More Than Somewhat

Self-Deception

2012-01-29T11:37:00.002-06:00

Apparently not wanting to work on something requiring the commitment of more than an hour or two was not in fact my motivation for not making a necklace comprising upwards of half a dozen floral components.

I still don't know what was though.

Peyote stitch, perhaps?

Seems what I wanted to work on were these odd little rectangular components.

I love the way they're thinner in the middle when viewed end-on.

I used a single colour of seed beads in most of them, but (if I actually get to it), the next round of experiments might add another colour or two of seed beads, and/or use different accent beads - I used the so-called Thunder-Polish Chinese rondelles. They're very pretty and !shiny!

Why yes, I did in fact find a better thread path, though I'd be wary of the finish of the seed beads if using my usual double-standed Nymo B with a size 10 beading needle, because there were a couple of bead holes which were at their limit, and I chose beads (matte metallic) which tend to be on the larger end of the spectrum of bead hole sizes. Colour-lined and permanent finish Toho seed beads may well not play as nicely with this needle and thread combination. Fireline would be a very good choice.

While these could certainly be made in one continuous chain (since the spine of each is a column of cubic right angle weave), I like the contrast in texture and colour of the brass and copper jump-rings. I'd originally used some very large anodized aluminium jump rings in place of the copper rings, but the scale was all wrong and the colour was too much.

There's no reason that these couldn't be made considerably longer into a substantial cuff, or with uneven sides so that they curve.

More experiments ahead!

Honestly I Have No Idea

2012-01-28T13:08:00.002-06:00

I wanted to make a pendant. No, a rope. No, a pendant.

I thought I had a plan and then I didn't and then I did and then I just wanted to be doing something else and though there are a couple of well-hidden design elements that might inspire me at some time, I think that the time may not be now.

Or tomorrow even.

So then I had another idea which is actually somewhat interesting if only there was a better thread path that didn't lead to ridiculous congestion inside the bead holes IMMEDIATELY.

Wait.

I may have a solution. Stay tuned.

I forgot to show you this variation of the class I taught on Tuesday which I think I may like better than the original, especially if I can do better on the colour placement (I still want the three variations on a theme, a.k.a. light, medium and dark, but in different positions on the piece). And I think I have a better way of joining them into a necklace, but what's holding me back is the time commitment because there are sketches on the pile, ideas in the queue and a necklace of sweet little blossoms will use up all the free time I have, such as it is.

This day job thing. It really gets in the way.

I don't know if it's just me, turning into one of those people who just doesn't like anything, or if it's the program committee of Dance St Louis or whoever decides what's going to appear on stage for our yearly subscription, but once again, I can tell you what I don't like: the overly emotive singer who elbowed the dancers of Ensemble Espanol away from centre stage, not that I found them especially engaging either.

They weren't bad in that they danced well, the program was somewhat varied, the costumes were fine (one dress I loved, sheer black over red) through the sets such as they were should have been left at home, but honestly all that skirt-swishing and stamping and meaningful glares over the shoulders just bored me after about half an hour, and it was a long program, over two and a half hours. I wish one of the dance companies I really enjoy (like Pilobolus, Momix, Sydney Dance Company, etc) would have over-long programs, but it never quite works out that way, does it?

Doodle Do[nut]

2012-01-24T23:05:00.002-06:00

Class this evening went well, I think. Three people sewed cute little flowers.

Then I cam home and doodled.

I don't buy tons of donuts because I'm rarely happy with what I do with them, but I buy enough (because I'm weak, that's why) that I'm always on the lookout for something good to do with them.

I'm not sure if these bails based on stars are good per se, but they're a whole lot better than having the donuts languishing in a drawer.

Samples, Always Samples

2012-01-22T22:50:00.002-06:00

Except of course when they're not, but today they are.

First for the class I'm teaching on Tuesday.

The actual class is for a blossom as an earring, but I thought I might be able to join them to make a necklace or bracelet.

Yes, I can.

I think it would make a better necklace than bracelet as the blossoms are slightly concave and might not lie comfortably around a wrist.

Two Lucidity pendants.

These have marbles inside, and while I can't capture it so well in a photo, they have an airiness belied by their weight because the layer of seeds isn't solid, and you get these great flashes of lustre as the surface finish of the marbles peek through.

They're kinda fun to make too.

Same But Different

2012-01-21T22:12:00.002-06:00

I made a slightly larger, slightly more interesting bead the same shape as the last ones I showed you.

It's the one in the centre, but somehow the colours conspire to hide the difference.

I think the necklace set shows it up better.

How It Works

2012-01-20T21:20:00.002-06:00

Colour.

I've always been quite confident of colour, not in a self-conscious show-offy way (at least I don't think so), but in the same way that one would be confident about breathing. You don't think about it; you just do it and it turns out quite well.

Colour in beading isn't always quite like that. The proportions and the finishes and the reflections off the other beads add a level of complexity that sometimes defy over-thinking.

Often I do best when I'm trying out a design, seeing how it will work from my sketches, and I just grab whatever's around, and more often than not it turns out so much better than when I start from a fixed point and try to come up with a plan.

Take these three beaded beads. I had dark iridescent faceted beads, and I wanted a seed bead overlay.

I knew I wanted something bright and metallic for the centre (it worked so well for the first set I made), something silver-lined or copper lined, not too bright for the little adjacent accents, and something in a matte rainbow (sort of multicoloured) for the main seed bead overlay.

The first combination is the leftmost.

The metallic magenta are exactly right, as are the copper-lined olivine, but the overlay is too close to the faceted beads (the difference in finish is somewhat exaggerated in the photo; in Real Life there's less distinction), and the larger bronze seed beads at the intersection just disappear.

Next iteration I went for more contrast, with a blue-violet main seed bead, and size eights in a gilt-lined peach, ugh no! Gilt lined lavender! The whole is just a tiny bit nauseating, in much the way that the Magic Kingdom is.

The one I like the most photographed the worst. The main seed beads are a smokey lavender (more purple, less smokey than they appear), and the intersection beads are a medium-pale copper. Something golder would have been better, but my golds are either too dark or too bright, and this one is better in real life than in the picture.

It's a little disconcerting that it took three tries to get something that I didn't feel the need to attack with scissors (the first two are not long for this world, I can tell you that).

Not Surprisingly

2012-01-15T22:43:00.002-06:00

There's not much to photograph at the end of a week infused with some winter crud or another in which your chief form of productive relaxation is the beginning bits of a knitting project in fits and starts as you watch TV.

I managed to make another pendant.

And then because I got tired of the bail (with which I'm not quite satisfied) I wondered if the pendant, sans bail, could be the focal of a necklace.

Yes, in fact it could.

And then I had an idea for a cuff but then it was the end of the weekend -- and thank you yes, I'm feeling a whole lot better. Back to normal in fact.

My kitten, on the other hand, is re-aquiring normal. He has undergone, as my vet calls it, the redirection of his cerebro-testicular oxygen shunt. He was tutored. Neutered. He doesn't seem to miss them at all, or even notice that they're no longer there.

I Love It When This Happens

2012-01-11T23:15:00.003-06:00

Well, eventually I love it, but I spend time not loving it, and let me tell you, coming down with a cold also helps me not love it so much.

Then there's the whole packing off one's first-born for her final semester in Geneva with the dilemma of how much to let my inner control freak take over and how much to let my daughter ask for help.

There were some near-misses, like the whole finding a notary public on a Saturday afternoon when leaving the following Monday morning (we made it with minutes to spare. Like three perhaps).

The luggage dilemma.

She's a fashion forward person, a bit of a compulsive shopper with the wardrobe volume to confirm, and the difficulty of not being able to pack all one's clothes into a suitcase weighing fifty pounds, not to mention all the other things one may need for a semester in Europe.

I set my mind to not crying like my mother did when I went to Israel to grad school, and I didn't, but she did (I think it had more to do with leaving her boyfriend than anything else), surprisingly.

Then there was the knitting of the beanie for my second child who thought he knew what he wanted but in fact did not and if I'd just gone ahead and made what I really thought he ought to want, I'd have been right all along and would not have had to make two major alterations after weaving in all the ends.

There was teaching a class which was just plain fun but not conducive to figuring out a Thing That I Want To Make.

Some weeks ago while surfing I saw a pendant woven of large beads in triangle weave and embellished with smaller beads, and somewhere else I saw a rivoli perched on a unit of cubic right angle weave using larger beads.

I needed to make a triangular pendant using triangle weave with a rivoli in the middle.

I generated piles of thread which I extracted from various bead holes.

I didn't like the colours, the capture, the embellishment, did I want fringe beads, and how many, 3mm beads of size 8º seed beads, nothing was quite right, though there were bits that were right.

Eventually I had all the right bits and was rid of all the wrong bits.

I love it when that happens.

I also like the way it looks as though maybe I used a triangular rivoli (I didn't).

No Really

2012-01-07T22:27:00.002-06:00

I'm fine, I just had nothing to show you. Not that nothing's happened.

We have a brand-new year (yes, I get one of those too), and my kitten is old enough to be (as the vet puts it) tutored: she will redirect his cerebro-testicular oxygen shunt which I fervently hope will cure him of his need to pee in the primary cat's favourite chair. I haven't caught him at it, but I'm pretty sure it's him, not her. Oh yes, and on my bed. Ugh. My nice heavy winter comforter is (oh please please please) being deodorized and cleansed and de-peed by those nice people at the corner dry-cleaners, but hey, luckily for global warming and unseasonal temperatures I can make do with my summer comforter.

I like the winter one better though.

The vet told him that if he doesn't stop this rude behaviour he'll have to live in a shed with Very Unpleasant People, but he didn't seem afraid of her threat as he just came home and peed on the chair. Again. After I'd done a good enough job on it that the primary cat was happy to curl up on it.

Actually, I forgot that I'd made these earrings to go with the necklace.

I've done quite a bit of knitting over the past week: a rather plain ribbed beanie for my son and the collar of a cardigan for a friend who was having trouble between the pattern, her tight gauge and shortness of yarn and was ready to throw away an almost-ready-for-her-granddaughter Noro cardigan.

I couldn't let that happen, so I made it work for her.

And I started another cardigan (for me), but it's not yet at the attractive stage, it's still kinda blobby.

I've been trying to work on a necklace for another lampwork bead, a gorgeous bead in very pretty colours which apparently just don't excite me when I have to stitch with them, so there's been a fair amount of cutting.

I decided to take another tack entirely (less right angle weave and fire-polished beads, more herringbone and seed beads, and instead this happened (no, these are not the lampwork colours; these are colours that I like to work with. Allegedly).

A curly little chain that flows easily from one motif to the next, is a decent vehicle for left-over beads too many to toss but too few to use in any meaningful way, and can be worked as single motifs for earrings as well. And they don't take too terribly long and mostly don't require superhuman thread tension.

All I need is a name.

Immediacy

2011-12-28T19:42:00.002-06:00

I'm not usually about the quick projects that bring instant gratification, since I want more joy not less, and I suppose that technically a necklace I started last night and finished minutes ago shouldn't really count as instantaneously done, but it feels like it.

Gorgeous, gorgeous bead from Polychrome Beads on Etsy, accented with jade beads, seed beads and copper.

Yum!

Off The Wagon

2011-12-27T22:53:00.002-06:00

There have been times, but I have been strong lately.

Back in the nineties you could get these amazing deals on wool yarns on eBay, and the place was awash with boutique fibre vendors, and I had the watch-list and disposable income of which I disposed.

When I'm retired and on a fixed income I will not have to spend a cent on yarn or spinning fibre; in fact I could stop right now, stop beading even and spend all my time knitting and spinning until I retire and I still wouldn't run out.

Then I stopped that.

Some years later I was given a virtual eBay gift certificate for lampwork beads and once again I fell hard. I used up the gift certificate and kept on going. I had my favourite lampwork artists, but was in no way restricted by my favourites.

If I gave up knitting and spinning and teaching and only beaded things incorporating lampwork beads and seed beads - well, I might eventually have to buy more, but not for a while. I stopped the breakneck rate of acquisition when I was laid off a few years ago, and occasionally succumb, but not often.

And then there were gifts but they didn't quite cover all the bases, so I did it myself.

And to prove that I don't just accumulate lampwork in order to increase my collection, I started something, a slightly embellished version of yesterday's red necklace. I rather like these little thingies. Components, for want of a better word.

They're not beaded beads because they're not bead-shaped, whatever that may be.

They're not beading findings because, well, they're not clasps or links or ear wires or anything like that.

Thingies.

Components, I suppose.

I'm debating bead placement.

The focal is more or less symmetric in terms of overall shape, but it definitely isn't in terms of colour placement and design, so perhaps it ought to be hung vertically, but it fits so nicely this way and really, I'm not usually hung up on symmetry so actually yes, I think I'll just leave it this way.

Thanks for helping me talk it out.

To Close

2011-12-26T23:10:00.001-06:00

I just knew the weekend had some more beading time left in it.

To be sure, I should have gone to bed half an hour ago, but I have priorities!

Head Space

2011-12-26T10:57:00.004-06:00

I'm looking at the final half day of a four-day weekend and even though I didn't (yet) sew my daughter's robe, I'm happy with the places my head took me.

I redid the first of the big square pendants which I think I'm calling Nellio, a bastardisation of the word "square" in Finnish. It's easy to say and it's kinda funny-sounding, which reminds me to not take what I do too seriously, as I do it because I enjoy it, because it's fun. I'm not Making Art or a political statement or bringing beauty to the world or anything like that; I'm merely pleasing myself by scratching an itch.

It's really that simple and that personal.

I was surfing and saw some brilliant chains beaded from right angle weave links, which inspired me to make these.

Yeah, not so inspiring, are they? Ugly even. Their lack of gorgeousness forced me to make these beaded beads (the link thing just didn't work out. There are other ways to join them into a necklace or bracelet):

which make a sweet pair of earrings:

or a sweet little pendant.

Dolce, n'est pas? (Sorry, I'm feeling all multilingual).

