Prepping for the Bead & Button Show

Four more days available to do everything needed before I leave for the Bead & Button Show. A little sense of panic begins to invade my space. Here's my reality: I sleep in my living room in a hospital bed because I can't get up the stairs. My usual studio space is up those stairs or down a couple of steps in the sunroom glass studio. I haven't made it up the seventeen steps to the second story yet, but I did get out to the glass studio today by the roundabout route.


I used the walker shown above (see the platform for my right forearm, since I can't put weight on the right hand yet?) to go out the front door over a couple of low steps down. It's safer than letting my husband try to get me out in there in my wheelchair. Then I transferred to the wheelchair and he pulled me backwards over the new decomposed granite path around back (large wheel first is easier over uneven ground). Then he brought the walker around as well, and I could move around the studio. Perched on a tall stool, I cut glass tiles and molds for my students, then ground edges on the molds. It felt so good! And it made me want to spin around and try out the torch.


Yesterday I spent the entire day making tear-aways, reworking my procedure since I was having some issues with poor transfer. So today I have a collection of materials to pack. Check those off the list. Well, I did finish the copper electroforming handouts as well, a time consuming task.

Today I was very productive. Besides the glass work, I made new metal clay pieces for a Garden Window pendant. I need samples at various stages, including fired but unassembled. They're in the kiln now. I edited my handout for that class. And I packed tools and supplies I need for the two classes I'm taking: a glass casting workshop with Susan Lenart Kazmer and concrete for jewelry with Robert Dancik. Two of my favorite teachers, so I should be filled with inspiration before I start teaching.

If you're coming to Bead & Button and have Wednesday free, there are still a couple of seats in my class available. Or just come say hello.

Bird Journal - Near the Finish

The bird journal is almost done. Only a couple of small fold over bits to complete. Those will be minor, with just a quick drawing or collage. I'd like to add a few things to many of the pages. Of course, as I worked on the pages, I developed new ideas and wish I'd used them earlier. Adding those to the earlier pages would unify the whole.


This page has the most appropriate quote of the moment. I can't believe I only found this one recently. I didn't feel that I had another long quote appropriate to fill in the big space, but a search turned up this one. I guess it just didn't call to me before, as it does now.

Healing

Today marks seven weeks since my surgery. Next week I go to see the surgeon, hopefully to remove the brace permanently from my right arm. X-rays should show how well the bones in my leg and arm are mending and how much longer I'll be wheelchair- and walker-bound. My face is still sore over the left eye, where I cracked the orbital bone, and I still have pink patches from the abrasions, but I don't look like a car crash victim any more.

I've learned a lot about tibial plateau fractures. For example, only 1% of all broken legs are this type, considered to be a very challenging break to manage. There is a classification scheme that further subdivides these fractures in terms of how they're handled. Although I don't know my exact classification, I gather from the amount of hardware in my leg and the reactions of the orthopedic surgeons that it's one of the worse versions. I know that the bone was broken into three main pieces, with the ACL pulling one piece out of place. Now I have two plates, one on either side, and about ten screws pinning it all back together, along with bone graft material. On my list of things to do is call the hospital to get a copy of the X-rays and CT images.

Drop foot, caused in my case by surgical trauma to the peroneal nerve, has left me struggling to control the muscle that lifts the foot and toes. Without the ability to lift the foot at the ankle, walking is difficult since the toes drag while the foot moves forward. Electrical stimulation of the muscle and nerve has led to a huge improvement over the course of the past few weeks. I've become proficient at picking up marbles with my toes, which I can't do nearly as well with the left foot. The nerve damage was apparent immediately after surgery, and the surgeon told me that the nerve was sulking, but 99% likely to recover. This week I had a physical therapist in out-patient PT who worked with me as an in-patient. She gushed over the amount of movement I'm getting with the foot, so that's reassuring that the improvement is real. I've graduated to lifting my foot enough to tap my toes, which I do every time I think of it. It would seem the surgeon is correct that the nerve will repair itself. It's just extra work.

