Two projects last night... one a winner... one... well, lets just say its not what I was hoping for.

Tried my first basket twist.  Came out pretty decent, and just turned it in to an s hook.

My second project... I wanted to try a jewelry tree to hang my pendents on at my upcoming show.  I didn't have enough round stock, so thought I could just use a hunk of cable.  I forge welded up the center for the trunk, but left a ton of texture from the coils.  That part worked like I intended.

Then untwisted the bottom and forge welded the ends of all the individual strands and bent them out to form the roots/stand.  That part worked like I was hoping.

Then on to the branches.  Because of the odd shape, even with everything else bent out of the way, I couldn't get an even heat on the whole branch, so the forge welds didn't get very far up.  I want to split each branch in to smaller branches and draw them out, and it just wasn't working right.  In the end, Instead of something beautiful and elegant, I would up with Halloween decoration or maybe something out of Forbidden Forest from Harry Potter.  I'm hoping spooky and ugly will work, because I just don't have the time to make another one.

Nice hook, it's calling out to me for a marble in the basket but that's just me.

I like the creepy tree  quite a bit, a little refinement in the process and I think you have a winner on your hands. Next time don't weld the end with the intent of splitting it later just weld a section for the limb shaft and leave the ends to open into branches.

That one branch that's partly untwisted with the two little even limbs looks like some kind of critter with horns. maybe a Long Horn Tree Worm. A little modifying and you could make a Saber Tooth Tree Worm. Gotta watch out for Tree Worms you know, they'll steel your cookies if you don't keep an eye on them.

Tree Ents for the Tolkein fans, it'd be easy to make a couple round openings for eyes, google eyes of course. A beard would be easy and it'd be all tangled wind blown looking. Just take a torch to the ends to melt sharp wire ends so it doesn't poke holes i people who want to touch it.

Oh yeah, a BUNCH of possibilities for cable trees. I haven't gotten started on Halloween Creepy Trees, that's another whole species!

Frosty The Lucky.

I really like the tree also.

The only suggestion on the s hook is to have the little curls or scrolls (what ever you want to call them) a bit more closed, so they are less likely to get caught up on things, everything else is good though.

                                                                                                Littleblacksmith