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We have added a new chat feature to the bookstore front page. The idea is to allow non members to add suggestions for listings etc in the store. It is not intended as a chat feature so much as a suggestion box. If anyone has an idle moment or better still, an actual listing suggestion, please drop by the store and try it out
Reproduced from David Western's Portland Lovespoon Blog .
After last week's little tirade on the sad state of the craft market, I came back to my dragon raring to go. With all the major carving completed on the front of the spoon, this week is all about sweeping up any obvious inconsistancies, errors or annoyances which still remain.
Most of these lurk in the cutouts of the Celtic knotwork and the vines.
To deal with fuzzing of the wood, scruffy saw cuts or knicks and blemishes, I make use of needle files. These remarkable little files allow me to polish up rough areas without involving sandpapers. I find that the file (whether full sized or in needle form) saves me a ton of money on abrasive papers and even more time not having to fold up the sandpaper into odd shapes. They also have the great bonus of not leaving sanding grit behind in the wood and dulling my tools should I need to revist the area witht the knives. I don't spend a great deal of time with the filing as I will be turning the spoon over soon and working from the other side, so there will be a final opportunity for tune-ups later.
It IS however, a bit of a morale boost to have the front almost finished and to not have jobs hanging over my head before I go to work on the back.
Inevitably there are little areas which could benefit from a touch more knife work. Every time I turn around it seems like there is some aspect of this star which could be improved. I'll try to get as much as I can done now, but I anticipate spotting more on my last sweep when the whole spoon is complete. For now I go over the spoon with a nice little customized Flex cut pelican mini knife. For those of you with an interest in tools, to customize a pelican knife just like mine, simply drop it on a concrete floor while talking to some door-to-door type soliciting a sale. When the tip of the blade breaks off, you are ready to spend time at the grinder carefully trying to reshape things without over- heating the blade and loosing its temper. I should add that keeping the knife's temper is crucial...YOURS however, will be long gone!
The vines could do with a little bit of touching up too. For this I rip a couple of narrow strips of cloth backed abrasive and I then run the strips over the vine as shown in the picture. Running the paper back and forth gives the edges a nice, soft 'roundover' which gives the vines a natural look. I don't ever use anything coarser than about 150 for this process (preferably 180 or 220) so that the scratch marks from the paper going across the grain don't make a mess of things. I'm more concerned with getting the edges neatly rounded than I am about removing material.
Lastly, I give the spoon bowl another light sanding with 220 grit paper. This cleans up any last scratches and also gets rid of any accumulated dirt which has adhered to the spoon during the carving process. I know that sounds as though perhaps I am carving in a farmyard, but you would be surprised at how pencil lines, eraser sweepings, grease from the hands and metal from the tools can conspire to take the sparkle from your work. A light buff at a super fine grit like this will get rid of that stuff and get the wood looking pristine again.
Next week I'm going to flip the spoon over and have some dusty, noisy, dangerous fun with an angle grinder. Who says its all comtemplative quiet in the carving studio?
In the meantime, please consider donating to the Left Coast Eisteddfod! With every week that passes, this exciting event draws nearer and your support becomes more and more vital. I hope you will consider becoming involved in the Eisteddfod as a donor, sponsor, volunteer or ticket holder! And if you know any AIG execs who got the big payouts last week, ask them to send a couple of crumbs our way!
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Currently our membership stands at 2957. We are hoping to reach 3000 by October 13th ( the date of this years West Coast Eisteddfod ). If you are an AmeriCymru member you can help us by inviting your friends or anyone you think may be interested in joining. To assist with that we are pleased to announce a new feature on AC. It is now possible to invite your Facebook friends to join the site. If you click on the Invite tab on the top navbar OR go to this url http://americymru.net/main/invitation/new you will see the following:-
All you need to do is click on 'Find Facebook Friends' and they will automagically appear. You will have to invite individually and you can invite up to 200 per day. We are appealing to all our members to help us reach our new membership target by October 13th.
PLEASE HELP US TO PROMOTE WALES AND WELSH CULTURE IN THE U.S. AND AROUND THE WORLD....DIOLCH YN FAWR
A message from David Thomas Jones:-
We in the Fron Male Voice Choir are delighted that one of our albums has yet again been nominated for the NS&I album of the year at this May's Classical Brit Awards at the Royal Albert Hall. This time its Voices of the Valley Home. It's the only award decided upon by a general public vote, so can you please again show your support by voting, here is the link. www.classicalbrits.co.uk/nominations it cost nothing to vote and only one vote per computer. You have until May the 1st to vote.
