Hey there, friends! Round here, we’ve got a tradition in these parts. And that tradition is the weekly prompt exchange. Interested? The beauty of it is, anyone can play along!
Here’s how it works. Option number one: Send in a prompt idea to oddprompts@gmail.com, and receive one in exchange. That’s it! Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s even a different prompt than the one you sent.
*pauses to ingest additional caffeine and contemplate the randomization function*
| Giver | Gift | Giftee |
| Fiona Grey | “Er, darling? How did we end up in space?” | nother Mike |
| AC Young | A firecat in the neighbourhood was bad enough. When one of them had kittens… | Leigh Kimmel |
| nother Mike | You put your right foot in and you shake it all around… | Cedar Sanderson |
| Becky Jones | Well, whaddaya know? The devil really IS in the details. | Fiona Grey |
| Leigh Kimmel | The whiteness hung in the air like mist, yet there was no moisture in it. | Becky Jones |
| Cedar Sanderson | He poured a perfect gimlet | AC Young |
Righty-o, onto option two. These are the spares! Have an idea and want to see if someone’s intrigued enough to run with it? Send in a prompt to the address above and put “spare” in the subject line. Or snag one for yourself – they’re free for the taking.
| Spare | The roof retracted to let in starlight. And also… |
| Spare | The colors of silence spun through the air. |
| Spare | It’s raining pens! Halleluia! It’s raining pens! |
| Spare | “Squidpocalypse,” he pronounced. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.” |
| Spare | The jalepeno festival was approaching, and… |
| Spare | The violet rose bloomed in the garden. |
We try to be good hosts around here, and not turn anyone away from the prompt table.
That’s it! Let your creativity flow in the comments, or post a link to your story or image. Cheers, y’all, and happy prompting.
Header image by Fiona Grey
More Odds Than Ends 
My gift this week was a present from Cedar Sanderson: He poured a perfect gimlet
A quick check of the dictionary to find out what a gimlet was, and I couldn’t resist going off at a tangent.
—
Peter double-checked that everything was ready. The mould was in its place, the two halves firmly locked together. The crucible was in the electric heater, currently heated to over a thousand degrees centigrade, the carefully weighed and measured platinum inside was fully liquid. The tongs were by his side, with safety gloves to protect his hands from the heat.
No point in wasting any time. Peter put on the gloves, picked up the tongs, and then carefully used the tongs to pick up the crucible.
Not hurrying, Peter brought the crucible over to the mould, and carefully poured the platinum into the mould. Still not hurrying, he put the crucible back where it had come from. Once he had laid down the tongs and stripped off the gloves, he turned off the heater.
Now it was a matter of waiting for the platinum to cool and solidify. Peter made himself a big mug of tea, and sat down on a stool, sipping his drink down.
Peter had drunk two mugs of tea before the mould had cooled enough for him to see how the casting had gone.
He undid the catches, and carefully separated the two halves of the mould. He held his breath until he could see the solidified platinum. And then he released his breath in relief. It appeared to have worked.
He pulled it out and reviewed it carefully. It was even better than he had any right to expect. The bottom end had a screw thread. A little further up was an augur-style screw. At the other end was a twin-bow handle. It was a diminutive gimlet.
It was almost perfect. There was a little needle of platinum at the bottom, where Peter had added a narrow shaft to the mould to encourage the metal to go all the way to the tip of the gimlet. There was still metal in the sprue. Along the join line of the two halves of the casting there was a slight ridge that needed to be chased away.
Peter set about finishing the piece. By the end of the working day, he had done so. A perfect miniature replica of a gimlet in platinum lay in his hand.
Only two things still to do. He attached a short silver chain around one of the handle bows, using solder to connect the two ends of the ring together. At the other end of the chain was a connector so that it could be attached as a charm to a charm bracelet.
Finally, Peter wrapped it up in decorative paper.
This was for his friend, Lucinda. She was thirty this year, and her friends had got together and agreed to get her a charm bracelet and charms as a collective present. Peter was put down for one of the charms. Since he was a freelance jeweller, he decided to make it himself.
As far as the design, Lucinda did carpentry in her spare time as a hobby. So one of her carpenter’s tools made sense. He chose a gimlet as it was an unflashy tool that was very useful as a foundation for using the more flashy tools, and Lucinda was the glue that held their circle of friends together, giving others the support they needed to shine.
He had bought a gimlet and set about constructing a mould. He followed the actual design of the tool for the business end, but made the handle fancier to befit the present it would become, and scaled things down so that it would be small enough to work as a charm.
It took several steps to go from the final wax model to a mould capable of withstanding the heat of melted platinum. Every single step had to be taken with extreme care for the details, or the charm would come out wrong. Eventually the mould was ready, and Peter could heat it up, and get the platinum melted.
That evening was the birthday party. Peter had a great time, but it was eventually time for the presents. Peter waited his turn, and then handed his package over.
Lucinda tore the paper, and extracted the charm within. She picked it up, and looked it over, carefully. Then a smile grew on her face. “It’s perfect! Thankyou!”
Peter was very relieved and smiled back. It was already a good night. It looked now as if it would be a great one.
Lucinda finished unwrapping her presents, and ordered cocktails all round.
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Well met!
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[…] More at MOTE! […]
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And now mine is up on my LiveJournal at https://starshipcat.livejournal.com/1365846.html. Not as long as I would’ve liked to take it, but at least a beginning.
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