Post Harvest Fest

My wife and I had a blast at HarvestFest 2011 in Thornton, CO. For all the great people we talked with, thank you very much for stopping by and we are very glad to have met you face to face.

With some people we discussed more involvment with the SCA group in our area. I did a horrible job giving the proper information out to the officers in the local area. The people you should speak with are THL

Conrad von Zollern and Katelin De Irelande. Press them with questions like where to meet, what you enjoy doing or what your interests are, and they will help you get started and involved with renaissance reenactment.

This blog is short and I will have another post as to why we haven't blogged since June and all the blessings Christ has given my wife and I.

The Knighting Weekend

We're going camping! If you didn't know already my wife and I like camping, it helps us feel closer to God and His creation.
...Okay, I like to camp grill as well. But truly what is most important is seeing that "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims His handiwork." [Psalms 19:1]
We are going to an Adrian Empire event to witness the Knighting of our really good friends Daniel and Mary. How we met them is an interesting series of events but they run a great shop in Colorado called Crossbow And Bolt. I made these knight chains for them and my wife and I were honored with the privilege of delivering their chains to them during the knighting ceremony.

On top of that, there's a cold war between Mary and her friend Rita involving lemons. If I remember correctly, it somehow started with them being at a restaurant and one of them got squirted in the eye with lemon juice. It's moved on to lemon bouquets, lemon colored bandannas, and now this:

My wife and I will be ceremoniously delivering this to Rita this weekend and we can't wait.

My friend Zach was very happy with his chainmaille playmat I made for him. I made a new chainmaille piece and it ended up looking great.

Being busy is a good thing; God is wonderful! Take care and God Bless!

Being Busy in a Good Way

   Our hands have been very busy even after the cancellation of ThorntonFest. We dedicated our efforts to finishing and shipping the order for Diane in Oregon. She had a unique order for a burka dress and apron designed to reflect equestrian riding, specifically Icelandic horses. The finished product looked like this:

I stayed busy making a playmat for a friend that ended up looking pretty decent:

As for this week, we are making a very special necklace for an event coming up this next weekend. It's a gag gift between some friends and we'll be more than happy to post some pics once the product is finished. On top of working on that, I'll show you the new style of chainmaille I'll be making an item out of:

When we make things with our hands, my wife and I speculate at the grandeur of what God has created with his hands, and we praise Him and honor Him for His works. Amen!

Dashed!

   People here in Denver most of the time will say about the crazy weather here: "Welcome to Colorado". I haven't lived in Thornton area more than three years, but heavy hail in May?

Going for a Hail May!

On top of that there was about 3 solid days of rain. As a result, the field that ThorntonFest was being held at got flooded out, and the fair has been cancelled. It made for a rough day as my wife and I were on a mission to get stocked up on inventory. We definitely have alot accomplished, and now we're looking for other venues to sell product. Ah well, guess this Saturday we'll just have to go motorcycle riding and visit our family. Good times and to God be glory and righteousness!

The Final Leg pt.2

   What a great day! As we head closer to ThorntonFest 2011 my wife and I are crafting a large inventory of goods that we are hoping people will enjoy having as much as we enjoy making them. Every day we gain new ideas and make new things with our God-given hands. Here are some samples of some chain bracelets:

These colors seem familiar...

If I have time I will make some other team colored bracelets for men and women. We are very excited to meet people and if we hand out 100 business cards Saturday we're calling that the start of a big success.

   My wife got this to help us with our business:

Want to dance?

 The great story about this dress size helper is the story about its cost and how we found it. These fancy stands run about $260US after taxes. We prayed about it and waited on God's time for an answer. A few days later my wife is in a local fabric store and she's checking out clearance items. Lo and behold, here's the dress size helper, claiming to be damaged. After she checks it, we talk about it and go look at it together. There was a broken neck mount for an alternate neck size adjuster, and an internal flex bar had come off its spot weld. We bought it, and after putting a machine screw and bolt in place of the busted spot weld, it works like a champ. Final cost: $62.

   There were so many other blessings on us this last week, and I hope you see and know all yours throughout all your days. Life is good, God is awesome!

The Final Leg

    Hello and Happy Sabbath to you all! My wife and I are celebrating the Holy Sabbath of the Lord Jesus Christ by resting. Alot! We had a rough week when our refrigerator freezer fan stopped working and we were scrambling to save what foodstuffs we could from spoiling. After a screwdriver and a shipped part that arrived later, we were back to having a functional fridge.
   This last week we had a sum of money hit our Paypal account. We both thought someone had bought a steel chainmaille vest through our Etsy website.

