want to talk about how making jewelry makes me feel and why it has become a part of my life.

I look at jewelry making as a combination of challenges:

  • The engineering challenge is to come up with a design that physically works. For example, a pendant that includes a stone must have the features necessary to hold the stone securely in place. It must have a bail to hang it from a chain or other necklace. It must be balanced so it doesn’t hang awkwardly from its bail.
  • The aesthetic challenge is to come up with a design that looks good. What design elements can I include? Which stone will I work with? How will the overall design complement the stone?
  • Ruby In Zoisite
    This piece on includes two ruby in zoisite stones. It was entirely handmade from sterling silver sheet, bezel strip, and wire. The skills I used to make it include cutting, piercing, filling, stamping, shaping, and soldering the metal. As for tools — well, it took a lot more tools than I could take with me in my travels.

    The skills challenge is to be able to create the piece of jewelry I’ve designed using the silversmithing skills I have or am building. Those skills include cutting, filing, texturing, and soldering metal. My skills improve with every piece of jewelry I make, but they’re limited, in part, by the tools I have available. (I have a full set of jewelry making tools in my home-based studio, but I’m very limited when I travel.)

It’s these three challenges that make jewelry making a rewarding activity for me. There’s always something new to try. There’s aways a skill to build or hone. I will never be an expert, although I will get better and better at what I do just by doing it.

Making Jewelry for Sale

When my seasonal flying work was earning enough income to support me, making and selling jewelry was a “side gig” and it didn’t matter much whether I made more money than I spent on materials and equipment. But with my retirement this year, that has changed. I’m now treating my jewelry business more seriously as source of income. That means making more (and selling more) jewelry.

I’m fortunate in that I have several avenues for selling and they’re all pretty good. Some are better than others. About a month ago, one of my wholesale clients pretty much cleaned out my inventory of pendants, leaving me with slim pickings for my online shop and a lot of work to do before my next art show. That show is coming up in about 10 days, so, as you might imagine, I’m hustling to make more inventory.

The challenge now is to keep my creativity level up and not just make different versions of the same item. I do that, too — it’s quick to be able to make certain designs in “batch mode” — but it also takes a bit of the fun out of making. (See the second bullet point above.)

Lately, I’ve been very busy with garage projects, but for the next 10 days, I’ll try to spend 4 to 8 hours a day in my studio. (Fortunately, it has an air conditioner, which I’ll definitely need with temperatures getting into the 100s for the next few days.) I’ll work primarily on pendants, which I’m so short on, but will also try to get some earrings made. In the evening, while I’m relaxing with my pups upstairs, I’ve been making the beaded necklaces that coordinate with the pendants; I’ve made four in the past three days.

I have two back-to-back shows in Leavenworth, WA, including a five-day show for Labor Day weekend. Then I might do a half-day show in Twisp before taking whatever inventory is left to my wholesale customer in Winthrop and a gallery in Twisp. By then, it’ll be pretty close to the end of my stay at home and the start of my travels.

On the Road

Will I make jewelry while I’m away?

It was easy when I traveled with the cargo trailer I turned into a mobile jewelry studio. I could camp out in the desert all winter and spend as much time as I liked inside it with just about every tool I needed within reach. But I’m not traveling with the cargo trailer anymore. These days, I’m on a boat and space is very limited.

Ruby In Zoisite
Another ruby in zoisite piece, but wire-framed. I can make this kind of pendant anywhere and it still sells well, but I’m bored with it.

The main challenge will be to put together a set of tools and materials that’ll keep me producing without taking up too much space. The wire work I used to focus on is extremely portable, but I’m kind of sick of doing that. Beading is also something I can do anywhere, but even the beads take up a surprising amount of space so I’ll need to limit what I bring along.

I’d like to be able to keep fulfilling online shop orders as I travel, but that means taking all of my inventory with me. That’s not a huge deal since jewelry is relatively small and I have a good storage case to keep it all in. I’d also like to be able to set up new wholesale accounts along the way — but that means having enough inventory to sell. And that means making while I travel.

So the answer is yes, I will make jewelry as I travel. I just don’t know how much. The next 12 months should be quite a challenge.

The Seasonality of My Blog Posts

What you find on the home page varies depending on the time of year.

A few months ago, I was thinking about how I never blog about flying anymore. But a quick look at the home page and you’d think that flying is the only thing I blog about. What gives?

