Celtic Labyrinth, or December?

My very first contact with chainmaille was a Byzantine chain, as demo'ed by David Scott Plumlee on an episode of Beads, Baubles, and Jewels.  I was hooked by how the tiny little jump rings of exactly same sizes and shapes morphed into this mesmerizing pattern.

I'll bet I'm not the only one that started their chainmaille addiction, uh, I meant "journey", from this weave:-)

There's a reason for this Byzantine Effect; and this Celtic Labyrinth pendant is a good example.  Look closely and you'll see this weave is another play on the same weave but with rings of rather different AR's.

And I do like making this weave with the Byzantine flip method, which is building the pendant inside out starting from the center rings.  This allows for a sturdy, immobile structure if you wish.  The other method, which builds the 2x2 chain first, inserts center rings last, seems difficult for me to properly close the center rings, i.e., no room to land my pliers.

So, what about December?  Right, the other weave that actually works exactly the same way as Celtic Labyrinth, but with different number of points; December as it's recorded in MAIL weave library has 6 points; Celtic Labyrinth has 4.  Those who came to chainmaille before me had already discussed this on MAIL.

I experimented with a few 5 pointed ones in different AR combinations.

Isn't it amazing that while they are all made in the same manner, the results are quite different, even with some 3-D effect!

Be it Celtic Labyrinth (Unit) or December, the influence of Byzantine is not hard to see, and I now have a much deeper appreciation for Byzantine weave's versatility.

Any insight learnt from making this pendant?  When needed, square wire rings are quite excellent in increasing the stability of the weave.  Now you know!! :-)

More views of the pendant, as well as my experiments, are here and here in my Picasa web albums.

Steel Magnolia

I named this bracelet "Steel Magnolia", it got nothing to do with the movie (no, please don't tell me I can't use the name), just simply, big bold beautiful magnolia flowers made in steel.

As to the weave, it is called "Double Spiral Half Byzantine + 1". Hee hee, that's a long name, isn't it? But very accurate, just take a look: There's the double spiral, half of a Byzantine (is that aka. a unit of Box?), and + 1 holding onto the next half Byzantine. Or, I'll fess up, I just love everything with double rings:-)

I learned it from this tutorial by Onering on MWw. Mine is made with 1 mm x 1 mm square stainless steel rings from C&T Designs. These rings were originally sized for JPL5, but since I don't know JPL5 (not yet :-), I used it for this fun bracelet.

Would have been great if I had a different metal in same size to work with in this bracelet, maybe copper, kind of like the pictures in the tutorial. Maybe next time, I will. This is too much fun to make only one.

Scary Weave

Relax, nothing scary here, just 2 new bracelets made in Scary Weave pattern. This is in response to Maillers Worldwide's July 2010 challenge.

I had wanted to try the weave for some time now; earlier attempts didn't go far; I had a hard time placing the connector rings. Base on the tutorial, I think it's meant to form a 3-tier step up or down, depending on how you look at it. But some photos of finished work out there show either a peak/valley style or multiple-ring-connection. I don't know which is which... They all look nice to me:-) Mine followed exact steps of the tutorial, and I must say, it's easier said than done. The Honey Bee connection was much easier.

Any who, here are the specs:

Copper and stainless steel square wire rings from C&T, 20-K, 0.8 mm x 0.8 mm, AR sized for HP4-1, so about 5ish. The stainless steel rings' AR seems wee bit smaller than copper; my attempt to make a "copper orbital on one side, steel the other" didn't work... it only flexed to the steel side. Photographed here is the remake on the copper/steel mix; it only comes up half a unit shorter than the all copper one.

RPI: This one measured 3 units per inch, so that makes it 21 rings per inch.

The heart clasp together with the catch rings are hand forged from 1.3 mm copper wire. I'm getting to be quite good at this:-)

The matching earrings came from extra units of the all copper bracelet; the ear wires are from 1.0 mm Niobium, handmade then anodized.

Enjoy the slide show!