I don't care as much for the colour-way of the pendant; what I like about the earring colour-way is that the centre groups of four bright gold beads really pop, because all the other colours in each beaded bead are about as dark as each other and are closely related in terms of temperature.

I celebrated December 25th in the traditional way of my tribe: by eating Chinese food and seeing a movie (not a very good one unfortunately).

Not Unsuccessful

2011-12-24T17:01:00.003-06:00

My daughter's hat turned out pretty well, I think.

Oddly enough, I'm completely satisfied with the blue and purple in the photo; however I used a burnt orange, not a screaming firey orange for the ball on the top (and how cute is that?)

And then of course because I just needed to, two more of the big square pendants (also because two were given away as gifts, the one below and one of the others from yesterday.

I think I might be done now.

Born to Eat Bonbons

2011-12-23T17:14:00.002-06:00

When I have a day off work it feels like my true vocation: to recline on a velvet chaise longue and have a cabana boy place the finest Belgian truffles in my mouth whenever I need them.

Not that days off are ever actually like that, but in my self-indulgent use (or misuse) of my time, that's what it's akin to. Sort of.

It's how I feel when noodling around with beads just because I'm inspired.

First came this, which I didn't finish (it's due for the scissors actually) because it's not quite right.

The next I like much better, especially because I found a use for the beads in the corners, the ones with glitter and windows. I like the corner pointiness of the pink one better though.

This one also has some extra embellishment that ended up on the back. It's not actually hurting anything, but it is a little silly.

So I had to make another.

Instead of the glitter window beads, I used cathedral beads, just to see if I could. They're a slightly large 8mm, and they needed extra stuff (seed beads around them) which had the added bonus of making the whole thing a bit firmer.

Slightly New

2011-12-19T23:03:00.004-06:00

Only inasmuch as I haven't made this exact configuration in these exact colours before, but otherwise not so very new.

Given that I spent most of the evening knitting (a hat in many colours), it's not so bad.

PS I think the background is kinda awful, in case you were wondering. White looks like a disguise, black is too stark, I couldn't find grey and I'm just opposed to royal blue (all I could find besides neon green).

PPS Hat:

(Upside down. The blue/gold is the brim).

Apropos of Nothing

2011-12-18T21:53:00.002-06:00

I didn't finish much; or more precisely, I didn't photograph much.

There was a pendant which is supposed to have matching earrings, but I'm not feeling all that compulsive so I may not bother, much as this opalescent glass thrills me. I have the stuff, that's the thing after all.

This was going to be a set like the aquamarine one from last week, only slightly shorter.

Sometimes when I'm teaching and intoning "Repeat Step 20 until you can count five pairs of A beads", I often want to interrupt myself because after all, five was just a number chosen randomly (I stitched until I thought of something else or got bored or found it pleasing to my eye), not for any specific design concept or principle of proportions or anything like that.

So I decided to make a shorter one of those and see how I liked it.

Well enough.

I made a mitten and darned in the ends and sewed on the buttons (it's a flip-top jobbie) - only one, because only one was lost and needed replacement, not that I'm generally much of a fan of rewarding carelessness on someone else's part with additional effort on mine (like the time the ex-boyfriend wiped snow off his car with his hands while wearing the handspun hand-dyed camel down cabled gloves I'd made him, disappearing two or three fingertips. Of the gloves. He didn't actually even last a full year beyond that), but offspring have special strings they can pull so that you don't even resent it, not really anyway, just enough to tell the world you don't, but not enough to be actually annoyed.

I started two other necklaces, samples for class proposals for a bead show I'm planning on applying for. One has a respectable amount of work done (trust me on this please, even though it's not immortalized and verified by the wonder of digital photography), but the other is awful. Hate the colour scheme I started with, hate the colour scheme I switched to, and also the one after that.

I put it underneath something opaque.

Discouraged, I had to indulge in something frothy.

An entire necklace which took me a little more than an episode of "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me", and by "a little more" I have no idea how many minutes (or hours even) that translates to, just that it's more.

Work has been a little frustrating these past few weeks. I'm glad there are only four days until the next weekend; three would be considerably better though the sleeping kitten on my lap makes the prospect a little less unappealing.

Until the Next Time

2011-12-13T22:37:00.003-06:00

This evening's class made a version of this:

I tried this variation once before with a very long narrow crystal pendant, which I thought was rather elegant, but I'm partial to the aquamarine too.

And then I slipped and fell into The Cute again.

I needed a shop sample for classes and I couldn't find all the others I'd made. I wanted to see if copper-plated charlottes would work instead of Japanese 15ºs.

Yup. And look: you can see the thread I didn't trim all that short but just left inside.

I finished my mitred cardigan, and am wearing it as we speak.

For odds and ends, it turned out really well.

The yarns were small amounts (only an ounce or two) that I'd bought, samples spun in classes at SOAR, generous SOAR goodie bag samples carded together and spun; that sort of thing. I chose blues and greens as well as multicoloured everythings, and overdyed a couple of Oh No You Di'nt skeins too.

In spite of a construction faux pas (I didn't account for the front overlap correctly), it fits well enough, doesn't slide backwards or off the shoulders (I see a plethora of patterns for sweaters in heavy yarns with necklines that are too wide that I know will require constant readjustment in the wearing. Not a success in my book!) and is soft and warm but not too warm for work where they really should save money and energy by lowering the temperature a few degrees, so I'm counting it as pretty successful.

Even though I was a little sick of it towards the end, it's unsuccessful enough that a somewhat different approach using similar techniques (garter stitch, mitres, multiple yarns) is appealing. I think I'll go purple next time, but first I have to finish a mitten (my daughter lost one; luckily I have tons of that yarn and I trust her remorse enough to knit it again) and a hat (she'll be in Geneva and needs to be stylish, warm and funky - you know the hat won't be ordinary!)

Onward ho, I guess.

Never Just One

2011-12-11T19:26:00.003-06:00

(Unless it's big and takes ages. Like this necklace which was in the queue forever because something else suddenly took precedence when I wasn't even close to finished and then it sat until I absolutely had to finish it so I could submit it with the rest of my classes for February through May).

I really like it though. The insides of the beaded beads are marbles.

On the other hand, I finally got what I wanted in these pendants with rivolis and daggers.

This one was right.

See? the rivoli sits up above the daggers, unlike the blue one where it's somewhat submerged and can't seem to lie straight.

Of course I had to make another one to iron out the details that were slightly off.

And then another to be sure that it wasn't just a fluke.

I guess there was just the single star though, because I realized that the necklace I had made somehow found its way into my Etsy shop which means it's probably not a great idea to have it also sitting in the case at the bead store and besides, the class will just be on making a star, though I'll also give examples of how to use it (other than as a pendant).

Apropos of nothing I've mentioned here before, except that it was weird and I feel like talking about it, I saw a movie last night and for the first time in my entire life, had to leave in the middle because I thought I was going to be sick.

(Turns out I wasn't).

There was nothing in the movie (Melancholia) to induce this; it wasn't even disgusting or violent or anything like that, though the cinematography was very distracting: extreme close-ups (often only half a face could fit on the screen) and jiggly and bright, but I'm not sure that's it either. Roller coasters (or more accurately, that one roller coaster that one time) only scare the bejeezus out of me, they don't make me ill. (They do make my cry though, hence only one that one time ever. It was very bad).

It wasn't even a very good movie. It was self-indulgent and overly long (the first half could have been cut out as it added absolutely nothing relevant) and the only potentially (but not actually) redeeming feature was that the Kirsten Dunst character did a single kind and unselfish thing (ensuring that her nephew wasn't afraid) seconds before the end of the movie. This was not enough uplift for me, not that I of necessity require happy endings. It just wasn't satisfying in any way, shape or form.

Perhaps I'm influenced by the fact that I felt rather ill through a full three-quarters of the screening time, but I think not.

Something About A Deadline

2011-12-09T23:35:00.002-06:00

My class proposals for February through May are due on Tuesday when I teach, so this weekend I not only have to write up instructions for Barokia, but also need to fill in those last few classes that have been eluding me.

It's been an intense week at work, and as such, I've been too engaged to doodle, um come up with beading designs as my mind wanders. It happens from time to time, depending on how much I have to concentrate. When tasks are mundane or not challenging, ideas distract me and I come home with sketches of beading and knitting, but not this past week with its looming deadline which has come and gone (not my fault!)

Frankly, I was a little concerned about the class schedule.

I thought I might have to recycle one of the older ones, which actually isn't necessarily a bad thing.

So I came home and finished the knitting on my cardigan (there's still finishing. Weaving in of ends and sewing on of buttons) and took a beading break where this happened.

About two thirds of the way around I changed some of the bead counts and I didn't put the bail in a neatly symmetric place (I like to align it with the bead hole when I'm working with transparent or not entirely round beads), so I made another one.

For grins, I used different fringe beads on the other side.

It's a nice project for a two-hour class and uses those gorgeous Czech paddle beads which fill me simultaneously with lust, covetousness (both of which I give in to) and despair because I ~~have~~ had no idea how to use them.

Well, now I do!

Always Again

2011-12-04T20:33:00.002-06:00

No sooner is a class over when another deadline is imminent.

I'm more or less decided on my class proposals for February through May at Lady Bug Beads, but I still need to complete samples for the case in the store, so I spent a little post-class time beading.

This is a mostly right angle weave chain with beaded bead accents filled with garden variety glass marbles. Since the beaded beads are solid glass, you probably don't want a full length of beaded beads as it might be a bit heavy, even though it doesn't look that way, but the rest of the chain repeats part of the motif for continuity.

There's a version of this that makes a pendant (beading around a marble) or a lariat end, and I think for the first time, instead of trying to cover both variations in one two-hour class, I'll simply offer a class for each version. That way, people who prefer small projects can do the lariat/pendant version, and those who enjoy bigger projects can do the chain version.

I hope it works out.

Little Things

2011-12-03T23:05:00.003-06:00

For Stefanie, to send to her kitten-deprived daughter.

My daughter and my kitten.

For the class I'm teaching tomorrow, some samples to check the instructions.

Colours as usual, not quite right: the blues are actually more lavender, the brown beads more smokey grey-purple, the yellow beads more beige.

My pictures of knitting are really misleading!

I Can't Get Up

2011-11-28T23:33:00.003-06:00

There's apparently no stopping The Attack Of The Cute because I did it again.

I was thinking that I'd made only one pitcher (the prototype doesn't count because it's ugly) and two urns (although now that I think of it, urns can be handle-less too) and so it was time to balance the numbers of each.

So I did.

I couldn't help myself, and I'll tell you something else: this is not the last of them.

Taken Over By Twee

2011-11-27T22:49:00.005-06:00

OK, I admit it.

I've been subsumed by alien minds who like Cute and Whimsical.

All I want to do is make adorable little amphorae (quick, I need an Asterix fix) and pitchers.It's not my fault.

I Might Be Broken

2011-11-26T11:48:00.002-06:00

Not my bones or my skin or anything physically obvious, but somewhere deep inside.

I mean, I don't usually do whimsical, but then this happened.

It's not as if it was even an accident, because I have sketches to prove I was thinking about it and planning it, and anyway, it's not as though I stopped either.

I made another one. An improved nother one.

And in spite of myself, I like it.

I'm a little afraid, quite frankly. I might have regrettable taste. If I put it in my Etsy shop, what's to prevent me from being Regretsyed?

On the other hand, I still maintain a shred or two of sanity, I think.

I made earrings which I hope are not hideous or twee; at least not too much.

Very Boring

2011-11-25T17:42:00.003-06:00

Leaves.

Raking them, or blowing them, or otherwise herding and taming them when they are no longer useful and green, but have reached the stage of their existence in which they're no better than garbage.

My lawn guy used to take care of this onerous time-suck of a task, but I fired him because he would mow anytime there wasn't snow on the ground (we don't get much snow here. Most of winter is snowless) but now I realize what a bargain I was getting in at least the disposal of all those dead leaves. I bought a blower because I'm such a delicate flower that rakes and brooms give me instant blisters (this fragility and eagerness to blister is related to my lack of skiing experience), and besides, my garage somehow went from the condition of having two rakes and one snow shovel to having no rakes and four or five snow shovels, which is ludicrous since we don't get all that much snow and anyway there's never more than one person here who is motivated to shovel it.

I lie. Once when I was car-pooling and my buddy's car has seriously pathetic tires, he helped shovel my driveway so that we could go to work but otherwise, seriously, there's not a lot of shovelling that happens.

So a blower seemed like a better, if more expensive choice than a rake.

I suppose shovelling is as boring as raking leaves, but it's a better workout and doesn't require such an investment of time; at least not here, where it's Grand Central for leaves, or so it seems. Turns out there's also a huge difference in terms of Getting It Done as to whether the leaves are bone-dry or not quite a week post-rain. On the plus side, if they're not dry and crumbly, mulching doesn't result in leaf dust in every orifice and on every surface of one's skin.

Still I was delighted when I'd done enough to call the job more or less complete, so that I could finish my sample for the instructions for Tuesday's class.

I made earrings too, just in case.

The seed beads are my absolute favourite colour of Czech seed beads: silk dark bronze. They're a velvety assortment of metallic patina colours: golds, browns, green, pinks and my only regret is that the Japanese manufacturers don't have anything comparable, because if they did, I'd be all over it.

This is one of the few seed beads that doesn't lie: it looks as good (and almost exactly the same) when sewn up as loose, or in a tube or a hank. I can't count the number of times I've splurged on ridiculously expensive seed beads (ahem, Toho hybrids), only to find them dull and utterly uninteresting (except for the apollo colours, which are quite nice) when used in a piece of bead-weaving.

While I don't share any of the often-popular disdain for Czech seed beads, they definitely are not suitable for every application. Like Japanese beads, they have their strengths and weaknesses, and netting as in this necklace is without a doubt a strength.

Not Quite There Yet

2011-11-23T23:28:00.003-06:00

I'm not as obsessed with beaded flowers as I once was, but it's not as though I'm completely over them or anything; it's just that I've realised that while I want to make them, I might not want to own them or wear them, but that's not enough to stop me with the needle and thread.

