I've been feeling rather poorly these past few days, no thanks at all to protracted CNY snacking on all the "heaty" stuff. It's a darned shame that all these foods that are bad for you have to taste so good.

Anyway, I wanted to post new photos I took this morning of the gold Flint Hoops, which I had to rush through before going out on errands. I also discovered that my obssession with having them matching, symmetrical, etc means that I can only produce like 3 pairs per hour! I'm just not cut out for factory-line mass production :P And since I feel like boring you with details, these are the steps that go into the creation of each set.


1. Measure and cut wire, trying to avoid being gouged by the sharp ends.

2. File both ends and form the loops, making sure they are like 98% identical in size/shape and lie perfectly horizontal.

3. Form the hoops around a mandrel, and make the sticking up bits that hooks into the loops. Harder than it sounds to make everything exactly even :\

4. Lay flat and hammer with mallet, which does not flatten the metal, just hardens it. Reshape with pliers if necessary.

5. Hammer skinny edges with flat side of hammer to form the shape and background texture, then hammer skinny edges with pointy side of hammer to make the rough facets.

6. Test opening and closing, polish them up, and feel the lurve!