Beyond the third incision leading to a sulking nerve, it also hasn't healed properly. Somehow the sutures weren't as even as on the other two incisions. The tech who removed my sutures at two weeks was hesitant to take those out on the third incision, but the surgeon "wasn't worried." Within a day of the application of the steri-strips, I had indications that it had opened up. When the steri-strips dropped off the two well-healed incisions, this one remained open. Prescription antibiotic ointment and a lot of bandages have helped it progress, but it's still scabbed over at seven weeks. I think the hole under the scab is very deep.

In spite of the wound, the occupational therapists allowed me to go into the heated saltwater pool this week. They seal over the small scab with Tegaderm, a waterproof dressing. I'm "toe touch weight bearing" which means that I can touch the toe of the bad leg down enough for balance, although I usually just balance on the good leg. Technically, I'm allowed 20% of my weight onto the leg. The buoyancy of saltwater means that I can walk in water at chest level. So I've begun to slowly walk back and forth across the pool.

Seven weeks of avoiding pressure on the leg is long enough to retrain the brain on acceptable modes of transport. My brain now believes that hopping on the left leg is the way to go. The right leg never relaxes while standing, but always hovers in the air. Retraining the brain takes conscious thought. Reach the leg forward. Put the leg down. Push forward with the good leg. Put weight onto the bad leg. Lift the good leg, while leaving the right leg down (!!!! something I haven't done in seven weeks!). Roll forward on the right foot. Push off with the right foot. Stand up straight. In actuality, the buoyancy is so great that it's hard to get a lot of forward motion out of pressure on the foot. A one-pound ankle weight helps.

Interestingly, the amount of brain involvement in the issue becomes obvious by trying different walking directions. Walking sideways or backwards seems almost normal, because the brain has not retrained those methodologies. Treading water feels totally normal.

The standard treatment for this type of broken leg is no walking for ten to twelve weeks, so I have up to five more weeks to go until I can start partial (50%) weight bearing. Right now I'm looking forward to being able to weight bear on the right arm, which will relieve me of the platform on my walker. Regaining the right arm hopefully will make getting upstairs a possibility for me, as well. I'm wondering if the surgeon will recommend crutches as an alternative to the walker. I feel I might be a menace to myself on crutches. While my fine motor coordination has always been extremely good, the very fact of this injury lends credence to my lack of gross motor coordination.

Luckily, I'm not having much pain anymore. I totally weaned off the narcotics as soon as possible after seeing my regular doctor. Since I typically never take any painkillers, four weeks of heavy narcotics were scary. My very alternative medicine friendly doctor was obviously nervous about the oxycontin usage, even at the lowest possible dose, and recommended immediate discontinuation. I did manage to do that, with some withdrawal issues, and continued on the hydrocodone for another week or so. Now I take an occasional ibuprofen, but rarely need that. I expect pain management may become more of an issue when I can actually put weight on the leg again.

For the foreseeable future, three days per week of therapy, two hours per day, will be my lifestyle. Add in the hour round trip travel and my days are shrunken. Add in the fact that EVERYTHING, from showering to dressing to loading into the car takes at least twice as long as normal, and the days don't have enough time in them for everything I'd like to do, like writing more on this blog.

For my initial post on my injury, telling how I got into this crazy predicament, go here. For Frankenstein photos of the injury, try here. For a laugh over my garage shower, see here.

Workshop with Hadar Jacobson

Despite the wheelchair and walker, despite the inability to drive, despite limited utility of the "making" arm, I refused to cancel my weekend workshop with Hadar Jacobson. My angelic husband drove me to San Antonio and returned later in the day to retrieve me, both Saturday and Sunday. He ran up and down the stairs to help me pack tools, searched for the last minute supplies I totally forgot about until time to leave, and even packed drinks and snacks for me.

