Chainmail - To you, Patrick

As I get older there are more and more people who I have known in some capacity who have died. Patrick taught me how to put together chainmail. Patrick is dead now. He had pretty aggressive cancer when I met him and he was hoping that a move to Oklahoma and some pretty heavy radiation or chemotherapy was going to get him back on his feet. it worked for a while, or so I understand, but this wasn't Patrick's first go around with cancer and I found out a while ago that he passed away. I had received some chainmail a few years ago that had been used in a weapons demonstration. It was pretty hacked up and several links were separated or missing. I ad been messing around with it, but recently I have been taking it, repairing it and using it to make new pieces. I have a couple of belts, a few bracelets and as a joke to some friends back in Anchorage, I may end up making a thong. Every time I make something though, I think of Patrick. I remember sitting around the shop, with Donavan deciding that it was too crappy a day to fire up the forge, which I now realize it was really because Patrick had come in and the last thing anyone wanted to do was waste time that could be spent with Patrick. Patrick was sitting in the office with the rest of us and pulled out the rings and started showing me how to put them together. It is deceptively easy and yet deceptively hard, If you do it right it is faster than you think and if you do it wrong, it can take all day to get anywhere. Patrick got me started though, and every time I put a couple rings together, I think of him.

Hello world

So here I am, I moved to Kentucky from Alaska to be with my wife. You can see her blog here. I am trying to start my own forge in my spare time, what little of it there is. If I update this blog at all, it should be to update on the progress of the this endeavor.