I realized that my blogging habits are seasonal.

  • Oregon Coast
    I managed to get one trip in before cherry season started: I took the helicopter down to Oregon for some maintenance and spent some time on the cloudy coast with my pups.

    In the winter, when I’m traveling and have limited access to the Internet, I often share quick “postcards” that feature photos of places I’ve been. Occasionally, I’ll do a deep dive into a topic on my mind that time of year. In recent years, I’ve been making and selling jewelry on my travels so I write about doing shows, finding supplies, and learning new techniques.

  • In the spring, after I’ve returned home, I write about springtime topics. Although I love traveling, after 3+ months on the road, I’m usually very glad to be home. I write about the remnants of winter, the weather, and the chores I need to do to get my garden and home ready for the time of year when I’m there.
  • Weird camera Angle
    One of the things I’m excited about lately is the GoPro Fusion camera I recently acquired. It makes interactive 360° videos, which have been a real hit on FlyingMAir YouTube channel. Here’s a screen grab from a recent video — isn’t this a cool angle?

    In the summer, when cherry drying season is underway, I write a lot about helicopters and flying. After all, that’s what’s on my mind. I also dial up my video production for the FlyingMAir YouTube channel, which is quickly becoming a decent source of revenue to help cover my flying costs. Flying helicopters ain’t cheap and I occasionally whine a bit about that, too. I might also write about new cameras or video editing tools I use to get that work done.

  • In autumn, when cherry season is over and no longer have to stick around the house waiting for rain, I eventually hit the road on some sort of autumn vacation. Last year I did a photography cruise in the San Juan Islands, but this year the plan is to go to Alaska; I already got a good deal on First Class plane tickets to get there. When I’m not traveling, I’m prepping my home and garden for the winter and starting to pack for my winter travels, so I sometimes blog about that.

Keep in mind that the busier I am, the less I write in my blog. Sometimes I’m very busy. Other times, I might not be especially busy but I could simply be burned out. Remember, I’ve been blogging here since October 2003 — getting close to 20 years now! Maybe I’m just running out of things to say.

Morel Mushroom
Here’s a morel mushroom I found in mid-May. I hunt for morels in spring and chanterelles in autumn.

I think I blog less now than I did years ago because I’m more active now than I was earlier in my life. I have freedoms now that I didn’t have when I was with my wasband, a man who had limited vacation time and didn’t like me having fun without him. I also have a lot more personal time to learn new things (for example, beekeeping in 2013, gyro piloting in 2014, mushroom hunting in 2016, jewelry making in 2018 and 2019) and build new skills (for example, basic carpentry in 2014; acting as the general contractor on the construction of my home, wiring my home and tiling my bathroom floor and shower stall wall in 2014 and 2015; jewelry scale metalworking in 2018). I do as I please and I do a lot. Who has time to blog?

What does all this mean to blog readers? Well, all it really means is that this blog’s focus will shift with the seasons. It’s summer now, so I’ll be writing a lot about flying and sharing lots of my videos. If the virus situation improves, I hope to get out to do at least one or two jewelry shows and I’ll likely write about that. And, keeping this in mind, I’ll do my best to write about things other than flying when they’re on my mind.

You might even get another political rant out of me. 😉

The Wink Debacle

Wink convinces me that it’s time to switch home automation systems.

When I built my home in 2014 I decided that I wanted it to include some “smart home” features — primarily devices that I could access, control, or monitor from my phone. Back in those days, Alexa wasn’t commonplace — if it existed at all — and Apple hadn’t come up with its HomeKit. It was a hodgepodge of options and I did a bunch of research before I decided on the Wink system.

My main criteria were:

  • I needed to have a generous number of device options that included light switches, motion sensors, and outlets.
  • I didn’t want to be tied into any monthly subscription plan.

Wink met this criteria. I could buy a Wink hub and then buy compatible — mostly Z-Wave and Zigbee — devices and add them to it. A free Wink app on my phone would give me access to these devices from anywhere I had an Internet connection.

To be fair, I went with other home automation products, too. A Ring doorbell to help monitor the outside of my home. LiftMaster wifi garage door openers that I could not only control but would notify me when one of my four garage doors opened. Various SmartCam and Tenvis security cameras. A Honeywell wifi thermostat so I could control heating and cooling, whether I was hopping on a flight home from a trip or too lazy to get out of bed. None of these products required a monthly fee for use. In fact, the reason I didn’t go with the Schlage keypad lock for my front door is because, at the time, they wanted a subscription fee and I wasn’t willing to pay it.

