This is really long.

I know I said I was going to kept posting over the summer...So two months into it, here's a post!

This summer has been semi hectic, becasue my family is selling our house. Unfortunately, my camera cord is packed away somewhere unknown, so I can't share the quite colorful before and quite bland after picture of my room. But once I can get to that, I'll post it!

I meant to post about Peter's Valley as soon as I got back, while I was still on a Peter's Valley high, but I got back like 2 weeks ago, though I'm still very fond of the place. I made Damascus steel! It was so cool! Once again, I wish I could post pictures! I worked in the blacksmithing studio and it was like the coolest thing ever. It was just such a completely different experience than I've ever had. At first I was disappointed that I wasn't doing a fine metals workshop, but I'm really glad I got placed where I did. The blacksmithing studio was a really great environment, and everyone there was just so helpful and welcoming. I was definitely nervous going in, especially becasue I had no previous blacksmithing experience, but the people were just so great, and I recommend Peter's Valley completely to any of you guys.

My instructor, Neil Kessler, was fantastic. Go to his gallery link for examples of really cool Damascus steel. I did a five day workshop, and it was so fun and rewarding. Man, I have never been that tired and sore in all parts of me before, but it was so worth it.

Right now I just have bars on Damascus steel. I want to make jewelry out of them, but I'm not exactly sure how to approach this, especially because most of the studio tools are not to be used on steel. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I'm also working on how to work some of it in to my honors thesis. I have some ideas for that and I've done some development of it, but not enough to be ready to share.

In August I'll be up in Towson again, working till 5 on weekdays and then spending my evenings in the studio, making production work for club sales and developing my thesis. But before that, I'm going to California for 2 weeks starting Saturday!! I'll mainly be in the bay area, but I'll be going a little South of there. I'm going to go see Velvet da Vinci while I'm there, so hopefully, when I find my camera cord, I will just have so many pictures to post on here.

This post got ridiculously long. I apologize.