This red one was the first in a series, and oddly enough, it might be the best of the bunch in terms of shape and structure.

Sure, the blue one has teeny-tiny daggers and fire-polished beads.

And the green one has polka dots on the front daggers, but the rivoli isn't seated straight exactly and the tiniest seed beads may do what they're supposed to (firm things up and hold the daggers in place), but they're definitely not doing it with anything remotely resembling grace or style.

Fortunately it's a long weekend and I have time.

Progression

2011-11-19T20:58:00.005-06:00

If one is going to cut up one's beadwork, it had better be peyote, because anything else is just too irksome, and there's a measure of satisfaction in sliding those beads off the ends of the thread.

Still, I prefer not to.

What you can't see at the left of the photo above is that there's an oval crystal cabochon held in place by the darker beads. Clearly this was not a useful design.

I bought a bunch of them as soon as the local bead store started carrying them, made one abortive pass at bezelling them, and then gave up in disgust when it didn't work terribly well.

The baggie with the crystal and the seed beads and my notes folded very tightly mocked me every time I opened the rivoli drawer. I'll get to it. One day.

Last week I thought that day was imminent, as I had an Idea, which turned out to be a Bad Idea, or at best, not a Very Good Idea. Hence the scissors.

Turns out that the Rather Bad Idea led to what turned out into something I'm happy to post, and not as a cautionary tale.

It doesn't have a working bail and yes, the drop is a bit pink, however it's a start in the right direction.

The colours are a little Bollywood, but it works, though the thread path was rather too convoluted.

Much better. Doable, which is to say explainable in instructions.

The back's pretty too.

We won't go into my other activity today, except to say that it involved leaves, a blower and a mulcher, and even though my back insists that it's all squared away because if not I may never walk again, there's a front yard and a pile of leaves in the back yard that vehemently disagree.

I always take counsel from my back. It's so the boss of me.

So I Did

2011-11-13T22:01:00.003-06:00

I made another Kell pendant and thoroughly enjoyed it again.

I used these large faceted teardrop beads which are quite a bit longer than the slender oval beads I ususally use.

A couple of months ago I tried using beads the same length but more zaftig, and they didn't work well as they crowded each other so badly that the shape of the pendant was compromised. Even though these teardrop beads are rather heavy in the botty department, they actually do work as their largest circumference is nicely balanced by 8mm beads which you can see in the upper part of the picture below (the brown beads encircled by grey-blue-green seed beads).

Because the teardrops are so much longer than the oval beads, I had to add extra seed beads and a rondelle between the narrow end and the fat end, but I think it still works.

I really like having options to vary the beads like this.

Semblance of Busy

2011-11-12T17:17:00.002-06:00

It doesn't feel as though I've been very busy because I have nothing much to show for it, but it feels as though I've been so busy that I've had no time to make anything.

It's a little confusing, actually.

I did make a pendant.

Not a fabulous picture because you can't see that there's a triangular crystal donut captured in a frame of seed beads, but now you know. I spent ages trying to come up with something more interesting (sad to say, I played a part in the destruction of trees because of all the bad ideas I sketched, and all the sketches I tossed), but ultimately nothing really shook me by the lapels, so to speak.

I made a class sample as I was proofing my instructions. I forgot how much I like this pendant, how much I enjoy actually making it. Some things are fun to conceptualize, but then the execution turns out to be a little too much "Just shoot me now"; some things just sort of happen, and you're satisfied but not necessarily excited with the results, and some things go together so pleasingly, taking just the right amount of effort and ease in just the right proportions and just a perfect amount of time, and for me, this is one of them.

Perhaps I'll make a few more.

And Janel's Sekla, kinda like the one I made for myself, but slightly different, subtly bluer (I didn't make the whole thing since my last post; I had started it some time ago and ran out of one of the beads which arrived here yesterday).

I guess it looks as though I was busy, doesn't it?

Gullible?

2011-11-07T23:37:00.002-06:00

I think this shows promise.

I'm not sure exactly what it's promising, but apparently I'm pretty trusting.

This was going to be a slider-thingy, but it seems it needed to be a regular pendant so that I could use daggers.

So far it hasn't broken my heart - to tell the truth I'm not all that invested in the relationship yet, but I'm hopeful.

What I Like

2011-11-05T23:26:00.002-05:00

No appointments, dates, meetings, plans, obligations, duties, chores (well, I have those, but I chose to ignore them): a day when there's nothing I have to do but what I choose, when I choose.

And I chose beading in the morning.

I know it's not startlingly new, clever or refreshing, but I've been wanting to make star-shaped donuts forever (I keep finding older and older sketches) so it was time.

And I chose knitting in the afternoon and evening, punctuated by reading, exercise and playing with a cat and a kitten. I also visited a bead store, briefly (they were about to close).

All pretty idyllic, really.

I'm really enjoying the way this cardigan is turning out. It started off green, but then I realised that I have at least three green cardigans already, so I added some teal and some smokey blue to move it away from the warm fall tones, and added in splashes of pink and purple and brownish-red - basically any small amounts of handspun that vaguely seemed to coordinate in even a small way.

I started off changing colours on right-side rows, but I much prefer the blending that happens in garter stitch when you change colours on wrong-side rows, so that's what I switched to.

This is my favourite type of knitting. The only preparation I needed before starting (apart from picking out yarns) was to decide what size needles would yield the fabric I wanted (not too dense, but not so loose that it would stretch and lose integrity).

I started knitting a triangle until it was big enough (the back neck width), then made another three the same. I joined two together and knitted until it was as wide as the back, then knitted each of the other two until they were half as wide (plus a front button band) and then joined them all up, and now I'm knitting until the front bands (oh yes, I just realised that I forgot to make buttonholes. Oh joy. I guess it won't have any buttons. No more than two, anyway) are long enough, then I'll knit until the side "seams" are long enough, and at that point I'll work each sleeve separately, all the while switching colours and using up those vaguely coordinating odds and ends.

I'll knit on a neckband, and depending on how impatient I am to wear it and whether or not I have any coordinating yarn left (I'm guessing I will), edgings along the bottom fronts and cuffs.

No swatching and no stitching seams. The only needle-and-thread work I'll do will be sewing on one or two buttons.

My favourite.

The kitten seems to like it too: he purrs whenever he sits on my lap while I'm knitting. Truthfully, he purrs on my lap even when I'm not knitting, but still, I choose to take it as a sign of approval.

Out of the Handbasket

2011-11-04T22:52:00.001-05:00

I've been meaning to do this for ages.

Make a little star-shaped donut.

It was quite satisfying.

Samples

2011-10-31T22:45:00.002-05:00

A pendant for tomorrow's class:

It's only a little more effort to string a coordinating necklace than it is to cut chain and attach a clasp, and it really looks so much better.

And earrings because, well, I hafta.

In Which I'm Horribly Late

2011-10-30T09:29:00.004-05:00

Yesterday my friend Julia got married and I was an hour late for the wedding, missing the ceremony and much of the reception.

I felt like this:

And the truth is, I was confounded by misdirection.

I gave myself an extra half an hour, and ended up taking an extra hour and a half .

It started with construction downtown and a detour which probably added an extra ten to fifteen minutes. No worries, I still had another fifteen and Intent To Speed.

When I turned off the highway to take Indiana State Route 69 my troubles started. Mapquest sabotaged me with spurious turns, non-existant signs and incorrect hints. I back-tracked quite a few times, once incorrectly. With twenty minutes to go, I still thought I'd make it. Things like this often don't start exactly on time.

By the time I recognized the neighbourhood near Julia's house, I knew I was way off-track, so I attempted to turn back but instead got on the wrong highway. I didn't recognize any of the landmarks, but thought it was because I was so panicked getting there that I didn't notice them, and by the time I knew with horrible certainty that I was was utterly lost and so stopped to ask for directions, I was a twenty-five minute drive from campus and already more than a few minutes late.

By the time I finally reached USI, all I had was the invitation and this map which it turns out was just not as useful as one might hope, as the sun was down and the signs on the buildings are not lit and are positioned for the pedestrian. Panic, embarrassment and the same misguided belief that causes one to knit faster as the yarn starts looking pitifully inadequate dictated that I drive, though eventually I gave that up too.

Saturday night on campus is not very busy, and some students are better at directions than others, as it turns out.

At least the decoration on the gift was:

handmade
pretty
useable (it's a button)

I hope they like the gift too.

Still, I was beyond mortified. I am not someone who regards herself as unreliable or habitually late.

Julia looked beautiful and happy, was astonishingly understanding and I got to meet her family and the friends I've been hearing about for the last fifteen years, not to mention her new husband (about whom I've been hearing for less than that!)

The drive home was long and late and very dark, but with the help of an over-large bag of Chilli-Cheese Fritos (ah pregnancy, I don't miss you at all!) I made it home before it got light.

This and That

2011-10-24T22:58:00.002-05:00

The kitten has been keeping me very busy. He's just too cute for me to get anything done.

There has been a bit of knitting though.

It's a cardigan, can't you tell?

Another one where I use up small amounts of vaguely coordinating colours, preferably more variegated than less.

There's been minutes of beading, apart from class last week and working on instructions for next week's.

I discovered one more SOAR photo.

Yes, it was that much fun.

This Is What It Looks Like...

2011-10-17T22:43:00.003-05:00

...when there's a very curious kitten who won't pose for pictures:

...when a kitten prefers the other water bowl, y'know, the one that belongs to the other cat.

...when cat people come to visit:

In case you couldn't tell, here's a close-up so you can see how tough he finds his new life. Awful, isn't it? You can tell by his expression he's having a ghastly time here.

...when you need to dry your handspun yarns in a cat-proof kinda way:

Randomly

2011-10-15T11:36:00.006-05:00

I don't really like Martha Graham all that much.

I found her style as silly as early Star Trek episodes: too much drama, very dated, though sadly less entertaining. Some of the dances inspired by her style were OK, but one in particular I'm pretty certain that the dancer must refer to as "My Art", when it was mostly pointed stares, hair tossing and odd stances, much like Blue Steel.

Now I know.

Turns out that it takes forty-eight hours from introduction to full-on cat wrestling.

[I had an excellent Feline WWF video which no one seems to be willing to upload: not YouTube (which Blogspot said I needed) nor facebook, so you'll have to accept my rating on faith. It showed how when teeny-tiny little Anubis asked for a timeout by hissing, Isis just lay down].

I took exactly one photo at SOAR.

John and Evil Michelle at the end of the first day of Workshops.

I started one of the necklaces for Janel. It's a little bluer than mine to bring out the blue in her eyes.

Nuthah Kitteh

2011-10-12T20:08:00.000-05:00

Seriously.

That cute.

The vet thinks five or six weeks old.

Vot Vos, Vos

2011-10-11T19:19:00.003-05:00

So I was at SOAR last week and stuff happened. I spent lovely time with old and new friends and we laughed we cried we drank pink wine we knitted we spun and ate chocolate and nuts and came home again, so that's all in the past.

What was, was.

Or as my dad used to say in a fake Yiddish accent, "Vot Vos, Vos".

I finished the sweater in the air on the way there, so it was able to go in the gallery and was able to be photographed by Ercil who posted it on Facebook whence I stole it. I hope it's OK. If not, there will be a big fat nothing above this paragraph when she makes me take it down.

My cat was annoyed when I got home and she'll be even more annoyed when I get home tomorrow as I'm going to adopt a very young kitten that someone brought in to my vet. She needs a playmate since my son left for college as she's a rather sociable creature and seems to be just too delighted to see me when I get home after work. My daughter's in and out but not often enough for my little furry princess, so she'll get a buddy whether or not she likes him.

Of course I hope she does.

Meanwhile I'm still trying to catch up on sleep while itching ferociously (it's like poison ivy in my brain) to start on EVERY SINGLE inspirational idea I had while there.

All of them.

Now.

I want to.

Two More

2011-10-01T23:05:00.003-05:00

It's not as though I've been doing nothing (Drive with Ryan Gosling, mmmm, not nothing), but it's just not quite enough.

I think I'm at about eight or ten now.

This one turned out to be rather time-consuming, but I'm not sure it's necessarily all that elaborate.

I mean, perhaps not elaborate-looking enough for the effort.

And to prove that there's been knitting:

It's not beadwork, so my photos completely suck (as opposed to only sucking slightly), but as you can see, when I took them, there was just a little more raglan shaping to go.

As I write this, I've started picking up the neckband stitches, so I'm well on my way.

Since I'm going to need more than a neckband to keep my knitting fingers busy for the next week (though I suppose I could spin; what a concept: spinning at SOAR), and both pairs of socks are three quarters done (both have a single and a half: one half is a foot while the other half is a cuff), and I didn't entirely like the yarn I dyed for my Australia trip (which I didn't exactly get to), I slightly overdyed it.

Again, super-crappy pictures. The ugliest one is truest, while the ones that are prettier in real life look as though I shouldn't have bothered to show them off.

Inevitably

2011-10-01T12:24:00.004-05:00

So I'm still making pendants.

This one makes six.

This makes seven - but wait!

The back? Not quite the same as the others.

These are quite quick to make, not grindingly dull, you can play with colours a bit, but I suppose it was inevitable that I tweak the design.

Pardon the weird colour which looks like a Polaroid taken in the Seventies of Really Bright Colours which sadly (goodbye, family photos) did not survive more than a decade or two - but really it's just a set of pastels that look much better in real life (my photography skills, yadda yadda).

I'm kinda liking this variation thing.

So I'm up to eight, not nearly enough and I leave in (checks time) twenty-ish hours. Damn the need for sleep! I can probably finish the sweater on the plane, but the pendants are less plentiful than I'd like.

Three More

2011-09-29T22:04:00.001-05:00

It's a tug of war between beading and knitting.

Two

2011-09-27T23:27:00.002-05:00

So far.

Still a bunch to go.

It is not outside the realms of possibility that I may finish my sweater by the end of the week. It could happen. I'm hoping (and knitting at every opportunity).

In Which I Convince Myself That I Am Organized

2011-09-25T12:18:00.003-05:00

I did get enough of this colour-way stitched so that I could photograph it so that I could make a kit cover so that I would have kits available for yesterday's show.

