Carousel Interlude: The Adirondack Carousel

Now that we're already in for the second snowstorm of the season here in upstate New York, I am thinking back to my summer vacation and how nice it was when I could go outside and enjoy the world. One of the most exciting things that happened on my vacation was randomly stumbling upon this beautiful carousel in Saranac Lake, NY back in August. Anyone who read my blog back in its brief heyday of regular posts in 2011 (yeah, I'm talking to you, audience of like two people) will remember my love of antique wooden carousels with carved horses or, ideally, many different animals. I wrote about the ones in Millville, PA and Myrtle Beach because they are such beautiful works of art. So it was a huge surprise to discover this wonderful carousel full of unique carved wooden animals in the remote Adirondack location of Saranac Lake. As you can see in the photos, these are not your typical carousel animals! A skunk, rabbit, turtle, raccoon, duck, fly and multiple fish were some of the creatures you can ride here!

This one-of-a-kind carousel completely mystified me, but then I learned that it is a modern carousel crafted in the antique style. It only includes animals that are found in the natural habitats of the local Adirondack ecosystem! The animals are hand-carved by artists, just like the antique animals were in the early twentieth century, the only difference being that these are living artists who donated their talents to carve the animals a mere decade ago as part of a community project. I love that this project attempted to keep the tradition alive. I thought that nobody cared about old carousels but me.

This is the sort of thing I would have made a special trip to go and see, so it was incredibly lucky that we just happened upon it while wandering around the sleepy town of Saranac Lake after hitting the tiny Robert Louis Stevenson Museum. We went to the Adirondacks to explore Lake Placid, but this carousel turned out to be the highlight of the trip!

I love carousel animals so much that I have started a Christmas ornament collection of them. Right now I have a giraffe, polar bear, and horse. If I ever leave the apartment again this winter, I plan to get another exotic carousel ornament. They really add pizzazz to my tree.

Blog Revival: Flatware Discoveries

("Countess," 1880, William Rogers)

If anything warrants raising this blog from the dead, it is the strides I have been making with my new hobby--flatware jewelry! This past January when I had just moved to upstate New York and was very stressed, I was whiling away too many empty hours in the old way, by quilting. But my heart just wasn't in it. I almost completed my second small quilt of the past year before giving up and turning to TV for solace. I seriously watched almost the entire series of Mad Men for the second time before deciding that I needed a new hobby to channel my creative energy and get off the couch. I have also been playing harp pretty diligently, but I think the crafting half of arts and crafts satisfies a different part of my brain or something, and I wanted to be creating objects that were not quilts.

So I decided to give flatware jewelry a try. I am way behind the times I think because I did not even know that flatware jewelry existed until last spring when I saw an octopus necklace made out of soldered forks at a craft display in an antique store. I had to have it! It's one of my favorite pieces of jewelry and this gave me the idea of making my own someday. Since then I have seen flatware rings and bracelets made by local artists at various antique stores and craft fairs, not to mention a ton on Etsy.

I am definitely not up to the level of octopuses yet. In fact, I haven't learned to solder at all and right now I am making all my jewelry without any heat or blowtorches. I bend the spoons through sheer muscular force! And I use the Dremel tool to cut and smooth the metal.  Someday I would like to graduate to the level of soldering even though it is quite intimidating. Using a drill is milestone enough for now.

But really, the thing that I might enjoy most about this hobby is looking for the flatware itself at antique stores. This has truly been a pleasure for me in a time of serious professional turmoil in my life. And I have found some beauts! Here is a selection:



From left to right the patterns are called: Carlton, Florida, Violet, and Wild Rose. I just love, love, love the variety of silverplate patterns that are out there. When I was in Pennsylvania last week visiting my parents I stopped in at Street of Shops (where I found the Carlton forks) and a few thrift stores. At one thrift store I was amazed to find these:

 

This pattern is called "Milady" and they were 10 cents apiece because they were so heavily tarnished that no one realized that it was basically a complete silverplate set. Here is what they looked like before I cleaned them up, very speckled and dirty:



There were so many I ended up leaving some behind. As it is, I have no idea when I will be able to use them all for jewelry crafting. But since they were so cheap they will be good to experiment with if I decide to branch out from necklaces and bracelets.

So far I haven't made much, but here are a couple of pieces that I think turned out pretty well.

This is my favorite and I wear it out a lot. I couldn't identify the exact pattern but it looks a lot like "Yorkshire Rose" that another company manufactured. The necklace below is a popular pattern called "Rosalie." I gave this one to a friend of mine. I love how art deco it looks!



The book Boho Chic Jewelry by Laura Beth Love has a lot of examples of flatware jewelry and I got some good tips from it. All of my flatware so far has come from antique and thrift stores in central Pennsylvania and upstate New York. I know a lot of people look for this stuff on Ebay, but checking out the local antique scene is well worth it if you have the time!