The content is awesome, but even more importantly what really shows through to me is the thought and care that was taken to produce this book.This isn't one of those 'let's produce a book as fast as we can so I can say I wrote a book,' books. It is obvious that this was a labor of love and came directly from Lorena's heart. The quality, thought, and care, of everything written and the arrangements of the brooches and the idea itself shines through. It felt that she treated each piece as if it were her own. This book is a work of art in every aspect.

My work is on pages 60 and 61.

Origami and my brain don't mix. I just don't get it. But it is so useable with fold forming metal. 

I start with trying it in paper. Fold here - ok. Now fold here - ok. Now fold here - ok. So far so good. But generally after step 3, the directions get a little foggy - like this... Now fold here here here and here turn it fold here now and then here backwards and once more like this and you have a bird. Huh?

I have this altered paper jewelry book which has an origami lily necklace. So I thought I'd try it. It took me 3 days and the help of my son how to figure out how to do it in paper. BUUTTT... I did do it, and then I did it several times. Then I did it in copper.

 May 22 is Buy a Musical Instrument Day (according to the 'Bizarre and Unique Holidays' website!) Have you ever bought and played a musical instrument? Any funny or interesting stories about that? Is any of your metalwork musical in some form?

Ack, yes I have played musical instruments... however I am not very musical. My father was a singer, sang Come Back To Sorrento in Italian at my wedding and my brother and sister's weddings. He also played the violin well and was able to play other instruments a bit too. I remember my brother and sister (who are both older than me) taking violin lessons when they were young. They are not very musical either. I remember them practicing... sounded very much like cats being killed.

I played flutophone with the rest of my third grade class (group lessons in school.) I remember Hot Cross Buns. I was jealous that my elementary school pal, Debby, could play the piano. When I was 14, I took guitar lessons from Mr. Luscre, down the street from me. I could read music and could pick out tunes, but I think my lack of rhythm wasn't helpful. Also, the choice of music wasn't thrilling... I did play The Lonely Bull (by Herb Alpert) fairly well! 

When I was in college, I took piano lessons and bought a small piano. In my head, I sounded awesome... occasionally I would record what I was playing... not so awesome. 

Then some time in 1976, me and my friend Nancy decided to become rock stars. We practiced several times a week - she played guitar and we both sang. In our heads we were awesome! We had our first performance in a bar that I worked at called the Wooden Hinge.  We called ourselves New York City, because we both had NYC T-shirts and thought it would look good if we were uniform. We weren't really ready to play out yet. We only knew 2 songs and we didn't know them well enough - so we needed our little tape recorder to help us along. That night I had 10 shots of ouzo and Nancy had 10 shots of Jack Daniels. We were performing 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling' (along with the help of the Righteous Brothers on our little recorder) to a full house, when we realized that they had the juke box on in the other room so I went to ask them to turn it off and Nancy kept singing, difficult song to sing harmonies by yourself... well, I'm not really sure I knew what harmonies were back then and even if I did I certainly couldn't sing them... so I guess it didn't really make any difference if I was in the room or not. Everyone thought we were pretty funny, and we could be flexible so figured we would be a comedy group instead. We performed every Wednesday night for the next year. We wrote every show and even wrote and performed some songs. We always opened with 'Heart Break Hotel.' Oddly, even though we wrote a lot of the songs we could never remember all the words so we would write them on our arms. Even more oddly, the only song where we could remember all the words was 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' by the Beatles IN GERMAN. Go figure.