Ooooh! Haley is gonna be pissed! The silver chain for one of the pewter pieces she made is broken.

It's a relatively minor break; the piece itself is still ok, just the chain is broken. The piece almost got lost because of the chain, though, and this is a custom piece. Haley made the prototype by hand, crafted the mold, and poured the metal herself. Both the prototype and the mold have been either lost or damaged since then, so it's impossible to replace. 

Every piece she's done has a special place in Haley's heart, but this piece has a very special significance for her. It's one of her first pieces she made and it's also her first custom order. As for what it is, she'll only tell me it's the name of an angel, but she won't tell me which one. She says I'll find out if I'm supposed to know, but how am I supposed to find out if she won't tell me? Pfeh! Sisters!

There is apparently a piece of music hidden in Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. There's apparently some disagreement as to if Leonardo did it intentionally or not. All I know is there is something playable in the painting and Leonardo probably won't get around to telling us the answer any time soon.

Supposedly, the hands and loaves of bread correspond to notes, and you should read the music from right to left (the same way Leonardo wrote). There's news articles and Wikipedia which can tell you all about it. 

The music is supposed to be in the same style as what was common in the time that the painting was made. It sounds a little bit gothicy (time period, not the people who wear black and pretend they can't feel anything) or chanty. I decided to take a shot at the song. After all, how many people can say they've played Da Vinci's music? I didn't do a performance quality piece, then again, I just wanted to play it.

I'm going to talk about my sister Haley today. She was named after Haley's comet. Considering what she was named after, it's not surprising what activity she got into. Metal made from fallen stars (meteorites) is supposed to have special properties, and many people think a comet is just a fallen star that hasn't fallen yet

Her passion is pewter and everything related to making stuff from it. She makes the prototype, then the mold, then she pours the molten pewter into the mold. Her preference is for making jewelry out of pewter, but she's happy as long as she's surrounded by the smell of molten metal and can watch it flow and pour. She's made several pieces of jewelry this way, custom one of a kind work.

Haley is really hard to describe. She is very friendly. People just open up and talk to her, telling her all the secrets of their trade and letting her have or borrow things they normally wouldn't let others. She's walked right into a bronze foundry (where they pour bronze into molds to make statues) and spent four hours talking with them about how they make molds and pour metal. 

She also gets exactly what she wants, people just don't say no to her. At the end of her visit to the bronze foundry, she walked out with a stack of irreplaceable books about mold making and design. She's gone into a machine maintenance building and they let her cut off a sheet of stainless steel and walk out with it. She went to a chemical supply company, informed them that they sold the chemicals she needed (they didn't know this), and returned a week later to pick up her order of chemicals.

She is also a little bit scary. I saw her buy a pair of welding gloves just so she could juggle hot metal that's over 400F (over 200C). She's also poured liquid metal while wearing almost nothing, hard metal music blaring on the stereo, the smell of molten metal in the air, and hot metal crackling and popping when it hit the ground. And she was laughing and singing!

She is also incredibly brilliant. She just absorbs any information related to what she wants. Metalworking, vulcanizing rubber, encapsulation, sculpting, soldering, plasticine...she just takes all the information and combines it. She doesn't believe there's anything she can't learn, so there's nothing she can't learn.

I'm still experimenting with my new toy. The Samson Go Mic is doing incredibly well, the sound quality is better than anything I've had access to before. It even allowed RubyStarfire and I to give a private performance online :)

My sister Hesty can get really picky about recipes. She wants recipes that are usable and reasonable to make. She's come across all sorts of brownie recipes that are far from usable: melt three kinds of chocolate, find a butter with a particular fat content, mix butter and oil, use two different kinds of flowers, etc. She hates all that extra work; once in awhile it actually makes the food better, but usually it just makes things more complicated and a large mess in the sink for later. She finally found a recipe that's easy and tasty *I can vouch for that ;)*

This was also Hesty's first time using a springform pan, the kind of pan that's like a puzzle. I personally don't think the bottom of a pan should be able to fall off, but she's the cook. She did say she'll probably use the tart pan for the next batch of brownies.

RubyStarfire got me a new toy! He got me a Samson Go Mic to use when recording songs. Before, all I had was the crappy little mic on the front of the computer; now I have something to make higher quality recordings, and it's portable! Here's a video I made while experimenting with the new mic *ignore the man touching me, I'm the one who's important here ;)*.

I did a little tuning exercise to make sure my voice was in good shape followed by some random playing and fingering exercises. The mic was inside to catch the full range of my singing, but I think it caught too much of my range. I will continue to experiment with different positions and see how well they work. 

The mic was real easy to setup, I just plugged it into the computer and voila! There was one slight hiccup, the computer decided it was a sound out device as well as sound in, so it tried to use the mic as a speaker. It also comes with music editing software that can record audio and add audio to video, but unfortunately it doesn't capture video as well :( 

Recording the video was a lot of fun. It's been awhile since I've been done a recording and I hope to do many more in the upcoming months. Follow my progress with new music here!

These are the very first things that my sister Hesty made when she got her hands on an oven here. There's just nothing like home made chocolate chip cookies, and you can't find them outside of the United States. Even the ones you find in bakeries just aren't real chocolate chip cookies; they're cookies alright, and they're often yummy, but they aren't chocolate chip cookies. The recipe Hesty used isn't anything special, just a modification of the old Nestle one, but that's what makes a home made chocolate chip cookie :) 
**she does have some tricks she uses for these, but she won't share them with me :(*

I'm so excited! RubyStarfire took me shopping in Pigalle! No, no, not for sex stuff. I need a new travel coat because the lining of mine is getting ragged. Pigalle is famous for being a place for seedy sex stuff, but it's actually kind of a pathetic place. Most of the sex shops try to cater to the seedy image people have of clandestine and illicit sex parlours, but they do it for tourists instead of doing it to create a legitimate atmosphere or just being legitimately seedy shops. When you get off the metro and turn around, however, you find music shops and there's a family friendly area a five minute walk away, complete with cafe and merry-go-round.

See what I mean about the lining of my coat (case) being worn? In some spots it goes all the way through to the outer shell. This just simply won't do! I have very delicate skin that bruises easily, which is why I wear a special coat when I travel by airplane. This is why Ruby took me to Stars Music to look at new clothes.

The gentlemen there were very nice and helpful. They went out of their way to find me something that would fit. They had one coat that fit, and it looked very nice, but it was also very expensive. The price tag was 269€! It definitely looked like it was worth that, but the price was a little too much for the budget. They suggested calling Fabriquant Fly to see about getting one custom made. Now I have to take my measurements and send them off to get a quote. Oh how embarrassing! To send your most personal and intimate measurements off to a complete stranger! *^^*

We didn't get me a new coat, but Ruby got me a Samson Go Mic while we were at the music store. I've been looking for an affordable and portable mic to record myself while singing and I finally found one! Haven't had a chance to try it yet, but here's a picture of an adorable little friend trying it out :)

My sister Hesty got tired of only finding those blueberry muffins that taste like sugared oil or have that crumb topping on them. Outside of the United States, it's hard to find blueberry muffins that are just blueberries with nothing weird like white chocolate or crushed nuts. She picked up some frozen blueberries and started whipping up a batch of fresh muffins. The only problem is the frozen blueberries had thawed, so the muffins are purple inside. They still taste good, though :)