The Pipe Maker and the Dragon

I mentioned in my post, The Rose, of a fairy tale written by my little sister. This same sister has since started a blog with many if not all of her stories on it. The specific story of The Pipe Maker and the Dragon, is posted here, steinsstories.blogspot.com/2011/04/story-for-erik, and titled Story for Erik. I encourage everyone to read this delightful story and to look at her other stories. They are brilliant. I am sorry for having failed to post a new pipe today.

The pipe I am currently working on has taken it upon itself to thwart my attempts to form it to the designs I have intended for it. This is something I have not experienced with my other designs but it has given me much to ponder. My first attempt was to inlay silver wire. I fear I was to hasty in my procedure for creating the inlay channels and they got away from me, From there I decided to cover those mistakes by trying a new form of distressing. I was not at all satisfied with the look it gave the pipe. I am now pondering what new design I should attempt.

The Rose

I would like to dedicate The Rose to my little sister, Christine. While I had the idea to do this pipe in my head she wrote a fairy tale for my birthday about a pipe maker who has to go on a quest to rescue a maiden. He would carve pipes for the people he met to look like the flowers he saw along his way (I will look into posting the story or a link).

 This was a wonderfully fun pipe to make. I spent a lot of time hand carving and hand sanding on top of the time I spent with the flex shaft engraver my wife gave me for my birthday. I am excited to finally complete it as I have been working on it in spurts for over a month. The Rose is my first completed Churchwarden. I spent a lot of time on the stain trying to get the green to be more green and less blue and I would consider myself to have been successful.