Silversmithing

The second course I took in Chiang Mai was a silver jewelry making course. In the one day course you can choose to make either a pendant or a ring. The design can either be your own, or the instructor has a number of samples you can choose from. I decided to make a delicate ring with an attached concave hammered disk. I had a little familiarity with the techniques, as we discussed many of them in grad school, but I had never really gone through the motions. I started out with silver wire:


Annealed it to make it malleable, turned it into a circle, and soldered the ends together (with a little creme brulee torch):


Hammered out the kinks and polished it:


Cut out the disk from a sheet of silver metal (the instructor had me use something quite thick, which resulted in a different effect than I had in mind--not quite as delicate, and it didn't pick up the hammering texture as well as I suspect a thinner piece of silver would):


Hammered the disk to make it concave and give it texture:


Polished everything up, soldered the two pieces together, et voila:


My very first ring! I'm fairly happy with it, especially considering it was my first attempt. I would definitely like to take more silver courses, perhaps at Lillstreet in Chicago, if I ever make it back!

Thai cooking

One of the very excellent things about Chiang Mai is the plethora of courses you can take. Anything from traditional Thai massage to meditation to my favorite: cooking! I took a day-long cooking course from the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School. I had such a great time! I made quick friends with some of the other people in the class, and really enjoyed both the cooking, and the food. It was a very professional set-up. First, you get an introduction to Thai ingredients, and the master chef demonstrates the dish you will be preparing (there were 6 dishes over the course of the day). Then, you go outside to your own cooking station and cook the dish for yourself! They were very accommodating for my vegetarian diet, although I ended up using fish sauce in everything--you really can't avoid it in Thai food, and I'm not all that strict about diet when I travel--it would prevent me from eating so many delicious things!

Tom Yum soup--spicy, lemon grassy, absolutely delicious! The best part is that it only took a few minutes to prepare (plus veggie and stock prep, which our friendly assistants largely did for us.)

Preparing to make green curry.

Me! Making a chopped mushroom salad.

For desert, 'rubies:' water chestnuts coated in tapioca flour with syrup and coconut cream. These were actually really good. The water chestnuts had a nice crunch to them, and the tapioca had that gummy bubble tea consistency. The red color is from food coloring.

Chiang Mai

I ended up spending 5 nights in a luxurious boutique hotel in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand. It cost me $18 a night! I'd say it was worth the splurge. Chiang Mai was absolutely delightful. I spent the first day walking around, wandering into temples, knitting in a nice little cafe, and just relaxing. I can't remember the last time I felt so at ease!

Another street scene--I like these kinds of pictures. It's so hard to capture what your every day experience looks like while traveling in a foreign country. More often than not, I just take pictures of the beautiful places. In this image you see one of the communal pick-up trucks-turned-taxis. If you look closely, you'll see that one of the passengers is a monk, dressed in the traditional bright orange cloth.

Small historic temples with lovely teak carvings.

I think this image speaks for itself. Wouldn't this look great as a textile pattern? Maybe I'll use this if I ever give spoonflower a try.

Worldwide Knit in Public Day

In my attempt to hightail it out of Ayuthaya, I ended up spending half a day in the Ayuthaya train station waiting and waiting for a very delayed train. Happily, I had easy access to my knitting, and so I celebrated Worldwide Knit in Public Day on an old-timey train station bench in Thailand.


My bright yellow vintage sweater is coming out quite nicely, thank you. I finished the back panel (seen here, half finished) and just started on the front. I'm meeting up with a Sydney SnB group tomorrow, fun! One slight problem is that I may have been using two different sized needles (2 and 3 US) for an unknown portion of the back...hopefully my gauge won't be too far off if I try to stick to just size 3s for the front. We'll see! I think this one might be wearable!

Ayuthaya

Upon leaving Cambodia, my impromptu travel buddy and I parted ways and I headed North. I spent my first night in Ayuthaya, Thailand. Ayuthaya was the old capitol city, and has a scattering of ancient temples throughout the fairly modern city. Apparently I came down pretty hard from the highs of Cambodia, because I found myself a bit depressed in Ayuthaya. I no longer had a buddy to hangout with, I was the only person in my guest house, and the town was pretty much dead. The thing is, it was actually quite a lovely place. Walking around the extensive park lands, you see local Thai people exercising, kids riding bicycles, and the ancient temples are not too shabby! My mood was such that I decided to get out of town as soon as possible the next day, to skip Sukhothai, another former capitol, and head straight to the mountain town of Chiang Mai in the far North. Looking back at my photos now, I don't think I gave Ayuthaya enough credit at the time.

Before entering a temple, you must remove your shoes and put them on the racks (or 'lacks' in this case). (p.s. clicking on any photo will allow you to see an enlarged version, should that interest you)

To honor the Buddha, and gain merit, practitioners can purchase gold leaf and apply it to Buddha statues. In this case, they weren't very well adhered and were blowing in the wind.

A taste of what's to come

I'm in the Bangkok airport waiting for my flight to Sydney, so I thought I would start to share a bit about my trip. I started out with a few days in Bangkok, Thailand. Unfortunately I caught a pretty bad case of food poisoning from the airline food (thanks American!) I hadn't had a bite to eat in Thailand, and yet I was laid up in my guest house room for a full day. Once I had that out of my system, I was free to enjoy some of the sights. I spent several hours at the Grand Palace/Wat Phra Kaeo. I took a lot of detail shots throughout my trip. I often find the textures and shapes to be really inspiring later in my art/craft work.
This last one is the backpacker street I stayed near--Th Khao San. It's kind of nuts, and not at all authentic, but some people love it!