Medici: Poison Ring

Medici: Poison Ring, my latest creation. Labradorite and silver with a spring catch. This is proper medieval stuff. At home in any of the great houses of Europe in the middle age to renaissance period.

As per normal available at our cheekylemur shop on Etsy

Complexity

One of the reasons we moved to France was to escape some of the complexity of modern life. By a large extent this has worked, we live a very simple life; Get up in a morning, take kids to school, chop wood for fire, light fire, make jewellery, cook dinner, etc. etc. But nevertheless I'm still amazed at just how complicated it can be made..... Take my car for example its packed full of electronics. Each function of the car is controlled by its own computer system and each one requires its own bit of software to access it. In the old days I could take a car apart with a reasonably basic tool kit and put it back together, now its altogether different. Its a brilliant example of how technology can be abused. Take the service light for example, on the last model of my car the service light came on to remind you that you need a service and could easily be reset, my car oh no...Now- only the main dealer can reset it! Its up-selling in all its glory, Fiat know that the closer they can lock you in to the main dealer, the more money they make! Now to my mind its my car, I should be able to maintain the car if I so wish, Fiat on the other hand know its more beneficial for them to tie me in to a lifetime of main dealer servicing. My farther (who never went near a garage in his life) would turn in his grave, and I don't like it one bit either! But I'm afraid this is the way the world is going; cars, software, any where you look companies are adding in complexity as a means to lock you into their way of life. Microsoft .....software as a service, another good example. "don't you worry about putting up your own servers, its really hard, just give us all your money and we'll make it all go away..there.. there...that's better. That said if you look at all the really successful applications in recent years they are not the Microsoft way of life type applications. No not windows X or sharepoint way of life 3 but actually the simple stand alone innovative ones. Blogs, facebook, google, twitter, flickr etc. Now the one thing all these apps have in common it that they are all single purpose and they all have a really simple interface. You don't need a three day training course to drive twitter, nor should you need to (Microsoft.. look and learn).

And of course there is hope on the horizon, never thought id say it but god bless those hard working Chinese. If you look at the products coming out of China at the moment you will see 40year old perfectly good simple designs for scooters, quad bikes and motorcycles. Air cooled, carbs etc etc.  When those boys get their head around car production god help Fiat! A nice simple car, robust, economical, no electronics and 2/3 the price of a Fiat..... All with the same standard engine so you can buy bits of any street corner. It will happen but its still 5 years away. When it does there will of course be the most almighty repercussions for jobs and the likes of Fiat, Renault, Peugeot etc. If the car manufacturers were smart of course they join forces and head this off at the pass... Common engines between manufacturers standard open interfaces to electronics etc but unfortunately they are too wrapped up in their own self interest to do so. Think about it; I could go out and buy one of 10 different cars with a 1.9TD engine that does around 45-50mpg and gives out around 100+BHP. Each car would have a different engine; WHY! When the Chinese make a scooter there is one engine with two variations that is used in 30 different scooters by a bunch of different manufacturers, brilliant!

So the world is changing, but as a good friend of mine say's; "May all that you wish for be what you really want".

Thank God it's February

January is always one of my least favourite months. It's long cold and dark, and I'm more of a summer kind of guy. This year has been no exception. Added to this the fiat broke down on the 3rd of Jan and was in the garage for 6 weeks!! Thankfully we have some very good friends who lent us one of their cars; after cheekylemur lost the keys to the loan car from the garage, but the less said about that the better.

The house has taken a bit of a back seat as I've been mostly chopping wood for the fire and making jewellery. Somehow while its been sooooo cold its seemed a lot more productive to get some jewellery done!

As ever with jewellery its a matter of personal taste but hey if at the end of the day you make what you would like than chances are other people will too!

Next on the house front is to do the floor in the kitchen and finish off the electrics and lights and stuff. As the weather warms up a bit I'll start to tackle a few of the smaller jobs. The good news is that this last few days the weather has really perked up a bit and there has been a really hint of the first signs of spring. Starting with the crocuses outside the front door! yipee

Some of CheekyLemur's New Year Creations

Sweet Silver and Rhodolite Garnet Ring

Blue Ladybird

Christmas 2010

Well is Christmas and snowing again. 1 year on and a lot has happened so I thought is would be good to recap on a few of the achievements this year.

So this year then, well we've built a shed..Described as:

• "the poshest shed in Basse-Normandie!" Review by A Taste of Garlic
• "a frankly fantastic garden office" Review by Shedworking

And the house:

• Put in the first floor oak beams and floor board
• Made and fitted the rest of the windows
• Built the internal walls downstairs
• Connected the electricity
• Plumbed and fitted the downstairs bathroom
• Dug and installed the fosse and pumping station
• Built the laundry
• lined the chimney and fitted the Esse
• Lined and insulated the kitchen walls
• Rebuilt various sections of stone wall
• Made two bathroom cabinets, a kitchen table, one internal door and three workbenches.
• All the other stuff to enable the above....

Not sure whether that sounds a lot or a little, but either way its been a lot of work. Added to that of course there has been all the other administrative stuff associated with moving to a new Country and settling two young children into the local schools.......

Well there's plenty more to do, so after Christmas it's back to the grindstone

Bench2

So here it is my new workbench. Its a little more expedite than Julia's but hey its made up of all the bits of wood I had lying around. That said its fully functional and everything is easily to hand, bench peg, hammers and the skin under the bench is made from Colin Slingsby's old poof (I kid you not).

And I've even started using it. I have to say it is lovely to have a workspace of my own. Recently I'v been using Julia's bench and its very difficult since everyone arranges their tools differently and then when you come back everything is in a different place! Its also fair to say that Julia was even less happy with the arrangements than me. Still peace descends once more as we each have our own bench......and relax. 

While I was looking round for a set of tools and splitting up some of the spare tools on Julia's bench, I came across a few little treasures  which I have re-furbished. The set shown below were given to be by a very good friend before we left for France. There was a good few boxes of tools including the ones below. The hammer  I've made a new shaft for in ash, and looks and works great. Incidentally the ash came from a broken axe handle so even that was "recuperated". The pliers have been lovingly re-polished (using the polishing motor given to me at the same time) and look fab too. They have a lovely fine point unlike the modern ones you buy today. 

My dad was a great one for finding old tools and repairing them, in fact his favourite screwdriver he found in a skip! He found the process of taking something unused and making is useful again very satisfying and I have to say I have too.

And here is the start of my pendant. Its obviously a work in progress but I thinks it's going to work out alright

I'll post the finished article on my next post and you can judge for yourself.

And here is one I made (much) earlier modelled by my lovely daughter

Home Sweet Home 2

OK its not finished but at least we can now use the kitchen. The things we have working now are: Toilet, shower, hot water, range cooker, kitchen sink, washing machine, fridge and freezer. Is there anything else?

The laundry....LE GRAND LUX

That's the bench our good friends Mark and Julie gave us, covered in duvet and a throw.

My stud wall between the kitchen and the laundry / bathroom

The table in action

The shed on a very cold -8 deg foggy morn

And I've made myself a new work bench. Today I installed the bench in the shed,  just need a desk lamp and I am up and running.

We do take the internet for granted now, but it is amazing! Yesterday Julia sold a piece of jewellery to a guy in Australia! 10 years ago the prospect of living and working in deepest darkest Normandy and (hopefully in time) making a living selling jewellery all over the world would have been inconceivable. Now whilst not quite a reality it is at least in reach! God bless the internet.

Oh and one last thing, I really love my ESSE IRONHEART! It cooks brilliantly, warms the whole house and looks great. If you have space for one, buy one, trust me you won't regret it

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