Custom (Craftable) Item Creation

I want to start working on a plugin for my server. However, I have no idea how to create custom items. I would like to create an item craftable from gold ingots. Can anyone tell me how I can achieve this? I am an experienced 3d artist and C# programmer so no need to hold back when referring to certain terminology.

 

It's not possible to add custom items or blocks. Maybe when bukkit is the official modding api. You need to make a client mod for that.

 

I am currently working on a server/client mod, that will allow you to have custom blocks and items in the server, however it will take some time to finish it, and if you have any suggestions, what blocks could be added, post your ideas, and I'll see what I can do to make it happen

Here is the link: http://forums.bukkit.org/threads/more-blocks-in-multiplayer.1733/

Not encouraging at all , posts like these lower the morale (at least for me at the start, before I started to work on my own client mod)