That's the good news.

Bad? The show appeared to have barely been marketed, so that not only were there not enough vendors to bustle up the place, but the crowds were non-existant and barely trickled through, so although my percentage of lookers to buyers was pretty good, there just weren't enough lookers to make it incredibly successful.

On the plus side, I have a couple more kits in my Etsy shop.

My booth turned out pretty well, though my very clever kit display-and-purchase theme neglected to take wind into account when designing both the foam-core board ticket holders as well as the paper tickets, as I spent much of the time picking up the displays and running after blowing tickets. I do have some idea for the next show though.

The tent worked well, and was a great eBay bargain. The tables and sheets, um, tablecloths worked pretty well, except that one of them was accidentally a fitted sheet, so I removed the elastic and used it on a back table and while it wasn't ideal, it wasn't screamingly ghastly.

My poster (printed on multiple sheets, glued together, covered with self-stick laminating paper, glued to a foam-core board and suspended by handmade split rings) was pretty excellent.

The kit sample display cases (large sheets of clear acrylic placed on perpendicularly placed black-painted 1x2s) was also a good idea that proved itself successful.

The weather was generally pretty good, if a bit cold in the morning.

At least I now have the setup to do other shows, which is certainly a part of what's been holding me back (that and inertia).

There's nothing like a frenzy of planning resulting in an avalanche of mess to inspire an organizational spurt. I had already organized my kit boxes, so I cleared some shelf space (of seldom-inspected items whose accessibility would not suffer by being placed somewhere less accessible) and put them within easy reach, labelled so that I can see the contents at a glance.

I still had enough left-over foam-core board that I was uncomfortable simply tossing, and then it struck me.

I store the kit supplies in baggies (a large baggie for the design containing a smaller baggie for each colour-way containing baggies and tubes and flippies of beads and supplies) which in turn are stored in miniature milk-crates (about 8"x7") and Ican never tell what's where, even when I label them.

I have to lift each baggie out and sometimes open them up to determine which kit is represented where, which gets annoying. I hate that the baggies are just stacked one above the other, and even if they're labelled (some have stickers on them) the label may be face-down and therefore not terribly much use. Generally there are up to four kits per crate.

Foam-core board works so very well for dividing crates into quarters, and now I can see what's in which crate!

Except I had enough foam-core board for only four crates, and there are eighteen in total, though not all are eligible.

Guess I'm not quite ready to put away the utility knife and the cutting mat.

Less Dull

2011-09-22T22:15:00.004-05:00

Nah, still in panic mode vis à vis Saturday's show, kinda.

More kits packed.

More administrivia done, more to go.

I must report that I have discovered the secret to dealing with too much to do in too little time, or at least the attendant panic. Actually, it's also the secret to not feeling the crushing weight of the years and the loss of the thoughtlessness of youth too: do something fun on a school night to forget it all, at least for a few hours.

I went to a concert, even though I was concerned that I could ill afford the time away from lists and kits and posters and price tags. I'm so glad I did; it was exactly the right thing.

Yesterday.

Today I'm way behind on my to-do list.

On the way home I was so wired (and so deaf) that I think I blew the speakers in my car, because I needed extreme stereo volume to drown out the reality of my tuneless (and very loud) singing along.

Eh, who cares, I had fun!

Dull Girl

2011-09-18T22:07:00.004-05:00

Perhaps I exaggerate: it's not been all work and absolutely no play whatsoever, but my time allocation has been concentrated on the work. Honestly though, I have no right to complain (and I'm not, exactly) since this effort is entirely of my own choosing with no external coercion at all.

I've done this to myself.

I made nifty dividers that work pretty darn well using foam core board and packed kits in my organised crates.

I packed kits.

I made samples in new colours, and packed kits.

I made a sample for a new kit (I'm teaching the class on Tuesday, so it's fair game for a kit for Saturday), and packed kits.

I made a poster for my booth and printed it on nine pages and stuck them together and am now wondering how I'll make an actual usable poster.

I suspect that more foam core board and self-stick clear laminating (I always thought that laminating had to involve heat-bonding, but Wikipedia allows a more general definition. I'm thinking it's new-fangled laxity, and true lamination really only allows heat-bonding, but since I don't have access to a heat-laminating machine big enough for a 20" x 30" poster - or even for something small, for that matter - I'll just buy the self-stick and call it laminating) paper is in my future.

I also verified that my brilliant idea for display cases for the kits is viable (but no pictures). It involves large pieces of perspex/acrylic/plastic/clear stuff that is not glass left over from when my mahogany dining room table needed to be protected from careless little hands, and strips of wood, yet to be painted. It'll work though.

Ever the Optimist

2011-09-11T21:52:00.002-05:00

So apart from kit samples and packing kits, I have a bit of construction work to do for the show.

I need to make what will be essentially huge shadow-boxes for all my kit samples, print up tickets, one per kit so that customers do not have to resort to pawing through boxes of slippery baggies of kits, and then rig some sort of filing system so that I can lay my hands instantly on any kit when presented with a ticket for same.

I'd kinds of like some sort of raised section to display finished pieces for sale, but that's near the bottom of the to-do list.

I've bought the tent/gazebo/thing, tables, some displays and two table-cloths, um, sheets, but there's so much more to do that I really need another couple of months. I have two weeks.

Meanwhile, I made samples.

Not as many as I'd have liked to have finished, but I guess I could have done none at all and then next weekend would really be panic stations.

I keep forgetting how much I love pearls. I really should go back to figuring out how to use them in seed bead designs, both because they're pretty, but also because they're such a nice contrast in texture.

On Track

2011-09-10T21:33:00.004-05:00

Multitasking invariably means that things take longer than you expect even as you have more to show at the end of the day, but I did at least get one new colour sample done.

The pearls are this fabulous oilslick colour: some have notes of green, some blue, some copper, some just grey. My favourite kind of sludge (that which requires multiple words to describe).

And I packed kits.

Much as I don't want to stop knitting cute summer tops in silks and cottons and rayons, the weather will inevitably get cold, and SOAR is less than a month away and I just remembered that I have exactly one new handspun item since last year and so it's time to dust off some stalled projects and get going again.

I've been all nose to the grindstone, but unfortunately long-sleeved sweaters on small needles (US size 2 or 3 perhaps) just aren't instant gratification projects, especially when they were less than a quarter done at the time of abandonment.

Even though I'll be tremendously pleased at myself upon completion, it's just not as pleasurable knitting on something that you've been studiously ignoring for six months. There's this whole momentum thing which is inexorably tied to the enjoyment, so when the thing that's driving you is not enthusiasm and the momentum of the first blush of love for a new project, but instead guilt, shame and embarrassment, it just doesn't hold quite the same joy.

I'm thinking of diverting myself with a quickie oversized cabled side-to-side vest on huge needles.

Even flirting with the idea of a new love can be add new excitement to an old relationship - at least, that's what I hear.

More Marbles

2011-09-09T20:20:00.004-05:00

I'm not always the smartest when it comes to rationing my time.

The show I'm doing in a couple of weeks requires me to make kit samples and fill kits, and instead I spent my beading time this past week (which was somewhat limited) making the long skinny part of this lariat.

I made the ends last weekend, and it's taken four or five full Fresh Air podcasts, as well as odd half-hours here and there to stitch the length.

I've always enjoyed colour-fade necklaces, as it reduces quite a bit of the tedium. Instead of doing the same thing every stitch of every row, the colour pattern is a series of little milestones. Inchstones. This is my recipe when switching from colour 1 to colour 2:

I start with ten rounds of colour 1, then work one round alternating colour 1 and colour 2 (*), one more round of colour 1, then four rounds in which I first alternate colour 2 with colour 1, then alternate colour 1 with colour 2, then repeat these two rounds once, then one round with colour 2, and finish with a round in which I alternate colour 2 with colour 1 before working the next ten rounds with colour 2.

(*) When I say "alternate", I mean in herringbone stitch I pick up one bead of each colour for each stitch in the round, so this scheme works equally well when working more stitches around than just the two that I used.

If you (like me) find you have gobs and gobs of beads from a very narrow section of the colour wheel, some darker, some lighter, some matte, some shiny, some iridescent, it can be fun to order these similar colours, placing the most similar colours adjacent to each other, and then working a fast colour-change necklace, working perhaps three or four solid rounds between changes. You still have a necklace that's basically one colour, but it's just that bit more interesting than a solid colour.

At least, I think so.

In all fairness, I wasn't a total slacker.

I did complete one kit sample in a new colour, which I kinda love.

I also worked on instructions for the class I taught on Tuesday.

I didn't quite finish the sample, but it was instructive, I think.

Replete WIth Marbles

2011-09-04T21:32:00.004-05:00

I tried my little covered marble with fringe beads in strategic places and also with a shorter shaft.

The fringe beads were I think a good addition, but I prefer the longer shaft. I think the recipient (friend visiting from Portland for the weekend) likes it anyway - at least I hope so!

Turns out I was using some of these marbles for their intended purpose: in a vase.

I don't need all of them in there, so I rescued a few. The one above is dark cobalt, and there's an aqua marble on my work-table in a state of partial deshabille using tiny magatamas instead of fringe beads (successfully), as well as a totally naked green marble.

I Found My Marble

2011-09-03T11:17:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I make actual paper lists, sometimes they're digital, sometimes mental. Either way, I generally have a list of things I want to or have to do, and sometimes I'm even quite serious about it.

Take this.

It's the start (and I'm more than halfway finished) of a sample of a new colour-way for an old kit, and my first beading priority for the weekend was to finish it. First thing on my list of Beading To-Dos for the weekend.

Really.

It's a little, um, repetitive and while there are times when repetition and rhythm are just the ticket, sometimes I need something more.

Not unlike others of my ilk (those who like to Make Things), from time to time I acquire odds and ends which seem as though they could be useful at some point in the future, like those mesh bags of glass globs or glass marbles that are supposedly good for keeping flower arrangements, well, arranged.

(And seashells. You'd think. Less of a good idea for me, as it turns out, but perhaps there'll be a story in that someday).

I've used less of them than I imagined I would when I bought them, but there's still time. I'm not dead yet.

Instead of the spiral sample, I thought it might be fun to cover a marble.

It only took two tries to get it right, not that there isn't room for improvement. Fringe beads seem like they might not be out of place, for example.

I wanted to finish it, so I made a loop for it to be a pendant, but my first thought was that it would add wonderful heft to a lariat.

Also, I'm clearly stuck riffing with tone-on-tone. The faceted beads are bronzey-golden, but the seed beads are all variants on pinky-beigey-burgundy, and nothing is hugely darker or paler than anything else. (I said "hugely". That didn't mean that there was no difference at all).

What you can't see in any of the photos I took (note to self: take more better) is the view from the top, as you'd see when wearing it. The place where the stem connects to the swell looks like petals when viewed from the wearer's perspective, attractively and appealingly so, which to me is an added bonus.

I like the things I make to look good (and by "good" I mean "good to me", because really that's all I've got) when worn. So a necklace should sit nicely on the chest or at the base of the throat or wherever, a bracelet should flatter the wrist, earrings should dangle appropriately, that sort of thing.

Where feasible, I want the wrong side to look good too, so if a pendant flips over (assuming it has a back and a front), it shouldn't look like a mistake. In the same way, when I used to make more of my own clothes, I wanted the inside to look good too; I always wanted to be sure I wouldn't be embarrassed by the seams. The lining of a jacket should be functional (so that the jacket's shape is maintained as you wear it) as well as pretty. Floral! Paisley! Silk madras!

For example.

Something pleasing to the eyes of the wearer while being worn fits nicely with that aesthetic in my opinion.

Contrast and Compare

2011-09-01T22:16:00.005-05:00

My instinct with colour is to blend and tone and mix it up with textural and surface finishes, rather than to look for contrast in either value or hue.

It turns out that many of the beaded beads and pendants and components I've been fooling with for the past few months or year or whatever, contrast makes them much more interesting, so it's been somewhat of an exercise in fighting the path of least resistance to get the best effect I can.

And honestly, I'll teach a class from time to time and be blown away by the wild contrasts and unexpectedly fabulous colour combinations.

Although I haven't participated in years, I decided to hang my shingle at the "Bead Art" show that my local bead store holds twice a year, and see if kits (and possibly patterns) do better than finished pieces, which tend to not be good sellers, as the show draws in people from the neighbourhood (who are looking for bargains. Cheap handmade stuff) or else other beaders (who would rather look at wares very carefully and then go inside and buy the beads to make the jewellery themselves). To that end, I thought I might wake up some old kits with new colour-ways.

One of my favourite colours in seed beads, is the Czech colour often called something like "Silk Dark Bronze AB", a delicious mix something like the patina on silver from liver of sulphur, or like the colours I've seen on copper which I think is done with electrical currents. Or something to that effect, if I recall correctly.

It's a colour that can move around the colour wheel, and my first thought was (perhaps in part because of its name) to put it with brassy, bronzey colours.

Too much contrast, and not in a good way. It's too stark, too harsh. Turns out a more blended, more monochromatic approach was far more effective in this seed bead only design.

Nothing is especially darker or lighter than anything else, and except for the very tiniest beads, have a large overlap in terms of colour. Purpley browny somewhat colour-shifting with either matte or shiny iridescence. Just like that liver of sulphur patina that will stop at one colour but present flashes and hints of something not quite the same that doesn't actually read as a contrast.

My favourite type of colour requires a few paragraphs to adequately describe it.

Mission accomplished.

And then I finished Yet Another knitted project, a version of (Ravelry link alert:) Norah Gaughan's Shell tank. I've said it before and I'll say it again: her designs are not only genius, they're gorgeous as well. Intellectual aesthetics. What could be better?

I used a silk and dralon (yes, dralon) blend that I picked up back in the decade of my fiber obsession on eBay (in the nineties). It was pretty intense, and actually, if I hadn't bought another skein of yarn or fleece or piece of roving since then (I have though), I'd still have had enough to last me into a very, very long retirement (which at this point in the economy makes me wonder if I'll ever get there).

