Chainmaille Fever

I've been making a looooooot of chainmaille lately! Between a set of several custom-designed jewelry pieces for a lovely lady in New York and a stainless steel version of my copper byzantine bracelet for a gentleman in Arizona, I was already spending much of my free time weaving, but then I sort of went off of the deep end.

First, let me apologize in advance for the horrible hotel room table point-and-shoot camera pictures. I'm on vacation for the weekend, and of course I brought my chainmaille supplies.

Stainless steel, it turns out it, is wretchedly stiff! I have a large stab wound in one finger after one of my pairs of pliers slipped while trying to close a ring, and the other, suddenly lacking any resistance, went shooting off and embedded itself in me. And I'm using the soft stainless steel -- there's also tempered spring steel used for chainmaille garments that you must need hydraulic pliers to use. At any rate, the weaving of this bracelet required frequent breaks, so I alternating working on it with working on an idea that occurred to me while weaving the bracelet:  a watch band combining double links of my classic two-color byzantine chain with the larger stainless rings. I love it and have been wearing it every day since I finished it!

Vacation is for learning new weaves, right? I'm being growled at to go take a shower and head off to breakfast now, but expect another post this evening with photos of the new technique I learned last night -- shaggy loops!