Wink never worked great, but it never worked badly enough to cause serious headaches or complaints. It was glitchy, period. Devices I added would sometimes be inaccessible or not behave the way I wanted them to. For example, my one Wink light bulb always defaulted to the ON condition after a power outage — not pleasant when the bulb is in the bedroom and the power outage happens at 1 AM. The hub would occasionally go offline for no particular reason. Sometimes, it would take several tries to pair up a new device.

I dealt with all this primary because I’m lazy and it worked good enough that I didn’t need to replace it. After all, it wasn’t as if I were paying for it on an ongoing basis. The hub was old — I’d never replaced it with the new model, no matter how hard Wink pushed me — but it worked good enough.

Wink Home Page
As this screen grab from the top of Wink’s home page says, you have to “Subscribe now to keep your service active.” Huh? Sell us a product and later ask us to pay to keep using it? No thanks.

Of course, all that changed about two weeks ago. Out of the blue, I got an email message from Wink telling me that they were going to a subscription model and that the hub would cease working on May 15 unless I subscribed. That was three days away. They later relented and, in an email message bragging about how many people had already signed up, said they’d delay until May 20.

I was pissed. I’d invested in their system and put up with its glitches for a long time. I certainly wasn’t interested in paying to continue using it.

I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. There were plenty of Wink users bitching on Twitter — including me, of course — and lots of them were asking about alternatives. I suspected Wink’s email about their rush of subscribers was pure bull. Only an idiot would disregard his/her own thoughts and feelings to do what “the herd” was supposedly doing. I might be an idiot about some things, but I’m not an idiot about tech or my money.

I started doing research and realized that there were a lot more options out there now. The one that kept coming up as recommended was Samsung SmartThings. It didn’t require subscription fees and it was backed by the major electronics company that I already trusted to supply my new TV, sound bar, stove, dishwasher, washer, and dryer. I discovered that if I ordered on the Samsung site, I could save $10 and get free shipping. So I bought a new hub for $59 + tax and waited for it to arrive.

SmartThings Hub
The SmartThings hub is small can connect to my network via Ethernet or wirelessly.

May 20 came and went and the Wink hub’s light stayed blue. The SmartThings hub arrived on May 21. I spent the afternoon moving all the devices off Wink and onto SmartThings.

I won’t say it went like clockwork. I did need to call technical support at Samsung. A real person who spoke English as her first language and was not reading off a script answered within two minutes. She guided me through the process of “excluding” and then adding one of my GE smart light switches. I realized I’d missed a crucial step. I did another switch — this one the Levitron for my deck light (the first smart light switch I’d ever installed) — with her on the phone and didn’t need any help at all. Then I thanked her and let her go to help other former Wink users — she’d told me they’d been getting calls from Wink users all day. I did the rest of the devices by myself. Even the handful of switches that also work with HomeKit and Siri could be added; I’d never been able to get them to work quite right with Wink. The only ones I couldn’t switch over were the Wink brand lightbulb (duh) and the door sensors that were too old to be compatible. I was actually very surprised when I was able to connect my original motion sensor, although a warning in the SmartThings app told me that it was old tech and might not work right.

Oddly, one of the last messages I got from Wink in its app was assurance that they’d extended the deadline for subscribing and were re-evaluating their subscription program.

Too late. I made the switch. The Wink Hub’s blue light is no longer glowing (or blinking) over my kitchen. Instead, the SmartThings Hub’s much tinier form and green light is up there.

So far, I like it. I was easily able to set up my floodlights so they automatically go on when Ring detects motion outside my front door at night — and go off 15 minutes later. I don’t expect to have any problems setting up my light timers when I travel and don’t have a house sitter hanging out here. And I can still use Siri to turn on my out-of-reach Cocktails sign when it’s 5 PM somewhere.

And if I get really crazy someday and decide that I want Alexa to eavesdrop on my life so I can turn on a light without touching my phone — not likely, but who knows? — I can make the whole system voice activated via Alexa.

Thanks, Wink, for convincing me it was time to make the switch to a more modern, reliable, and cost-effective smart home system.