I took the faes into the powder coater. It wasn't easy to do. After spending countless hours painstakingly grinding iron molecules with tiny diamond coated dremel tools, and in the end I hand the whole lot over to a stranger and ask him to coat the faes with a sixteenth of inch coating... It was like handing over a painting to be finalized with rollers of semi-transparent decoupage.

But it turned out to be ok. It is not exactly the affect that I would have chosen but it is one that will blend in with the fence and gate while allowing the faes to stand out.

Here is Josheem before the powder coating and even before the coloring. She is the warrior-guardian of the group. She is the likeness of a long line of warrior faes. Although not likely, you may have noticed that the point of her spear is the same as the finial fleur-de-lis that adorn the top of the fence that she guards. This was not an accident but rather sheds a small amount of light on her ancestors that once guarded the gateway to the Fae Realm.

Many families brandish the fleur-de-lis on their crests but the simple fact that fleur-de-lis symbol can be found in all cultures of all times - especially in association with guarding or boundary posting - points to a more ancient ancestry.

And the fact that the 8 faes of my fence derive their origins from the fleur-de-lis seems not to be coincidence. When it came time to design the top of the gate I thought that I would continue the fleur-de-lis theme that adorns all 200 feet of the wrought iron fence - but with a little more flare. It was then that I considered the fact that a fleur-de-lis looks something like a faerie, the two wings spread wide, the head held high, crouching on the fence.

So I set out to make my own fleur-de-lis for the gate that looked something like faeries. 2 years later, voila!

So, I got carried away.... A little.

 Here is Josheem, the guardian, fully colored and powder coated. Her wings have the leaf look so common in her ancient line. Her boots and arm plates are mostly for decoration although there are stories of the scant armor coming in handy against certain kinds of venom unleashed by a particularly viscous flying beetle.

You may also be interested to note that her spear, with the sharp fleur-de-lis point is not used to stab. Long before King Clovis or Charlemagne or Solomon or even the New Orleans Saints took on the symbol, which represents purity, the guardian faeries tapped into the power of the purity of mind and heart to protect their realms.

Here is a picture of the IronFaes that I took a while back. The third one from the left (Sheneal) is the first.

I meant to say "winches" in the last post.
I don't have any "wenches". Honest, honey.

All those pictures from the renaissance faire were of complete strangers. Even the one of the gal that smiled at me when I took her picture. Her outlandish claims that I was the father of her little imp was just a ploy to extort money from me.

Who would use a wench to bend iron anyway? Obviously I meant winch. Case closed!

The arbor alone took a year of weekends. One of the reasons it took so long is that I did not listen to good advice. One of the benefits of teaching yourself how to do things is that you get to learn so much the hard way.

Where some people know instinctively or by book learning that 1-1/2 inch wrought iron does not bend very easily and that if you are going to bend it you should make the arc 10 or so feet in diameter. I on the other hand, have hours and hours of memories of wedging, heating, pounding, muscling, pullying, leveraging and seriously risking life and limb to back up why one should not attempt a five foot diameter.

My car, my house, my ropes, my cables, my chains, my wife, my wenches , everything stationary and everything that remotely looks like a lever are glad that I am done bending those two pieces of iron. I should probably mention that I too am glad that I will never have to do that again, lesson learned. 

Upon special request by my fans (make that "fan"), sparing no expense,  I am bringing my faerie related blogs over to this site. So without further ado:

- no wait, one ado: These blogs make most sense - yes, they do make some sense and the most sense they make is when they are read in order. But since blogs are posted in reverse chronological order and taking into consideration that this statement explaining that problem will be one of the last statements you read if you come across these blogs a month from now:

I have decided to post these one at a time, as if I were writing in the current time-continuum. You know, I bet this is similar to what the faeries go through when they try to explain to us when something happened or will  happened (sic).

And now, without any FURTHER ado, the FaeGate story by Faerin:

If you had spotted me a couple of years ago, trying to catch the essence of a football game through my auto-darkening welding helmet, you probably would not have guessed that it would end in a flourish of iron faerie figurines on a rose outlined gate.

But there you have it.

Well, I guess you don't have it just yet. The gates with roses are there but the faeries are still in the shop, being welded and ground into shape, you know, the normal process for bringing faeries into the world.