Hadar is rather an icon in the metal clay community, with a distinctive style of her very own, a beautiful aesthetic that I've admired for years. It was a huge treat to sit beside her for two days, listening to the accumulated wisdom spilling from her soft-spoken lips and watching her worn, stained hands easily forming clay into things of beauty. Although I couldn't afford to purchase the piece of jewelry that called to me (a lucky fellow student took it home), I did so enjoy holding piece after substantial piece, examining the details: design, finish, size. Who knew that fabulous dress was as large as my hand??

We had two main projects in class: copper clay combined with silver or bronze.


The first project involved making copper clay pieces to fire, with holes for later "hot rivets" of silver, torch-fired. I'm afraid my planned earrings are heavy enough to pull my earlobes to my shoulders. I should have made them much thinner and lighter. But I have the concept down, and I can make these into pendants or some such.


The second project started as either bronze or copper clay, deeply textured, then inlaid with the other clay. I experimented with two approaches for the texture, one from my Flock texture, bronze inlaid with copper. I notice that filling around a raised texture leaves the edges open to more erosion during the polishing phase. Obviously there are voids arising from poor filling technique, too. Hadar warned me that my textures were probably not quite deep enough, so I'm happy that it worked this well. I could have polished out more of the roughness, but with a loss of the image, since the copper is clearly thin here. Notes for future applications.


Since I remember liking the carvability of bronze, I tried a simple carved bird on a branch. Let's just say, leaving my Dockyard carvers at home and having limited hand mobility didn't produce anything much. But the concept is good. Better finishing needed, again.

Perhaps the most useful part of the workshop to me was to see Hadar's approach to finishing. We purchased tool kits so that we could use our Dremels to follow her techniques in class. Some of the tools were things I use already, and others I'd read about in her books. Using them her way still seemed different and I'm sure some elements will creep into my later work. Planning ahead for removing material after firing is definitely a different mindset, so I'll have to give it some thought.

It was really nice to feel almost normal for the weekend. Distraction with a fun project took my mind off my leg, but I paid with increased swelling and exhaustion. Everyone was so very helpful in making it possible for me to participate, from bringing me food to ferrying work and materials around for me. An injury does at least make it obvious how many nice people there are in the world. Thanks to all, old friends and new, who helped me have a fun weekend away from my preoccupation.

Fine Silver Bird Ring

My progress is rather slow due to healing exhaustion and therapy, but I did manage to finish a domed silver ring. The silver dome was shaped over a polymer clay mold, then attached to a thick base with embedded wire shank. To finish, I wrapped a mock bezel around the side and notched the top edge.


It's a substantial ring, rather solid on the finger, so now I want to make another lighter version.

Bird Journal

A few pages of the bird journal have remained incomplete, while I try to come up with appropriate motivation to continue. This week I did spend an afternoon working on the bluebird page. It's interesting how I can go through my collection of bird quotes and find something that seems just perfect for the moment.

Garage Shower

Every invalid deserves a shower, even if they can't get up the stairs to the built-in kind. Outside showers can work, for example, camp showers, but neighborhood privacy can be an issue, not to mention the hobbling to the location. Then there's the deluxe garage shower build by a handy brother-in-law. I'm thinking I should write this up and take it to the rehab hospital for them to show others in the future that have the same issue.


This is essentially a shower fixture, with handspray, mounted onto a piece of plywood, then suspended from the two door rails in the center of my garage. Eyelets and rope hang a couple of shower curtains around the shower bench (standard medical supply issue). A non-slip mat and ladder shelving complete the ensemble. Just makes you want to zip outside for a toasty warm shower, doesn't it? Oh, remember the garage is too large to steam up, so a warm afternoon is best. Just hook up the water lines via long hoses to the nearby laundry room washer supply and open the garage doors to drain.

Torch Fired Enamels

Finally got a photo of the stash of etched and torch-fired copper domes I made working up to my Master Muse ring tutorial. I'm really wanting to make some more of these, and I'm thinking that they're pretty enough by themselves without the silver settings.


I'm wondering if I can drill holes through some of these to make earrings or a bracelet. Anyone have experience drilling through enamel? It's pretty thin, so it might work.

