The Move to the Midwest

We took an arduous journey of 3 and 1/2 days to travel from Seattle to Milwaukee this summer on our move. It seemed fitting that the morning we left Seattle, we were ushered out by a summer rainstorm. Leaving our house was hard to do..... above was our last picture of the house in Maple Leaf.



We had the Subaru loaded up with some of our belongings, 2 cats and a dog and as many of the houseplants that we could fit. We thought we would take our bikes in case the moving truck didn't arrive in Milwaukee for a while.










Our first night was spent in Wallace, Idaho at the
Stardust Hotel. We have stayed in this small
mining town before and it is one of my favorite
places that I have been recently.
It is also home to the trail of the Hiawatha.





Before we left Wallace, Henry and I took a morning walk to explore some of the back streets which seem unchanged by time. Here is Henry taking in some of this historic town.

Last Seattle Project?

It looks as though this will be the last significant jewelry project for the bench here in Seattle. I decided to make Anne an anniversary surprise for when she gets home. I think it turned out pretty well. It is fabricated from 2 layers of 22 ga. sterling silver. It is the first time I did this type of design and this style of pendant and sometimes things just work out. I think I would have had a melt down if it hadn't turned out (the project was also supposed to be a stress relief from the packing that I have been doing).

Actually I don't know what I was thinking, it definitely is the last major project I do here, I packed up all of my tools, well... pretty much all of them.

My New Tiffin, Dabba, Lunch Pail??

I just got this really neat lunchbox/pail from my friend at a garage sale last week. I knew that she brought it back from India and I looked it up on the web and searched for 'indian lunch box', which I figured would turn up some information about this new treasure. I found an amazing amount of info about the container which it turns out is called a 'tiffin' or 'tiffin tin' or 'dabba' (Hindi word) which seemed to have been popularized in India during the British rule (according to Wikipedia) . I found an article about the people who deliver these containers to workers at lunch time in Mumbai. One of the most amazing things is their rate of error in delivery is extremely low, almost non-existent. This is stunning, considering that it is estimated that the delivery people (dabbawalas) deliver around 175,000 dabbas over lunchtime. In the end, I am curious as to the actual origins of the container British or Indian? I found a few articles that people said they are popular for kids to use as lunch boxes in Thailand also, hmmm.... Lastly, I found a link to another popular spice container when I searched for 'daba' and I found a masala dabba, check it out here.

Cool Pocket Tools

I just recently found the neatest pocket tools that are made by a craftsman named Peter Atwood. Pictured above is one of his tools caled the Gasbaby - a Ti tool that includes a couple fittings to turn on/off the regulators of common gas cylinders for welding etc... How cool would that be to accesorize my jewelry bench with?

Heading to Milwaukee

Finally an update on what we are doing! Packing, packing, packing. Then we are heading out for the Midwest! Here is where we will be living in Milwaukee (Bayview). We still can't actually believe that we will really own a house.