On the other hand, I scored some very excellent bargains and got burned once only, and the seller deactivated her account before I could file an official complaint. On the other hand, if I'd put all that into college funds for my kids, I could impulsively get a new floor in the room where the cat peed even with two kids in college at the same time.

Make no mistake, I have neither regrets nor plans to give up my fibre stash or anything. It's very, very useful. Come the apocalypse and my kids and I are clothed and warm, though global warming may render that slightly less necessary than say, the next ice age, but who knows? Climate science really isn't my area of expertise, not that I claim to have one.

Mixed Bag

2011-08-28T21:53:00.003-05:00

My hands are just about dye-free, except for under my nails, and where my cuticles are not gorgeous. (The last actual manicure I had was probably five to ten years ago). I think there was some horror at my glovelessness, and if I did this more often, I'd be more of a glove-wearer, but it was hot and I wasn't in the mood and I knew that skin sloughs enough that by work on Monday I'd be presentable. And I will be, at least in the hands department.

And then there was weekend day #2. I love days which are not filled with deadlines.

I knew I wanted to take that leap of faith in my cat and her multitude of legitimate places for relief around the house, not to mention the vast array of enzymatic cleaners and home remedies that I used on her illegal waste water location, as well as the fact that I ripped out and threw away the wooden tack strips to which the carpet was attached to the floor (wood absorbs cat pee better than Brawny, according to my nose), and roll the carpet back and put the furniture on top of it once more. I'm not foolish, so I have a roll of wire mesh and a plastic crate thing blocking off her favourite area, but I'm hopeful.

That took a short while, but I had the rest of the day to putter, which I did.

I finished the necklace I started a few days ago, and while I do love the rondelles I used, and I'm pleased at the way the necklace turned out, it's just not what I wanted and as such doesn't press my love-button (you know, that button which when pressed by something you see or touch or taste induces bliss and lust and a sense of timeless perfection of the moment), so it needs an owner which won't be me.

It has matching earrings which are not a matched pair but are a pair nonetheless.

I think I may have to buy some more of those beads and try again. I probably need other/better/different fringe beads, seed beads and/or fire-polished rounds. I'm sure that's it. I shouldn't have been so quick to dismiss my metallic/industrial inclinations in favour of the easy fix of colour.

So it was successful in a way, but not in the I Have More Jewellery Now way.

Recently I picked up some faux turquoise rondelles which I'd hoped would work in this design.

Not so much, as it turns out. You can see that the seed beads around the rondelles are not lying neatly and symmetrically, but are buckling and angled and sticking out. Turns out that the rondelles are between useful sizes.

The first version of this design that I developed works well for the 4x7mm rodelles as in the necklace and earrings above, and the second version is tweaked to use the bigger 6x9s, but these ones are neither. They're wider than the small ones (so I had to try the bead counts for the bigger ones because thread was showing for the bead counts for smaller rondelles), but they're both much thinner and narrower than the big ones, so nothing really works well.

I like the colours though.

My total failure today as been reincarnated as a pile of wiggly threads on my work table and beads back in their tubes, trying to wipe their memories of what I thought they could do.

Hand Dyed

2011-08-27T19:29:00.002-05:00

Quite literally (and I mean it, I'm not using it figuratively and saying "literally" when I really mean "figuratively"). My hand is dyed. And the other one too.

I just wasn't in the mood for gloves at our dye day.

Between five of us (some people chose not to dye) we painted two and a half pounds of blue-faced Leicester roving and two and a half pounds of merino roving, as well as a package of silk hankies which we used as dye mops for spills. I think it is as least as good a technique as deliberate colour placement on hankies or mawata. We also dyed a pound or so of bombyx, but that turned out to be easier to fold and dip than to paint.

Wish I had a photo of all the fibre hanging on the line outside Dale's house, as it was gorgeous!

Colour Instinct

2011-08-25T22:21:00.005-05:00

I think I'm usually pretty decent at combining colours in beading. Sometimes a monochromatic palette with variations in finish and depth of shade is appropriate, whereas sometimes contrast makes beadwork sing. I usually know what I want, and I can usually get it.

Usually.

I'd been eyeing these pyrite-effect rondelles for ages, and then eventually gave in and saved them for a while. Wasn't entirely sure where I wanted to go with them.

On Tuesday I handed off class samples, and had a little me-time before the next class or set of classes, and decided to indulge myself with these beads.

I wanted a metallic industrial look, sort of a mixed metals effect. Since the colour of the beads lies partway between silvery and gold-bronze, it seemed the perfect opportunity to use both.

Meh. (The picture is very flattering. All my pictures float around average: the really good things photograph poorly and the uninteresting look better than they really are).

The fringe beads are too dark and stark and the others look messy and the lovely rondelles fade into the background. I thought I knew what effect I wanted, but I got what I wanted but it turned out I didn't really want it.

Apparently what I REALLY wanted was colour and contrast. Not where my first instincts led me, and not where my plan led me, but at least this way I know it's better.

See, I did say I'd been knitting a bunch, right? I wasn't making it up.

Slightly New

2011-08-22T19:52:00.002-05:00

Lately knitting has been calling louder than beading, but not in terms of photographic documentation of my progress and/or accomplishments, and the beading has been meagre.

To whit, a pendant using a pair of bead caps. Pretty, but hardly earth-shatteringly new and exciting, but then again, really, what is?

The second ring using smaller rondelles and magatamas instead of fringe beads isn't either. Earth-shatteringly new.

Actually, I'm ok with that.

I think I'm also ok with having a twenty-one-year-old daughter.

Not that I have a choice per se.

Scant Eye Candy

2011-08-20T22:19:00.002-05:00

It's kinda been a week, and I haven't been all that focused on making things so that I can post pictures, and although it's not nothing, it's not much.

A pair of earrings to match the pendant I made last week (class samples).

A pendant I finished today, although obviously not the chain. No, I didn't intend for it to hang on a black chain.

I just realised that it's a bit on the Harry Potter side. You know, pentagram-ish. Witches. That sort of thing. Not my intent, I swear.

I knitted a bunch. No pictures.

I took my baby to college. No pictures. It rained as we moved him in. A lot. An inch, according to the weather people, who are quite a bit better at reporting what has happened than what's going to happen.

My oldest turns twenty-one at the stroke of midnight. No really, she was born at 12:01 ayem twenty-one years ago. The hour is significant only because it gave me an extra night in hospital which when you have a newborn is like being at a fancy hotel spa thing, relatively speaking that is. I mean, there are no facials or hot stone massages or awesome food and expensive mineral water, but you do get waited on hand and foot, especially when the epidural takes a full twenty-four hours to wear off enough that your legs can support your weight.

Good times.

I'm still dealing with cat pee, although at this point I can't tell whether it's pee that I'm smelling or merely the gazillion products I've been using to transmute it into something better.

That's what the enzymatic cleaners do, isn't it? An analogously Rumpelstiltskin thing, but at a sort of lower level. I mean, I think straw has its uses (cat pee does not, as far as I can tell), but gold is better (and cat pee transmuted into water is definitely not as offensive as its starting point).

So far it's been cheaper than getting a new tile floor or even a new carpet, but probably not quite as effective, so I guess you do get what you pay for, at least in some instances.

Uncertain Measurements

2011-08-14T22:48:00.005-05:00

I assume I'm not unusual in that weekends are divided into those things that I like to do and those things that I have to do that are too difficult for during the week, when I'm at work most of my waking hours and thus otherwise occupied. It's probably different for people whose time belongs to someone else forty hours a week.

To a certain extent, my measure of the success of a weekend correlates to how much I actually managed to get done, both in the Have To and the Want To categories, and how good I feel about that success depends on how anxious I was about the Have To and how much I enjoyed the Want To.

Weekends in which I make things, and especially when I completethem, tend to be more satisfying, more successful in my mind than when I don't.

Broadly speaking, that is.

I got lots of Have Tos done. Visitation for a co-worker's mother. Shopping for my son for college. Sewing his duvet cover. Laundry, bills, that sort of nonsense. Feeding the cat. Not as much sleep as I needed though.

I'm trying to figure out if the rest was in the Want To or the Have To category, because it was beading (which I like) and knitting (which I like though I didn't finish anything), but on the other hand, it was class samples and not even new ones, just finishing those I'd started or making one which really ought to be available since it's in my Etsy shop.

I made another one of these, because the prototype needed tweaking, and even though the picture on their web-site is of that one I needed a good one for the bead store.

I also finished this necklace, which was ever so slightly on the interminable side. Just a touch.

It didn't need alteration or tweaking or second-guessing, but it did need quite a bit of time. One Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and quite a few Fresh Airs. Listening online is the best invention ever. Well, it's up there anyway.

So I got Stuff done, and I didn't hate it, but it didn't bliss me out either, and now it feels like past my bedtime and tomorrow is Monday, but I'm not entirely satisfied that it was a weekend well spent.

In truth, all my beading joy could well be tainted by The Cat That Pees On Carpet Even After Steaming It (which makes the likelihood of new flooring all the more likely at a time when I'm not thrilled about pouring money into anything as I'm already opouring money into two college educations as of the week after next when school starts), but I really have no way of knowing for certain, do I?

Out of Proportion

2011-08-13T13:26:00.005-05:00

A few weeks ago I missed Nancy's birthday around the time that Adriana admired a pair of earrings here, so I made a few pairs for Nancy and sent Adriana the ones she admired. It was the least I could do, really.

A small gesture of friendship.

But then this was in the mail today.

In case you can't see, it's a lot of chocolate with fabulously exotic flavourings like Indonesian sweet curry with coconut, and wasabi and ginger and blood orange caramel (I've tasted that one: yum!) and jasmine tea. Oh and some cookies, because really, seven slabs of chocolate just aren't enough.

Talk about overwhelmed!

Meanwhile I've been making class samples (story of my life) because the originals are in my Etsy shop (here and here) and so really ought not be sequestered in the classes case in the bead store for the next four months.

The earrings are identical to the ones I'd originally made, but the pendant has an add-on.

The dangle is exactly the same as the earrings (well, close) but without the overlay.

So often I add an overlay to something in large part because it needs strength or support or a place to affix a bail, but with this design, the overlay is entirely unnecessary and utterly decorative.

I actually like it both ways. More is often better but not necessarily, as it turns out.

Variations on a Theme

2011-08-10T23:06:00.002-05:00

I had made a necklace with these funny little components, and Amy had suggested that alone they might make over-long earrings, so I made an abbreviated version.

Apart from being shades of grey and therefore awkward to photograph, it was an excellent idea, and I like the way they turned out, though my choice of a teardrop bead at the bottom was perhaps less inspired, as they tend to not want to hang straight. Something with a straighter shaft would have been better, like a dagger bead. Probably one of the cute little miniatures.

The pendant however, does not incite me to second-guess myself.

I'd had the idea for a pendant using one of these components for a while, which turned out exactly as I'd anticipated. I think it could easily be adjusted to accommodate big-bottomed teardrop pendants too - in fact that had been my initial vision, but somehow I was seduced by the shiny.

It happens.

I Don't Love Blue

2011-08-06T16:24:00.003-05:00

Without the supporting cones, the medallions at the ends of my twirly slider make pretty decent earrings.

And the Chinese crystals I bought ~~in a feeding frenzy~~ on a whim finish them off just perfectly.

I may have mentioned before that I'm weak for opal-style colours: those milky shades with a hint of translucency that seems to lend them an ethereal glow. If not, I'm telling you now.

So I acquired some opal grey/blue/lilac/something spade beads which I thought I would make into a necklace that I would love and adore and have and hold until death or fraying thread tore it apart or familiarity bred contempt or boredom or something; point is, it was going to be for me.

It's just a bit blue for me (which ought not to surprise me since most of the accent beads are on the blue side), so I'm hoping someone else will first feel and then submit to irresistible lust. For the necklace.

I'm especially chuffed with the clasp, because as it turns out, some time ago I apparently urgently needed some button beads in the same indefinable colour which I promptly put somewhere dark and out-of-the-way so that they would not guilt me with their presence because it turns out I have had (until a few minutes ago) absolutely no idea what to do with them.

As it happens, a pair make quite a nifty toggle-style clasp.

What I'll do with the other twenty-three I have no idea, and I may have to wait another couple of years before I figure it out, but I'm feeling much more confident that something will occur to me.

Eventually.

And Again

2011-08-02T17:43:00.003-05:00

I had to make another twirly slider because I wanted to try rondelles in place of some of the smallish round beads, and I also wanted to see if I could adjust the length so that it would show its face better.

The golden one I made over the weekend was almost exactly two full twists; in other words, if you cut the ends off and cut in in half, it would be two circles. Like open jump rings.

This one is two and a half twists, and my thinking was that one end would sit against your chest, looking down at the floor and forcing the other end to be eyes front.

At least on a small plastic bust it sort of works.

The rondelles definitely work. You can't exactly see them, but they're towards the narrower end of the cone.

Beginnings

2011-07-31T10:03:00.002-05:00

Yesterday's little medallion spawned a prettier sibling which grew up into a fairy princess, but that's not where it started.

It started with a lampworked bead on a necklace that I happened to wear on Friday, but that's not where it started either.

Probably about ten years ago or so, my friend Gayle got into lampwork, and we happened into a conversation in which a lampworker who sells on eBay was mentioned. I promptly clicked over to look at her work, fell in lust, and fell into a deep depression (I'm embellishing here; I was somewhat disappointed) to see that her beads went for many hundreds of dollars a set, not infrequently in the thousands. I once saw a final price of over four thousand dollars, though that was unusual.

I went over to her personal site and saw that she offered sets for about $250, which while way more expensive than any beads I'd ever bought, didn't seem that excessive, especially when compared to the feeding frenzy that was her eBay listings. (They're no longer listed on her site).

Current boyfriend thought a gift certificate for a set of beads would make an excellent birthday present (it would have), but she was sadly no longer offering $250 custom sets since her auctions were so much more profitable. Disappointed, the gift certificate for the offerings of a particular artist transmuted into any set of beads on eBay, but after looking around some more, I realized that I could make that money go way further than a single set of beads, as there were so many incredibly talented artists selling for an order of magnitude less, and so started a period of obsessive purchasing of lampwork beads on eBay that continued for about six months until I got laid off.

