Remember me? I’m the ginger who used to post regularly about my transition and life. Speaking of life, that’s probably the reason I haven’t been posting! I apologize for that.

Since it’s nearly a month since my last post I decided it is time for a much needed update. You may recall the last thing I posted about was changing my name, well, I got it changed! I went to court and within an hour I was on the way home with two official copies of my name change papers. *queue cheering* Once I actually got my court date it was incredibly easy. After checking in at the clerks office I had to go into one of the court rooms and wait for a judge/magistrate. There was 20 or so other people waiting with me. When we sat down (my girlfriend, mom, and I) there was another girl behind us who was also changing her name. After a bit of talking I found out she was transitioning as well! It was a nice surprise to see someone else doing the same thing.

After the court official came in she called everyone up to check in and after looking over my papers and signing them she sent me back to the clerks office to have my forms printed. We simply walked back and gave the clerk my papers and waited a few minutes. Then like that I had my name change documents in hand!!

So far I’ve only changed my my name with the school and gotten a new school ID, but I am quite happy. 🙂

Aside from changing my name I have been pretty busy with school and my art. Above is my second set of bracelets inspired by My Little Pony. I’ve been making lots of jewelry lately and last week I found out I was going to have a piece in the student art show again. I decided I needed to make something big, so I came up with an idea to make a giant piece of chainmail out of rebar. Anyone who’s worked with rebar knows that it is not the easiest thing to bend.

With only a week to complete my piece before the deadline my father and I went to work wrapping ½” rebar around a 2-¼” pipe. The process was pretty time consuming considering we needed to wrap 50′ of rebar into 65 rings. After countless hours of torching and bending we created enough rings for my project. After that I went to work weaving and bending them into a sheet of Euro 4 in 1 chainmail.

This is what I ended up with, 27 pounds of rebar, weaved into a 2 square foot sheet of maile. After that I built a mounting bracket out of plate steel and ½” steel rod to mount it on the wall of my schools gallery. I torched and hammered the rod into hooks and then welded them into the plate using an ARC welded.

This it the mount after attaching it to the wall, we had some trouble figuring out how to mount it because the wall behind the drywall is cinderblock but we eventually got it to stay up with some Tapcons. (after snapping off several) The gallery opening is tomorrow night and I am sure I will have some better photos for anyone who is interested. 🙂

Anyways, as always thanks for reading, and I will try and update a bit more often.

Abbey