Playing with Fire!

Now for the economic news: : 18g wire is now up to nearly $12 a foot! This means that I seriously have to rein in my wire habit. I will, I will...right after I buy a few more feet.

The soldering class that I took on Saturday opened up a whole new way of working with wire. It was an excellent class, one of the many offered by The Bouncing Bead, a great little bead shop in La Mesa. (link) The instructor Christy clearly has a passion for working with metals, and her instruction was thorough and clear. It certainly helped that I was one of only two students in the four-hour class.

We worked with Blazer micro torches and tiny chinks of soft silver solder. I have to tell you, something magical happens when you apply the flame and watch the silver begin to glow orangey pink and then suddenly that tiny chink turns liquid and literally melts into the piece that you are soldering.