Help a Welsh Boy Out!!! Singer-Songwriter David Lewellyn
David Llewellyn is a contestant in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest for his song "Take Us Down" about a father's heartbreaking first day taking his very young son down to work in the mines. The contest is done in two parts and then the winning songs of each face off and we all get to vote for which one we think is best. From the site:- "Winner Announcement -May 1, 2010, Grand Prize Winners of Session I and Session II will compete head-to-head in an online voting battle to become the Lennon Award Winner in their respective category." David won the first half of the contest and is now facing off against the second contestant (not a bad song but pedestrian compared to David's). Go here to the Folk category:
http://www.jlsc.com/vote.php to vote for which song you think is the best!
The Welsh Poetry Competition 20 1 2 o rganisers have announced the winners of the 6 th international competition and the overall winner was Sally Spedding for h er poem She wears green .
The winning poem creates a mood and expresses emotion, it challenges and influences. She wears green: we all wear green. We recycle, save the planet, watch nature documentaries, fill the bird feeder every winter, yet we live in a nation where around 4 million scientific experiments are carried out on live animals annually, less than 3% of the population are vegetarian, and important wildlife habitat and green zones are destroyed with increasing regularity. This poem challenges us all. A prose poem, yes, but above all this is a very well written poem and a worthy winner. said John Evans, competition judge.
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The winners were as follows:
1st Prize She wears green by Sally Spedding
2nd Prize Lambing Language by Glyn Edwards
3rd Prize Austerity by Morgan Rhys Powell
John also choose a nother seventeen poems for the specially commended section with winners from all over Wales and t he UK , as well as from F rance, Michigan , USA and Wellington , New Zealand , which once again highlights the fact that the Welsh Poetry Competition i s a truly international event . All winning poems can be viewed on the competition web site www.welshpoetry.co.uk
The overall standard was once again excellent and weve had poets enter from Ireland, France, Spain, Germany, Greece, Italy, India, Pakistan, Thailand, China, USA , Australia and New Zealand .
Each year we go from strength to strength, last year w e publish ed an anthology of all the winning entries from the previous five years and in 2013 we shall be entering our seventh year! said Dave Lewis, competition organizer.
To get involved with next years competition , buy the anthology or just keep up to date with what we are doing you just need to visit The Welsh Poetry Competition w eb site , join our mailing list , Facebook group or follow us on Twitter .
Competition Web site - www.welshpoetry.co.uk
Competition Judge www.johnevans.org.uk
Organiser Web site www.david-lewis.co.uk
Aubrey Malone, a proud Irishman, sees many similarities between the Welsh and the Irish’s relationship with drink.
“I see a great affinity between Ireland and Wales in the sense of two small nations who were colonised by England and perhaps as a result of this developed a rebellious defiant streak, which led to colourful personalities who were sometimes unbalanced and sought either escapism through drink to make their poor circumstances bearable or dutch courage to try and do something about them. For every Dylan Thomas there''s a Brendan Behan, for every Richard Burton a Richard Harris and for every Anthony Hopkins a Peter O''Toole.”
Welsh Drinkers (£4.94 / $7.50 approx ) is published by Y Lolfa and is available on www.ylolfa.com and in Welsh bookshops.
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It is always a pleasure to introduce a first rate historical fiction writer on the site. All the more so if her work happens to be set in Wales. In this interview AmeriCymru spoke to Jean Mead author of The Widow Makers , Strife - The Widow Makers and Freya 800AD about her work, future plans and passion for sailing. Be sure to check out Jean's' website for details of her past publications and future speaking engagements.
Jean has also contributed an original short story for publication on the site. Joe Standish - Boyhood 1823 is a prequel to 'The Widow Makers' and revolves around incidents from the boyhood of one of its main characters.
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AmeriCymru: What attracted you to writing?
Jean: My interest in writing historical fiction was formed at school where English and history were the only subjects I actually enjoyed.
The history teacher was brilliant, she would tell tales of the past and the ring of clashing swords, the cries of battle, the sobs of the soon to be beheaded held me enthralled.
The English teacher was appalling, and to save her the bother of a lesson, she would tell us to write a story. The other girls would groan, but for me this was heaven. Whilst writing I could forget I was actually in the classroom.
Perhaps its the bad teachers that shape a childs destiny! The pupil must exercise imagination to escape the dreariness of the classroom.