(As an aside, she's no longer my favourite lampwork artist. Her use of colour is exquisite, but I think much of her magic lay in her most excellent eBay listings: the photography, the layout, and her descriptions. In her life before glass she wrote for Rolling Stone, so it's hardly surprising that she'd captivate with her words. I prefer the intricacy of this artist whose work is equally out of my reach).

I have quite an impressive collection which includes multiple purchases from a few favourite artists, including Polychrome beads who has an Etsy shop, should I run out of her beads (not happening any time soon).

So on Friday I wore this necklace which I made from her bead, and I somehow latched onto the idea of a beaded slider that twirled.

It started with the medallions above, and I experimented to see if I could do a stiff enough twirl (actually, I knew I could, as I'd made a self-supporting, self-shaping donut bead for one of my very earliest kits many years ago, and had recently been thinking about reviving the technique).

Yup, it worked, but the colours were horrible, so I started again.

I considered making another full twist, but I was impatient to make the other end. I'm not sure if a twist and a half would better display the slider ends, but that's a project for another day.

Right now, I'm pretty delighted with what I have.

Got It!

2011-07-30T11:26:00.003-05:00

Last week I finished off a necklace that started off like this, but I wasn't completely satisfied with it.

There was some kind of weight balance awry. As Amy said, it needed more stuff on top, so I decided on deeper netting (more stitches) but that looked unfinished and too open and fragile (and not in a good way) to support the drops, so I switched from five-drop netting to three-drop, but that was just flat and heavy.

So as I started stitching, I started ripping out (or cutting, when the thread was pierced) for the beads that weren't doing any good where they were (except pointing the way to What Not To Do), in this cosmic dance of eating my own tail, which is why the sample below is so short.

You can see part of the evolution (where the left hand side is older than the right): the space between the two leftmost daggers isn't quite the same as between the other daggers. I wanted a more well-defined zig-zag.

Eventually I had something which I found visually pleasing, but which wasn't suited to a necklace, as it wouldn't curve. It would make a lovely cuff though.

So I made it narrower, and suddenly it worked!

It's (to my eye) visually balanced in terms of the density and variety of beads, and it's wearable on the human form. I think I have a workable solution for the back too, which in my mind is always something to think about with necklaces. I like the front to have more weight so that it doesn't twist around the neck, and if we're talking about a wide collar, then its very width shouldn't seat it in an unstable and fidgety way.

For quite a while now I've been working on a large three-dimensional pendant or slider around 12mm rivolis, butit hasn't been going well, and still isn't, but I've stopped for now, though I'm considering other uses for the rivolis.

This may be an incarnation of the end-piece of a whole different necklace enhancer quite different from my original concept, thwarted in equal parts by blurred vision and too-small bead holes. Fortunately I'm never at a complete standstill, as there are always more ideas and more projects in the work.

Luckily.

I can't imagine a life in which I wasn't driven to make things.

Slave to Colour

2011-07-24T22:25:00.003-05:00

I'll probably still finish the green necklace from Friday, but apparently I needed to make one like this.

It's close in actuality to what I'd planned, but I don't love it as much as I want to, so I guess my plan must have been flawed. It's not awful, but it's not as lovely as I think it should be. I made the unadorned back section too long (you can see it from the front), and I wish I'd transitioned better.

I love fringe beads, and I love lots of fringe beads, and so I used a pair of fringe beads where seed beads looked lame, but the fringe beads don't behave all that well, so I need a better solution for that section too.

It may not seem like it, but the problem of a lack of transition between the back and the front presents in the lack of front focal, which I think might be in order.

I guess it's either Back To The Drawing Board or Forget This And Do Something Else, but I don't yet know which it will be.

On the other hand, the sample for Tuesday's class turned out quite well, although I was part-way through it when I realized that I'd used the same colours (though in different places) as in the first sample: purple and orange.

I might need to make another one in entirely different colours just to prove I can.

It looked to me like a lion's mane, so when looking for a name, I looked up the word "mane" in a bunch of languages until I found something I liked the sound of. The actual word (and I forget the language) was "crina", but I thought people might want to pronounce it "cry-na", so I changed the spelling to Creena.

I need to make one that doesn't have golden tones in it. You know, like the colour of a lion.

Apparently I'm all about the subconscious when it comes to colours.

I think I'm going to need to make blue or grey leaves and black flowers and metallic bunnies just to show my subconscious who's boss!

Starting Point

2011-07-22T23:02:00.003-05:00

I check in on a number of beading blogs which are so often inspiring. I'll see a combination of beads, an outline of a shape, an interesting variation on a stitch, then go away and start beading. If I continue, generally what I end up with is quite a long way from where I started.

Occasionally I'll even follow a pattern pretty much as written.

Like these earrings, which I found here. (Actually, this is the second pair I made; the first I gave away before I could even photograph them). I liked them because they use both farfalle (or peanut) beads as well as daggers, both of which can be difficult to incorporate into seed beading.

Cute little earrings. Little earrings. Tiny little earrings. So small they could be the trim on a necklace.

A tiny piece of a necklace, to be more accurate.

I actually tried to make the netting part of the necklace more interesting and textured and multi-coloured, but it only made it ugly, so I stuck with the undecorated look and let the dangles do all the showing off.

Although the daggers I've used are rather plain, this is a great use for those gorgeous (and expensive) daggers like the ones I used in the earrings. They're both shown off to advantage, and used relatively sparingly.

Sadly, this may have been my self-indulgent beading for the weekend, as I have instructions to do for Tuesday's class.

I'm sure I'll survive.

Just Finished

2011-07-18T23:00:00.002-05:00

And now it's bedtime.

I wasn't going to redo all the pieces linked to metal rings, and it's interesting that some people like the combination with metal and some don't.

I have no particular principles when it comes to seed beaded projects in terms of metal: I'm for it if it enhances the item and against it if not. Or if I'm too lazy to bead a clasp it's that much quicker to use something that's already assembled.

The ends that join the beaded ring should have been a bit looser, as the front section is a bit grabby and doesn't flow too well, but otherwise I'm quite pleased with it. I really love the colours though.

A Few Small Things

2011-07-17T20:46:00.003-05:00

I said I'd been fighting gauge and entrelac, didn't I? Or at least alluded to it.

The problem was that I wanted medium-to-small entrelac squares, preferably seven or eight stitches by twice that number of rows, and in order to make a garment that conforms to a body shape, more or less, one makes a back and a front which are generally the same width, which means the same number of entrelac units for each, which means an even number.

Herein the problem.

Each pair of entrelac units has its own measurement, which for seven, eight or nine stitches per unit yielded a garment either too big or too small. I tried a different needle size but it looked ugly, and so finally I have settled on ten stitches per unit which is bigger than I'dwanted, but will at least yield a garment that will fit me well enough. Not perfectly, mind you, but well enough.

To measure entrelac gauge, you need at least four units across, and three up, which ends up being way more knitting than I usually do in the swatching department (except for the sweater I kept on undoing at SOAR one year), but it was either that or give up, and I wasn't quite ready for that.

There was no intense beading this weekend, not really, not in the way of completing a large project over the course of many hours. I miss that I didn't, even though I did get plenty of knitting done.

I experimented with funny odd-shaped beaded beads.

I should have taken a picture from above or below, as they have this triangular structure which is more intriguing than the side view above.

In the course of searching for beads (which I never found), I came across some rose quartz ovals I'd forgotten about, and wondered how they would work for this:

Looks like they work, doesn't it?

Yeah but not really. I had wondered how a rounder oval would work, and it turns out the not-so-slim waistline gets in the way.

See the large pale bead at the top that's recessed compared to its siblings?

There isn't enough room around for their generous curves unfortunately.

Before I Spin

2011-07-16T08:45:00.002-05:00

Halinka didn't like the metal rings, so I tried a beaded ring.

Version II (of both the ring and the links, which may diverge into variations of the chain) are in the works, but if I don't make a Something out of what I've started before working on the next ones, I'll have Yet Another UFO. They're on the verge of overwhelming me, moving into the guest bedroom and leaving their dirty socks in the living room.

So I played around with something else.

I had planned for it to be a teardrop, but it seemed unfinished, a bit scrappy and unattractive, so it's a ring.

You can see that the rondelles, fringe beads and seed beads around the outer rim are vying for space, so the next version will be a bit smaller, making a sharper curve with more room and less overcrowding.

Meanwhile, I have to finish cutting and chopping and mixing the Indonesian Rice salad I promised to take to spinning today.

I was in grad school at the Weizmann Institute of Science for two years beginning immediately after the start of the first Lebanon war, and I somehow acquired one of those women's group combination cookbook/calendars, and this has been a standby since then, though I haven't made it in a few years.

Indonesian Rice Salad

2 cups brown rice, cooked, cooled

1/2 cup raisins or grapes (or dried cherries or dried fruit of your choice)

1 celery stalk, chopped or sliced or diced

2 scallions, chopped or sliced or diced

1/2 cup nuts

1/4 c toasted sesame seeds

1/2 green or red pepper, chopped or sliced or diced

1 c bean sprouts

Dressing

3/4 orange juice

1/2 c salad oil

3-4 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons sherry

juice of a lemon (or lime, if you like)

crushed garlic to taste

salt and pepper to taste

Mix the dressing, pour over the salad and chill. Add other things if you'd like. Edamame would be good, as would julienne carrots or cucumbers. Ginger in with the dressing, and a dash of cayenne. Replace some of the oil with toasted sesame oil.

I Made Stuff

2011-07-10T20:38:00.004-05:00

I needed another sample for Tuesday's class.

So I made a very pretty bracelet.

I also finished the vibrant necklace I started last weekend.

I redid the wirework supporting the focal bead, so I'm no longer embarrasssed.

I've stopped subscribing to beading magazines, because in truth usually what's useful are the pictures only; it's been a few years since I actually wanted to make a project from a magazine, and it's rare that there's a technique completely new to me.

Still, sometimes I find myself with a new magazine.

There was a very pretty herringbone project which wI decided to make, but after two pattern repeats, I was just annoyed. I didn't like the way it looked (there were curves that were not beaded as curves, so there was unpleasant listing to the side), and I just didn't enjoy the stitching, but I liked the concept of alternating directions by ninety degrees.

I had an idea. It was bad. I cut it up.

I had another idea.

It showed promise. I liked the look of the rondelles between decorative parenthesis.

I decided I didn't need to alternate directions, but because the main part was pretty stiff, I needed something more fluid as a bridge.

I didn't care for my first attempt.

Or the second.

Then I realized that I needed joints with rotation, rather than soft bits (which is what the bright necklace above has in the centre of each beaded-bead section: two beaded beads separated by soft right angle weave), and found a length of chain I'd bought precisely for the links which could be separated out.

The necklace is only as long as you see, but is working rather well, so far.

Knitting? I've done a lot, but it's all got to go. Two word summary: entrelac gauge.

I'm no more clued-in as to the origin of Friday's yarn gift.

Mystery!

2011-07-08T18:39:00.006-05:00

Apparently all it takes is a happy mystery to get me to post, even though there is this stack of pictures I took last weekend, so high it's practically toppling. (Well, it's all relative, isn't it).

This arrived in the mail today, from Interweave Press, from someone I don't think I know, and there was no note.

Just this scrumptious (less blue, more purple) skein of superwash merino in s ziploc bag.

Kind person, whoever you are, please tell me why you did this as I'd love to be able to thank you. I didn't think I'd been that good lately, or done something kind for which I should be repaid, and I'm pretty sure I didn't buy it, or even ask for it.

Last Monday, as well as I used my time off (no fireworks, lots of beading and knitting), I didn't have quite the success I like.

I saw a thing that gave me an idea of a use for cube beads that may not have been lame.

Eh. Didn't care for the 8ºs, wanted some faceted bling, and came up with this.

Kind of OK but those rondelles were a bit awkward. Perhaps faceted beads along the outside circumference, where they'd be more visible.

I guess so, but those 8ºs just don't do it for me.

Kinda-sorta better, but still not hitting the g-spot.

So I started a necklace.

The focal is this fabulous oilslick of colour over black, and it's lovely and all, but it's not speaking to me in the dulcet tones of desire, so it's languishing too. Plus I did a crappy job with the wire holding the very heavy focal.

So I made a pendant.

The rondelles are gorgeous, a sort of blue-green stoney wash over a black base, but I picked my seed beads poorly: highly contrasty seeds would have made it sing instead of snore. It's not objectionable, but it's most definitely not eye-catching. It's the sort of thing you'd wear to a party at which you really don't feel like talking to anyone there.

I did make Peg earrings to go with a necklace she bought a few months ago, so flush with my success, I attacked a plan for beaded links that could be formed into a chain.

I'd made one ages ago and thought it had seemed like a good idea at the time, and perhaps it is, so I made another (the one on the right) and even though it's serviceable and not terribly difficult, I think it might me rather irksome to have to make the next one intertwined with the previous one, as it's not a question of doing the whole thing and then in two brief steps, joining the ends so that TA-DA! they're magically linked. Rather, you make a very floppy chain, carefully join the ends, and then go around and around, adding embellishment to strengthen it, and with every stitch, your thread wraps around one of those evil fringe beads which are desperately needed because otherwise blah.

So I made a pendant.

At this point, I'm out of opinions, except I'll reiterate that I really love my new yarn.

Thanks, mystery gifter!

It's Apart Hate

2011-07-03T08:54:00.004-05:00

I put off seeing the movie Invictus until a couple of days ago for a number of reasons, all valid, and really I shouldn't have given in and seen it because it just irks me, as I knew it would.

Although I grew up in South Africa, I'm as interested in rugby as I am in baseball or curling or lacrosse, which is to say, not at all. Blind patriotism has never seemed natural, sensible or desirable wherever I've lived, and since I haven't set foot on the African continent since 1989, anything going on there is largely only of academic interest. Plus: rugby. Don't care.

