yesterday i bounded up the moss-covered, concrete steps up the hill to our porch as is my habit, caught my toe on a step and sprawled full length on the stairs, threw out a hand to stop my nose from smashing on a concrete step and broke my f'ing right wrist. i get a cast and ceri gets to learn to cook. the children wait impatiently to get to paint on the cast. hopefully, this shouldn"t slow us down any.

Now we can all have an AmeriCymru toolbar on our browsers - just one click to go to the site, the blog, the Welsh calendar, the Welsh Web Ring, and MORE!

1. Go to this link to download it: http://AmericymruToolbar.OurToolbar.com/ 2. Click on the big button which says download and it will download.3. Restart your browser to see it.You can choose from different styles, the super simple I picked above (for those of us with tons o' toolbars as it is) or something more pleasantly aesthetic, like this:

Enjoy! Bravo, Ceri!

Go to the poll at the bottom of the Left Coast Eisteddfod page to vote on a name for the dragon on David's lovespoon and this week on his blog he's exposed the wings on the Dragon and cut them out:

On a Wing And a Prayer!

This week the dragon finally gets his wings clipped! He might also have a name fairly soon too.

There are a number of ways I can approach the wings in terms of how I shape them. Many times I carve a concave 'dip' between the spine of each wing section to give them a bat-like appearance, but for this spoon I am going to cut in evenly. This will create wedge shaped section which will cast more shadow and have a vaguely art deco feel. I think that with the bold scales running along his back, the bolder and more stylized look of the wedge tapers will work nicely.

More on David's Blog here

.

Who can forget those classics like, "Tie Me Kangaroo Down" and "Stairway to Heaven"?In the very early hours of the morning, Ceri has inexplicably added 20 Rolf Harris Party Classics to his page for us all to enjoy and almost certainly destroyed our social life. So if you've been missing some of that odd but mainly very cheerful sound, you know where to find it: Ceri's page .

Ceri's built an embedded Amazon store ( http://astore.amazon.com/americymrucom-20 ) for us under the Stores tab, above, ( also see advert in the center column ) and we want this to include every book, movie, album by Welsh authors, musicians, filmmakers, etc. If it's in Wales, about Wales or by a Welsh or Welsh-descended artist, we want it listed!We're going through to include whatever the two of us can find or know about and this is something everyone can help us with. If you've got a moment now and then, please have a look and suggest items for inclusion to either Ceri or myself. You can get to the store from the Stores tab or from the big honking ad in the top of the front page. If you've got something good to say about a work on Amazon, please give it a positive review so other people know it's good and it's Welsh!Thank you very much!

Money to create a Centre for NanoHealth at Swansea University have been promised by the Convergence European Regional Development Fund.From Medical News Today :"These nanoscale technologies, for example, will enable researchers and scientists to apply engineering methodologies to successfully build, repair tissues such as cartilage and skin using advanced cell culture techniques including adult stem cell methods."Dr Chris Wright, Portfolio Director for Process Engineering and Senior lecturer at Swansea University explains: 'The School of Engineering has been applying advanced nanoscale techniques to develop materials for nearly a decade. By applying techniques typically used in process engineering to regenerative medicine, we are able to not only predict and control the way cells and structures behave, but test these before they are reintroduced or implanted in the body to give better results in healthcare applications.'"Read the rest of this article here .

From David's Lovespoon blog , All images and text 2008 David Western, All rights reserved unless otherwise noted:"

Continuing where I left off with the Celtic knotwork, the first image (4845) shows clearly the little ramp that I am developing to form the over and under structure of the knotwork. As mentioned before, the key at this stage is not to go too deep. Until I am satisfied that all the cross-overs are in order and there are no doubles, I'm not going to commit to digging too much out.

Again, the paper pattern glued to the spoon blank comes in very handy as it lets me clearly see where the overs and unders are and lets me find out in a big hurry if I have messed the sequence up anywhere! This image shows how shallow the ramps currently are and that I have lots of depth to play with if there is a problem. To follow all these little ramps around and dig them out, I make use of a nice, little Japanese 1/4inch wide chisel. These chisels are only about a third the size of a regular carpenter's chisel and allow me to manoever in these very tight surroundings without struggling to control a big handle and long blade.

To really ramp the knotwork and set the overs and unders off, I start digging in a bit more substantially with the gouge. First I repeat the stabbing action whereby I cut straight down at the intersection of the knot, then I progressively increase the depth of the ramp, all the time working to meet the low point of the stab cut. If I meet up cleanly with the ramp, a nice chip pops out and the intersection area is nice and neat with no cut marks or bits of uncut wood messing things up. Ultimately, I want to work the ramps up so that they curve gently over the intersecting section and there are no flat spots through the curve. (Flat spots can be seen as the slightly duller coloured sections between each ramp) What I'm after is a nice domed effect where the ramp rises up from one side, crosses over and then dips back down on the other side.

With the knotwork ramping nearing finished depth, I make sure to get a nice fair curve along each section and then I put a light chamfer (the slight easing of the edges you can see in this photo) to make the knotwork look more finished. I'm careful not to overdo the chamfering as a too round knot starts to look a bit too 'soft' and more like a shoelace than a wooden knot. I find about a 1/16th of an inch worth of chamfer is about right to soften the knot without making it mushy.

Occasionally, if the wood is presenting a troublesome grain, I will run a file or even sandpaper over things to even everything out just before I apply the oil finish. However, I NEVER sand while I still have carving to do. The grit which breaks away from the paper and embeds itself in the wood while I'm sanding makes a great abrasive which then plays havoc with my nice sharp knife blades. I always leave sanding until I'm are positive that I won't need to carve any more....it saves me a ton of time in wasted sharpening!

Next week I'll start shaping up our Draig Goch ( or in this case our Driag Gwinau). This will bring another series of challenges trying to get a nicely rounded body that retains lots of vitality and vigour! In the meantime, Valentine's Day is coming and if you neglected to get your sweetie a lovespoon I would suggest you hang your head in shame.. OR, consider donating a buck or two to help sponsor the Left Coast Eisteddfod in its first year! Your donation could win you this very lovespoon, show you for the romantic you are and get you out of the doghouse!

"

Americymru member Helen Davies works for ITV local Cymru , a Welsh website which shows daily news coverage and has an archive of shows which include: "like Pobol Y Chyff with Rhys Ifans, Torri Gwynt with Dewi Pws, Ffalabalam, Miri Mawr, Ty Chwith with Wcw, Troi a Throi etc." For ease of access for our members we have embedded ITV local Cymru's broadcast page here on the site - it's in the Today tab in the navigation bar at the top of each page. http://americymru.ning.com/Wpage/itvlocalcom-1 Here's Helen's post on this in Cymraeg:- http://americymru.ning.com/forum/topics/gwefan-itv-local-cymru and a translation for people, like me, who don't speak Welsh yet:"ITV LC is a relatively new website broadcasting daily news bulletins on video, and also a number of S4C classics such as... Some new ones are added each week. Also filming events round Wales not shown anywhere else. If you have any requests for programmes from the archive or for stuff for us to film, contact... let us know what you think of the site."Hopefully this will, besides being interesting to Welsh speakers, be an aid for those of us who want to learn and don't have people around we can talk to.Thank you so much, Helen and ITV local Cymru!