AmeriCymru: Care to tell us a little more about the Widow Makers.
The research required to write a historical trilogy, the story based in the quarry lands of North Wales, didnt occur to me until I attempted to write the first paragraph. But so in love with the place, I enjoyed learning about the history of the quarry.
The quarry in the trilogy is the Garddryn but many incidents that happen in the story actually occurred in Dorothea.
The Widow Makers 1842-1862 was published 2005 and republished 2012 and is a paperback and Kindle e-book.
The Welsh Books Council awarded a Literary Grant for the publication of The Widow Makers:Strife 1862-1874. The book was published in paperback in Wales 2012. There is one hardback copy which was made especially for the launch of the book. This is now in pride of place on the mantelshelf at home. Strife will also become a Kindle e-book very soon.
The Widow Makers:Roads End 1874-1884 is almost complete and will be published 2013.
The characters and locations are the same in all three books but each edition can be read independent of the others.
It is difficult to imagine a time when the characters will not be the centre of my day and the people I dream about at night. If they decide to stay, they no longer just inhabit my office but have free run of the house, I may have to continue the story.
AmeriCymru: What inspired you to choose a Viking heroine?
Most Viking era books are male dominated with battle, skirmishes and gore. Others are mystical and fantastical.
My purpose was to portray a woman living more than a thousand years ago at the beginning of the Viking raids on Britain. To write about life as it really was at that time. How women coped when their husbands sailed across the Norse Sea to wreak havoc of the Picts of Northern Britain. With settlements deserted of able men the women were vulnerable from attack, and in the story, Knut, a man of the mountains crosses the threshold of Freyas longhouse with devastating consequences. Researching the longhouses, longships, the way people lived at this time has taken me to Viking sites, and museums, which has been fascinating. Though the dried-out remains of a Viking warrior does tend to prick the hairs at the back of my neck.
AmeriCymru: You have also written a great many short stories for magazines over the years. Can you tell us a little more about this aspect of your work?
Jean: Writing short stories is a bit of a hobby and I enjoy contemporary situations and characters. In short fictions I tend to write about the humorous side of life. Over the last few months Yours Magazine have published my stories. The editor is kind enough to do a little write-up about the author and the books, which helps readers get to know me and my day job.
AmeriCymru: You have generously contributed a short story for publication on AmeriCymru, could you introduce it for us?
Jean: Joe Standish - Boyhood is a short story about Joe, the main character in The Widow Makers historical trilogy. Writing about him for so long I naturally got to know every little quirk of his character. The short story I have contributed to Americymru is how I imagine Joe may have been in boyhood, long before the infamous Galloway pit, the immense Garddryn Quarry, and his desire to see a union for quarrymen, shaped him.
AmeriCymru: Your profile notes that you enjoy sailing, any sailing stories you'd like to share with us?
Jean: I met my husband through sailing. At that the time I was the Honorary Secretary of The Royal Welsh Yacht Club in Caernarfon, Tony was a visiting yachtsman. We married ten years ago. Our boat is Ruby, a Gibsea 372. The yacht got her name from the fictional quarry in The Widow Makers.
We sail locally with our club, the North Wales Cruising Club, this generally entails racing. Puffin Island, the Menai Strait, and the Great Orme of Llandudno are the usual sailing patch.
Independent of the club we enjoy sailing to the Isle of Man, Scotland and Ireland. As my family now live in Brittany, sailing across the channel has a double appeal, the family give us a great welcome and weather is better. Wales is a bit legendary for rainfall and gales. There are loads of sailing yarns I could share with you but most are x-rated.
AmeriCymru: Where can readers go online to purchase your books?
Jean: The books are available on Kindle and paperback.
Freya 800 AD and The Widow Makers are available in paperback or as Kindle e-books on Amazon. The Widow Makers:Strife which is available in paperback will also be available as an e-book very soon.
AmeriCymru: What's next for Jean Mead?
Jean: Next book to be published is No Goodbye a contemporary thriller. The Widow Makers:Roads End will follow. Next writing project is another Viking era book. I shall be asking the members of Americymru to help me come up with a good title.
AmeriCymru: Any final message for the members and readers of AmeriCymru?
Jean: I would like to thank Ceri Shaw for making my books available through Amazon/Americymru. If someone purchases a Kindle e-book or paperback I really hope you enjoy it. I am always available to answer questions from readers.
It really pleases me that the members of Americymru have such an interest in Wales and what is going on here. Diolch.