Earring Give Away

Bet you thought I forgot, in the midst of my life chaos?? Slowly, but surely, I'm trying to gather all my loose ends together. It's been more than a month since the Month of Earrings Challenge ended, but I finally had my friend Leslie write the names of all those that completed the full thirty pairs onto scraps of paper. Then I tossed them mightily and had her draw a name. I even let her choose the pair of earrings to give away, so as not to bring my own personal bias into the selection.


Congratulations, Purple Ebren -- I'll be sending you the pair of sapphire chevron earrings shown here. To collect, please send me your snail mail address. You can use the contact button on my website to e-mail me.

To all who played along, I give my heartfelt thanks for inspiring me to meet my own challenge and allowing me to have a collection of earrings to take for my Meet the Teachers table at Bead & Button. I'll list any that come home from there on Etsy in mid-June.

Keyhole Clasp Bracelet #4

I had parts sitting around unfinished for another bracelet clasp, so that was one of the things I worked on this first week at home. Syringe work with a weak dominant hand is a challenge, to say the least. So is bezel setting a cabochon. Patience and persistence can make it work, although it might not be as perfectly polished as usual.


This one has a labradorite cabochon with beads of coral, sterling silver, magnesite and Czech glass.

These round clasps don't have enough slide room to make the keyhole mechanism very secure. The triangular clasps were designed to work much better, but I like the look and simplicity of these. I'm thinking I need to add a small security chain.

Making While Disabled

Healing is humbling. It's just such a total mental shift to suddenly, unexpectedly, be unable to do all the things you take for granted. How to cope?


In the hospital, one morning with delayed rehab, I started doodling my standard branches with birds onto my cast. Understand, I'm right-handed and the cast was on the right hand. It took an inordinate amount of time to dig through the art supplies left-handed, testing all the pens in my tote bag to see if anything would mark on rough fiberglass and plaster. Then it took even longer to slowly, carefully etch in a few branches and a bird, left-hand style.

I had such grand plans for that cast, color washes and detail work, a page from my bird journal worn on my arm. And then the surgeon cut it off after less than two weeks! I never took photos because it was a work in progress, and I thought I had weeks of work yet to go. Funny how you can cheer the saw (and plead for a moment to scratch before they immobilize the arm under the X-ray) and simultaneously rue the loss of a canvas not completed.

Now that I'm home, the first order of business was to set up some means to create. That's the real test of an artist, I suppose -- the need to make something, even something minor, no matter the limitations. Despite stupor inducing medications, drudgery with weights and therabands, extreme fatigue that turns an insomniac into an afternoon napper, and a body that isn't up to it's usual stroll across the room, let alone artistic finesse, I need something to show for the long hours, some distraction that reassures that at heart I'm still functioning.

My dear family understands that I must make things. After all, I left a science research career after the birth of my son made clear that some readjustment was required to leave time for sanity-saving making. Hence they rearranged the downstairs for me (suggesting that this was all a plot on my part to take over even more of the house for work space), complaining of sore calve muscles after myriad trips up and down the stairs to bring load after load of supplies down. The "nice" dining table is now covered with metal clay supplies, pliers and punches, bits of wire, and finally my desktop computer, so that I can access the full array of photos and back e-mails that need attention. DH has become my studio assistant, trundling trays of clay out to the kiln in my sunroom studio, two unnavigable steps down, a world away, and doing his best at shooting the results in my photo tent upstairs.

I have slowly regained more capability with the right hand, even adjusting to typing in the brace, only erasing ten times more than usual, rather than a hundred. I've learned to hammer left-handed, to give verbal pictures to direct DH to whatever I need upstairs or outside, to make slow but steady progress on little bits of stuff.

Maybe simplification is the order of the day. Or working in components. At any rate, I've told myself that what I make doesn't have to be good, it just has to be. So, I finished off the almost dried-out clay from three weeks ago and opened more. I completed the clasp parts sitting there waiting and fired them. I tried the new flower templates and made a couple of pairs of earrings as a test.

Progress, slow but steady. The artist heals, as does the body.