Every time I see a movie about South Africans not made by South Africans, everything they get wrong annoys the crap out of me and this was no exception.

The people in the movie in South Africa who are purportedly South African at the very least should pronounce the word "apartheid" correctly.

Say after me:

Apart.

Hate.

That's the way it's said. When speaking in English, by English-speakers. If people in the US get in a snit because someone with no Spanish mispronounces the word "tortilla", then they should learn how to pronounce the pivotal word "apartheid".

Couldn't they have found an accent coach for Morgan Freeman? Really not? Because he was awful every time he opened his mouth.

Just because English is not Mandelea's native tongue, doesn't mean that he has to pause between each word. The man is literate and articulate and far more fluent than Mr Freeman would have us think. There were a couple of real black South Africans in the movie who spoke at normal speed albeit with their usual accent and cadence, which is quite distinctive. (Actually, it's pretty similar to quite a few other African accents that I've heard, but to no non-African accents I've heard). If Mr Freeman had paid attention, his accent would have been improved a thousand-fold.

The woman who played his assistant, apart from her awful accent (it was she I noticed mispronouncing "apartheid"), was obviously not for a second even before she opened her mouth, South African. Just because she has a darker-than-white skin doesn't make her any of the ethnicities in Southern Africa, and certainly not one with the family name Mazibuko. She's very beautiful, but her looks scream "NOT FROM HERE!"

A small detail in the Pienaar household. Yes, the maid would have done the ironing, but she would never no how no ways ever have done it in the living room.

There would be a room somewhere near the kitchen, or perhaps (as in my family home) there would have been a room between the kitchen and the back door, that also contained the washing machine, freezer, brooms, vacuum cleaner and other cleaning equipment, where she would have been doing the ironing. I realize that the maid had to have a presence in the movie so that Francois could give her a ticket, but any work that she did would have been while the family were not in the room. Most likely, they would have interacted with her in the kitchen.

Clint, I'm disappointed.

Personal enlightenment and the growth of empathy and understanding always make a good story, and I loved the Cape Town nostalgia shots: the mountain, the lighthouse, the aerial shots, and the rugby looked authentic to me: lots of grunting and mud, but they say the devil is in the details, and so many of the details were so flat-out wrong that it (as expected) completely ruined this movie for me.

Too Tired To Title

2011-07-02T10:07:00.003-05:00

Before I show you my latest finished beadwork which you've already seen in progress so it's not as though any of it is mind-shatteringly exciting and new but I like it all the same, let me just say that Things Have Changed Since My Day.

I took my son to his chosen school's "Summer Welcome" which is really just student orientation with parent activities thrown in for the terminally Unable To Process Information. I think he had a great time, got a bit familiar with the campus, met a bunch of incoming freshman, all that good stuff, but as far as I'm concerned, I could have done without the bulk of what I wet through.

I'm a big fan of good communication, good organization of information, that sort of thing, and Thursday was an excellent counter-example. They were very well-orgainized in terms of herding us from one session to another, and I am glad that I got to see the campus, but if they had sent out a well-written, well-organized document with the information that we (as parents) need, I could have read it in about fifteen minutes and not had to endure the schleppage. It was really hot too.

The first session we went to was all about money essentially, and how students can accrue expenses, and how you (the parent) can pay for them. It was a little like an SNL sketch, where they say "If A, then B, but if C then D" and the parent asks "So if A then D?", and "B means C, right?" and my jaw actually dropped at the inability to listen and process for which the rest of use had to suffer.

Holy crap.

I'm happy to have taken my son to orientation. I'm happy to have received information that they did not otherwise send out to the parents. I'm happy to have walked around the campus and seen the student union and a dining hall and dorms, but I'm decidedly not happy about having been herded around and had doled out odds and ends of information piecemeal.

One plus is that I finished a sock and made significant progress on a shrug which looks to me like an excellent way of using that single skein of handpainted cotton that I was (a) unable to resist even though (b) I didn't think it could be used in any attractive or useful way (as a single skein) since I don't do scarves or scarflets or shawlets or capelets (though you need more than one skein for these ridiculous - and not in a good way - bastardizations of legitimate garments) or little bags. Gloves, mittens and hats are not good matches for cotton.

I ought to take a picture once it's finished, but the plan is that you cast on for the neck and work paired raglan increases for the back of the sleeve and single increases for the front of the sleeve: there is no front of the shrug. Once you reach the underarm, work a couple of inches of sleeve (if you like) and then work ribbing to finish the sleeve and around the circumference of the shrug, corresponding more or less to the back neck, front neck and back/bottom edge.

One hundred-gram skein of dk-weight is enough for the non-ribbing parts, and I'll use a solid colour for the ribbing.

On to beadwork.

I finished the necklace I was working on earlier this week.

I've been having a hard time finding brass clasps, so I made one.

I'm not the keenest wire-worker in the world, but sometimes you just have to. Solid brass findings are hard to come by, and they're often fancier or more floral or vintage-inspired than I care for, and almost always way more expensive than I think they should be, so making my own very simple findings is a good solution. It doesn't even take that long.

Now I need to stock up on 16-gauge wire in copper and sterling.

I also made matching earrings.

I also made the ear wires.

I'll probably put the necklace and earrings in my Etsy shop eventually. I like them, like the colours, but don't lust after them and desire possession, so I made a necklace to match the earrings in my last post for me.

Sludge. Yum.

In My Groove

2011-06-28T22:53:00.002-05:00

The last few weeks or months or so, I haven't felt terribly excited about beading.

I've been filling kits, writing instructions, making matching earrings, and although there have been a few things that have grabbed me, obsession-wise, I haven't been delighted with myself.

Perhaps from where you are, that's preferable, but I love it when I come up with something that I am not only compelled to work on (and "work" is such an inadequate and misleading work, implying a measure of externally-imposed obligation, rather than an organic fruiting eagerness), but enjoy the process: the way it looks at each step, as well as simple pleasure in the doing.

Sometimes I just want to be finished, but it's much better when I know I will be, but don't mind that I'm not yet.

This is preferable.

I fiddled over the weekend, and my first take was this:

It has potential.

Because it requires faceted beads of two different shapes, two sizes of seed beads as well as fringe beads, it lends itself to lovely nuances of colour and texture. For example the matte metallic smaller seed beads give the narrow parts of the rope a somewhat sharp-edged geometric feel, while the colour-lined transparent drops add a subtle dewiness.

I was liking it, but not loving it as in the first weeks of a new relationship, so I decided to take a break and start again with yummier beads, resulting in these earrings.

I also made a few inches of a necklace to match.

Kinda loving these, especially the extra drops around the equator, so I went back to the green one and added drops, and found bigger rondelles for the focal (it's fairly subtle), and now I'm all happy and in love.

Yay!

And since I finished knitting my stripey thing last night (although I will redo the sleeves which are a bit cracked out) and now must start being anxious about what to knit next, it's even more yay-worthy that I'm enjoying this so much and am very reluctant to go to bed instead of playing some more.

Baby Steps

2011-06-26T11:07:00.003-05:00

As it happens, when I'm grossly sleep-deprived to the point of pain, I don't get much beading done, though I do spend some time slouched in front of a movie, getting knitting done.

Sometime last year, I made this.

And then I sold it, and was asked to make a pair of matching earrings.

I'm not exactly sure why, but instead I started on this.

And even though it didn't give me the colour pop I'd wanted, I kept on at it until it was finished, because quite frankly, the unfinished beading projects are starting to scare me.

And then I made the earrings.

They're quite simple to make, and are little more than bead caps (or more precisely, cones), and even though there's not much to them, the colour, size and shape variation in the beads used makes them (in my opinion), quite interesting. After I've made the other two pairs of earrings I have on my list of orders, I hope I don't get distracted by something else ("Squirrel!") because I'd really like to pursue this a bit further.

I think it has Necklace Possibilities. Not that I'm not a fan of earrings (I am!) but I'm even more enamoured of multipurpose components, whether made singly as components and strung together, or (better) if they can be sewn together as they are made. This is looking at first blush like the former, though I do see vague possibilities for the latter.

But first, matching earrings.

Someone Else's

2011-06-19T22:07:00.003-05:00

I'm so very drawn to deep, dark, murky, complex colours, but every now and again, a colour from one of the other boxes catches my eye.

I originally bought a bunch of Peri's amethyst glass rings and used them in a fabulous necklace. The colour wasn't highly sludgey, but it's complex enough that you'd need ALL the primaries to mix it.

Then I bought a bunch more the next time she brought them to Bead Society: multiples of black, very dark amber, light amber, and a single eye-popping variably translucent orange like sunset over smog, bushfire at night, an eyeball-searing brightness that's almost neon - but more saturated, clearer.

So I made a necklace with red and gold and purple and lime and cranberry.

Earrings too.

Sometimes I take a break from my royal title(*) and play in someone else's sandbox, with someone else's finger-paints.

And then I'm pleased with myself, love the crazy wild bright, but sincerely hope that someone else will want it in their life, because it's fun and all and I had a great time and am glad for the experience, but for me it's the sort of vacation that you want to come home from, fabulous though it may be.

It just doesn't fit me, exactly.

I like it though.

[(*) The Queen of Sludge].

Beading Saturday

2011-06-18T22:30:00.002-05:00

(I'm not feeling terribly clever in the Title department).

I finally finished the sample for the kit I was going to have in my Etsy shop last Tuesday after class but instead I felt like death warmed up, and in that condition, my main concern was going home and getting into bead.

But now I'm fine.

So I made a little variation: I used a leaf bead and added Even More fire-polished beads (because sometimes more is in fact better) to alter the shape a bit. The daggers are partially obscured, so it may well be that this is the precursor to something else entirely.

Or not, as the case may be.

Feels Like Indulgence

2011-06-16T21:53:00.003-05:00

Last weekend I knocked off a few simple pendants to take a break from a bigger project which to be sure I'd happily agreed to do (and now I'm even happier that it's over with), but as with anything chosen not purely out of desire in the instant, had a faint tang of lack of desire.

I suppose I can keep the pendants, but they were akin to taking a drive to fill up with gas while immersed in spring-cleaning, a nice contrast to be sure, but not necessarily something that satisfies a burning itch.

Once I had the necklace done, I scratched my itch.

I had to finish instructions, which in this case meant taking pictures of a few steps still missing, rather than writing the text to accompany the pictures as is often the case, and I was so taken with the beads I'd picked for the photos that I decided to make it all for me.

And then I made earrings to match.

It's one of those things I don't feel strongly about one way or the other: matching earrings.

Given that I always wear earrings when I'm wearing a necklace, it's useful to have earrings that go, but not necessary to have them exactly the same. On the other hand, if the necklace is composed of earring-sized components, then it seems silly to not make matching earrings simply on a twee principle (because the argument that it's too, too cute to have matching earrings is in itself a little preposterous and self-important and therefore - to my mind - shading towards the twee).

So I have matching earrings.

And I plan on wearing them all tomorrow.

Interestingly, my Had Been A Large Swatch current knitting project would be a suitable backdrop, were it complete. Alas, alack, not by tomorrow.

Best-Laid Plans

2011-06-14T22:08:00.002-05:00

So it turns out that if you start getting ready for a class and kits and whatnot way in advance, you have to continue at it until you are in fact finished, because simply starting something early doesn't actually guarantee that you will be ready in time if you do no more than start.

There was a bit of a last-minute scramble for this evening's class, not helped in the slightest by a rather nasty cold that has me sleep deprived, runny and achey.

No kits today.

As part of the class prep, I did some sampling and really like this combination of beads, which I plan to make into something for me. I feel so liberated now that the jade necklace is off my hands (she really liked it and bought the earrings too).

I messed around some more with the glass globs.

The backs are pretty too!

Jennica has the blue one because she needed cheering up.

And the bead store had Stuff On Sale, so I bought more oval beads to make another one of these (I thought I was done but apparently not).

There were seven people in class this evening; all but one was successful - it's not a straightforward project, and I think it may have challenged her a bit too much.

Trying to concentrate in a very chatty environment, hearing "Go through the next two elevens - see, those two behind the fringe bead" and "No, you needed five beads in each step, not three" and "Add three beads, then pass through the eight, fringe and eight from the other side, add three more and pass through two elevens, the fringe and two elevens" can't be all that conducive to mastering complicated instructions when you're not at any of those steps when you hear them around you.

Unfortunately, my streaming nose and aches and chills may have done her a disservice, as I probably wasn't as patient as I should have been.

I hate being sick.

I hope I get some sleep tonight.

Matchy-Matchy

2011-06-12T13:25:00.003-05:00

So I made earrings to match.

They're pretty in their own right, and will happily go into my Etsy shop if she doesn't want them.

I Got Somewhere

2011-06-12T11:28:00.006-05:00

A month or more ago, one of my colleagues at my day job showed me a necklace her boyfriend had given her and asked if I could do "something" with it.

She loved the jade flower, but the twisted cord just wasn't her style. She likes big, bold, sharp pieces and this I think tended towards the hippie-cheap in style.

I knew I could do something, and even though I wasn't immediately inspired, I thought I could probably do it justice. The problem was that she wasn't in a hurry, so I felt no pressure, so everything else had a higher priority, so it hung on my wall for quite some time. I kept looking away.

From time to time I'd wander ask her desk to ask her whether she liked pearls, or whether asymmetry troubled her, or how long she wanted it to be, and I'd make little sketches that didn't seem terribly interesting once I looked at them at home in my beading space.

Three weeks ago she was due to have some sort of shoulder surgery, and I sorta kinda thought it might be nice to have the necklace done by the time she was back at work, so I started getting serious.

I knew from the beginning that it would have a chunky twisted rope with creamy white fresh-water pearls. I knew I couldn't use any of the jade in my stash which was more yellow and less blue than the flower. I knew I'd have to replace the cheesy faux carnelian in the centre of the flower and I thought I'd like to incorporate some sort of floral-esque motif. I also wanted to use the jade barrel beads on the necklace.