["YOU FOUND: CHAIN"]

   We investigated and discovered instead that a kind lady in Oregon had bought a Burka Dress & Apron attire set. So my wife and I were both ecstatic and going crazy because we're now a week away from ThorntonFest and we had already been trying to build an inventory of handmade cards and chainmaille jewelry.

Pink and gold Persian 3-in-1 chain weave

So we're resting this day and are both gearing up for this last leg of the workload before setting up our booth at ThorntonFest this Saturday. Business is sometimes overwhelming, but it's great to be busy doing what we enjoy. Take care and God Bless!

Chain Galore (Jon H)

My wife and I have been struggling to focus on our work this week, possibly due to the fact that we just returned from vacation. This turned around for the better yesterday. I have been a bit stressed about having a decent amount of inventory for ThrontonFest, but after yesterday, I don't know why I was worried.

"Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." [Matt. 6:34]

I completed some bracelets I had crafted with the idea that I would make them in the local school colors. Since the cost of sterling silver has skyrocketed lately, it's not cost effective to make some nice dainty women's necklaces or bracelets. These I made with anodized colored aluminum and brite aluminum:

These will be one of the more abundant chaincrafted stock that we'll carry and will be selling for $10 each. I figure the high school kids will want to wear them.

I made this necklace and my wife kindly informed me it's not a dainty women's necklace:

                  "Heavy is good, heavy is reliable..."

I tried this to see how interesting it is that the copper and brass spiral around in an undending fashion. Sadly it wasn't as great as I thought of it in my head. Not so much the spiraling effect, but that when you put in on it bunches up and curls constantly because it's trying to unwind itself. I ended up undoing the spiral effect and I feel better about it having an owner that wouldn't have to deal with the bunching problem.

Things are coming along smoothly. I have two Knight's Chains to make for my really good friends Mary and Daniel, who run Crossbow and Bolt. They are receiving their Knighthood in archery within Adrian Empire. Before that though, I have this to tackle and it's almost half-way done:

It's good to be busy! Take care and God bless!

The short road to a public festival

ThorntonFest is coming up on May 21st and we're working hard to get a decent stock of crafts to sell. Today my wife and I prayed for greater focus in completing our tasks on hand and after our bible study, I returned to finishing a chainmaille bag I had begun. This was what it looked like:

The soda can's identity was kept secret for its own safety.

It somehow struck me funny that the "soda can" had a chain headdress on it. After amusing myself about this and realizing I will probably be the only one who sees this as funny, I got to the task of completing the chain bag. A few hours later and...

Voila! Done and done. It holds soda cans, bottles, dice, rocks, small children (not really), marbles, or any small objects you might need to throw at people (we do not condone ANY violence). Considering how many pieces I would like to have for our upcoming craft show, it is very gratifying to have this done and off my plate. Praise you Lord for keeping my hands strong and my mind focused!

Happy Resurrection Day! (Jon H)

What a week and a half leading to the day of the resurrection of our Lord! My wife and I were blessed with the opportunity to go to my cousin George and his wife Ashley's wedding. Before leaving we asked the Lord to bless our trip and to see His glory and presence in an area of the USA that we have never traveled to. So while we drove through snow, nickel-sized hail, and lightning, my wife read some crafting books and got the idea for these:

She crafted these because a friend of ours is having twin girls within the next couple weeks and we're sending these to her. We pray for her to have no complications with child birth and are happy because she has been blessed to have children with her husband after many years.

It's crunch time! We're beginning to create inventory for the upcoming ThorntonFest in Denver, Colorado.We would like anyone in our area to come meet us in person. If not, visit us at www.henningcrafts.com to see our full inventory and prices, we also have items at www.henningcrafts.etsy.com, and we are also at Facebook. Thanks and to God be the glory!

The Early Beginnings - (Jon H)

My wife and I enjoy life tremendously. It has its ups and downs, but we look up to Christ in all things so that the downs become a perspective to the idea that our lives are actually pretty far from truly being down or in a rut. I come from a CNC machining background, my wife from a CPA background. What we greatly enjoy is crafting, and the items we craft we give thanks to the Lord that we have the hands to make them and the minds to create them in almost any fashion the buyer sees fit. Our only limitation really is the tools we have at our disposal. I keep trying to convince my wife we need an embroidery machine to expand on our clothing potential, but she reads me perfectly and sees that, although there's potential for embroidering business income, that really what I want is a machine with a computer that I can program and run. Ah well, someday we'll get that machine.
What we enjoy creating for our customers are handcrafted cards for the holidays or for any special occasion or holiday. We also make simple renaissance attire for the person interested in starting in their local medieval group(s), and we also make chainmaille shirts and jewelery for medieval or modern day dress. We would implore that our readers visit the following links to see what we create. Thanks and good day!

www.henningcrafts.com , www.henningcrafts.etsy.com