Asymmetry is always tricky in terms of the weight of the piece, and I could find no compelling asymmetric design, so it's pretty much symmetric, even the clasp, in which I managed to use one of the jade barrel beads, which in itself proved more challenging than I'd thought it would be, as it has a HUGE hole. Yvette has short hair, so the clasp has a dangle.

Even as it was in progress, I changed my mind.

I made a couple of floral motifs that didn't make it into the final necklace.

After making the second twisted rope, I realized that they ought to mirror each other, so I'm thinking that part of a bracelet is sitting on my work table.

Ultimately, I think I achieved what I was after. I hope she likes it.

And now I think I'd better get started on matching earrings.

During one of my slightly stalled periods, I was weak and took a break to make this.

A fun little pendant of slightly iridescent clear glass that allows you to see both back and front at the same time.

On the knitting front, I'm just about where I was last week when I realized that I'd in fact only been swatching all along. It turns out that the striping is even better than it was, so I'm not horribly disappointed, but I do hate that I wasted about two weeks of perfectly good knitting moments only to have to rip it all out.

I need to be strong, because I'm itching to start the next project which is especially urgent/exciting/appealling as I think it'll be an excellent use for the single skein of handdyed yarn that was too pretty to pass up so now that I've had the idea I'm not entirely sure that it's fair to deny myself the satisfaction. On the other hand, I'm fairly happy with the latest beading projects, so perhaps I should save it for a despondent moment when I need cheering up.

Perhaps.

Preparedness

2011-06-06T22:07:00.004-05:00

Today I'm not talking about knitting except to say that it turns out that I've been spending time on a very large gauge swatch.

Even though the next class I'm teaching isn't breathing down my neck, the instructions needed finishing and I was in the mood so I made a class sample that not only didn't even come close to being a class sample, but it didn't even make it into my Etsy shop after class - one of my spinning friends had the perfect earrings and bracelet that coordinated so well.

How could I refuse her?

When a project that I'm going to teach gets a lot of attention before it's even on the roster, I often intend to have kits available in my Etsy shop The Very Next Day After class, but what with my magpie sensibilities and my uncanny ability to be distracted by almost any other project than the one I said I'd be spending time on, that doesn't usually happen.

Except this time I think I just might get it right.

I started on one set of colours, but they just seemed a bit dull.

Interestingly, the photo of the colour-way that looked blech in person is prettier than the photo of the colour-ay that actually looks much better in person. Once again: Not So Good At Photographs.

I think this might work, and it might even be in my shop on June 15th.

It's looking possible.

I Lost My Stripes

2011-05-30T22:31:00.002-05:00

No, that's not slang for something esoteric and/or technical and/or geeky (much).

I mean it quite literally: the lovely stripes that my yarn was giving me have morphed into not-stripes as I shape the garment.

I still like it, but I really liked the stripes.

I made another one.

Look very carefully at the ivory-coloured beads: they have the prettiest carvings.

These are a fair amount longer than the beads I've been using, and while they work, their length and perhaps the end taper (the ends are fatter than my usual beads) result in a slightly less stable structure which is not as stiff as I'd like it to be.

Still pretty, not a failure, but not ideal.

I'm generating quite the collection!

Apparently Not Even Slightly Done

2011-05-29T23:07:00.002-05:00

Satisfying as it is to make merely a pendant, there's something about hanging them on purchased necklaces that feels impermanent, incomplete, a cop-out.

So I made one necklace.

The beads I've been using to make these pendants are all about 15x5mm, slender ovals, some smooth, some faceted like these.

The beads used in the red pendant aren't quite the same, yet were more or less successful. They're slightly shorter and fatter and less tapered, as you can see below.

I also found green ones and purple ones about the same size and shape, dark amber faceted beads close to the same size but with a better taper, and really pretty carved bone beads which are quite a bit longer.

Guess I'm not done with these pendants after all.

Psych! (As It Turns Out)

2011-05-28T17:06:00.003-05:00

Really, I thought I'd exhausted all local variations on longish oval beads, but I found some more, slightly different in proportion, which I had to try out.

I think they worked rather well, and even though primary red is not among my favourite colours, it's all they had in this shape, and I rather like the result.

The ovals are slightly shorter (but not enough to have to adjust the seed bead counts, which makes me think I should adjust for the longer ovals), and slightly fatter, which means only that if you're determined to peer into the interior of the pendant, the windows are a little smaller.

I've also been knitting.

Actually, that's pretty redundant, because I've always been knitting, every week, just about every day, for about, oh, forever or so. Which would logically mean that there's always more knitted stuff, or at the very least (more usually) that there's always some progress on knitted stuff, although in truth that progress is sometimes negative progress rather than the more usual positive progress, and almost more to the point, I rarely photograph it.

I rip out if something's not working, which is exactly what I did with this yarn before I had this:

I had started on a mitred square thingy which really wasn't looking all that nice. Sort of bitty, messy, not well put together somehow. I'd made significant progress on it, having used up one entire skein and dug deep into the next, but it was doomed to meh, so I ripped out and started something else entirely.

Even though I tend to prefer variegated yarn that does the dappled sunlight through leaves thing, resulting in an impressionistic, almost pointillistic melange of colours, in spite of myself I'm really liking the stripes here.

In case you're wondering, it's loosely based on (unless I change my mind later) this (Ravelry link). Different yarn/gauge, a different front centre panel pattern, and other minor changes.

The only downside? Two handspun projects (both wool thus not need-to-wear-now) which are slightly stalled have become less interesting, since I can't just pick them up and start knitting - both need a little thought and planning which has considerably less appeal than knitting something NOW.

And this is why people start new projects when they have perfectly good projects in progress: it's the lure of instant gratification.

The thing is, I really enjoy all stages of knitting projects, from conception to planning to execution to wearing, but I guess I'm weak for the needles.

Besides, it'll still be weather-appropriate when I finish if I don't get distracted by another project.

Last One

2011-05-23T22:51:00.003-05:00

I have no more long oval beads - and I saved the best for last!

Yummy golden-brown beads with touches of aqua.

I had a lovely birthday with beading and knitting and great food and a Two. Hour. Massage which is about the best idea I've had in my life.

I get a one-hour massage once a month (instead of a manicure or pedicure or facial or personal trainer) and I love it while it lasts, but in all honesty, the rest of the day is often not so comfy for me, and it's not until the following day that I feel the benefits.

I don't know if my back is stronger than it has been, or if going for a brisk walk before the massage is the ticket or if I was better hydrated, or if indeed two hours is what it takes, but that was fan-freaking-tastic and I felt great the rest of the day.

I might just book that two-hour slot for May 23rd 2012.

All Things Considered

2011-05-22T20:02:00.002-05:00

And not that for a second I thought the world was ending yesterday, but I'm pretty glad it didn't, as there's tons of stuff I want to finish (and start, for that matter), and if you can't take your shoes when you get raptured, I'm thinking beads, yarn and fibre are all probably verboten.

I'm almost halfway through the second sock, and even though this one isn't perfect, I'm still pretty pleased with it.

[This may be redundant if we've ever met but] I'm a big fan of modular knitting, in part because you don't have to commit for a while, you can just happily knit and then decide whether it'll be a cardigan or pullover, round neck or vee. Also because there's no need for a gauge swatch (usually) though with socks I don't need to swatch because I tend to use fairly consistently similar yarns.

Still, love the modular.

Turns out that with the triangles, I need about 12% more stitches than just straight up -and-down. Told you I don't swatch with modular knitting!

Anyway, I had a very grand plan for weird heel shaping which turns out not to actually conform to human anatomy, but I still ended up with something somewhat non-standard.

On a third of the stitches, I worked a longish garter stitch strip to cover the back of the heel. Then I picked up stitches on each side, and short-rowed to form triangles, picked up stitches along the remaining two-thirds of the leg circumference, and effectively worked a mitred rectangle (more or less a double-mitred square) but decreasing very quickly (every row) so that the long edges weren't parallel but curved towards each other in the middle. The rest of the foot was worked straight; perfectly normally with my usual garter stitch toe.

The heel as pictured is slightly too big because I wanted to stick with the same number of stitches and rows as for the modular triangles. The row count should have corresponded to my usual stitch count (so 12% fewer rows), with the decreases spaced accordingly, as the rows in the double-mitred shape were correct.

Overall though, I count this as a success.

I also spent some time making a kit sample.

Actually, just a short piece, as I wasn't in the mood to stitch an entire necklace, because what I really wanted to do was to make another one of these pendants (which as you can see I did).

As far as I'm concerned, this is not [yet] an obsession: I'm just refining the design, and unless I manage to find more of these long oval beads, it'll never get there (to Obsession Country), as I have only one more colour, and the bead store has one more after that (which I don't like all that much), and then it's the interwebs which so far have proven not terribly obliging.

PS It's my birthday tomorrow. If you buy something from my Etsy shop, put "BIRTHDAY" in the "Notes to Seller" and I'll give you 10% off.

Everyone Still Here?

2011-05-22T08:09:00.003-05:00

Guess the world didn't quite end, did it?

Flawed

2011-05-21T22:41:00.003-05:00

They finally stopped exploding the bridge just about the time that my alarm goes off on a weekday, and for those not paying attention:

Weekend = License to Sleep (*)

(*) According to the Whim of the Cat

I have a carry-around beading project which is starting to annoy me.

I made a lovely herringbone watch-strap which had a major flaw leading to its loss in that the part of the strap that goes into the buckle, has a hole for the pointy buckle prong thing, goes out the other side of the buckle and then tapers to a point, was too short, so the buckle kept coming undone.

The buckle would come undone, the watch would fall off, I'd retrieve it and rebuckle it, until the last time, when I didn't notice it falling off and so it became history.

Luckily I had another watch face and buckle in reserve, so the new watch-strap became my carry-around project. I don't BiP (bead in public) all that much, so the progress has been lacklustre. Today I finished half of the strap and made the EXACT SAME ERROR.

It doesn't even stick out, unless you call that hint of bead at the bottom "sticking out". I don't.

And the buckle is slightly narrow, causing the strap to distort as it passes through. This is less than optimal, and I haven't been thrilled with the entire project (witness how long it's taken to do a couple of inches/half a strap: months).

So I came home and made a pendant.

I completely love the 15ºs I used in it: pale matte aqua lined with gold (not real gold, just gold colour), so they're slightly green and they glow.

I've also been assembling and stitching kits to send to the Bead & Button show.

I love the way that iPhoto just has to make sense of pictures of beading. It might be a little psycho (aren't schizophrenics supposed to be obsessed with eyes? There surely must be a disorder obsessed with faces), as it's convinced that this is a face:

I don't see it, but I'm not a shrink.

Perhaps beadwork is the new Rorschach?

Sound of Thunder

2011-05-21T05:39:00.004-05:00

Did you know that the sound of a bridge being demolished carries more than a mile when it occurs so early in the morning that there are no traafic sounds (which is interesting because they might as well do it at rush hour since the highway is closed anyway) and is in fact loud enough to wake you out of a very deep sleep, so that as you pass from unconscious to dreaming to "What the hell" your mind ar first sluggishly interprets the sound as animal footsteps and you wonder how a possum could have entered your ductwork because man this is too noisy for a mouse, and when it doesn't go away it occurs to you that it might actually be outside, so you throw on a robe and investigate the basement which is pretty damn quiet, and then as you stand outside your front door hearing the sounds of rockets, mortar shells and gunfire, you realize they must be blowing up the Delmar bridge which is illuminating but doesn't lead to anything resembling silence and most certainly doesn't create an environment conducive to sleep.

Not even slightly.

Stuff I Have No Title For

2011-05-15T15:14:00.003-05:00

My baby graduates from high school in two hours. Freaky. I remember being pregnant with him.

I think that's my major accomplishment for the week, although in truth I really can't claim a whole lot of either credit or recent direct action - at some point you have to get out of their way and trust that they've figured this out. And so far, for the most part, he has.

On the other hand, I directly and intimately contributed to everything pictured below.

I don't feel terribly confident in my wire-working skills, though in a pinch I can manage - it's just not gorgeous, and I won't attempt anything complex or too intricate. I don't enjoy wirework as much as beading anyway.

This is one of those things at which I'm not utterly lost, yet I do it from time to time because I can't find/don't have what I need, or it's the only solution to a corner into which I've beaded myself.

Take brass.

Love it, and I often bead items which would be best finished with a brass clasp or ear wires or other findings, yet solid brass findings are difficult to find and rather limited. I'm loathe to use the popular brass-finished findings endemic in all bead stores, online or brick-and-mortar, because my skin is so reactive that it strips the finish right off, and then it looks hideous.

I've been making very simple S-hooks with 16 gauge brass wire for ages. Nothing fancy, I just bend them into shape and hammer them a bit in part because I like the look, but also because it stiffens the metal nicely.

I'v also made a batch of ear wires I rather like: some big round ones, as well as some that I can only describe as 80% marquise, as they lack about 20% of the outline. Again, rather plain, very simple.

Yesterday I needed a clasp, and the 16 gauge S-hook just seemed too clumsy and stark, so I managed to find instructions online for something which I think I actually managed well enough.

I wanted it to match the pendant, so I had to use 20 gauge wire so that it could pass through the bead.

The next one turned out even better. If I hadn't been distracted by making class samples for Tuesday's class, I might have turned out a whole collection of these clasps. I still might.

The class is essentially an add-a-bead pendant set.

Students will make simple large-hole beads in three sizes.

They'll also make one humungo bead, and a head pin.

Should be fun.

Another Variation

2011-05-09T22:28:00.004-05:00

I haven't made enough of these to call it an obsession, but I am playing with slight variations and perhaps improvements.

When I think about teaching a project, I have to consider the availability of the beads required. Even if I did buy them at the bead store, if I used the only bead of that shape in the entire store, it could be problematic (depending on the colour and finish) if a student likes only primaries or pastels or brights or sludge or black.

There weren't too many of the long oval beads I used in the first one of these I made, so I wondered if you could stack round and rondelle beads to approximate a long oval.

The short answer is that you can, but you lose the prettiness of the oval showing through the window, and the bead hole dynamics are different, so the bell-shape is less pronounced. It's OK, but I wouldn't repeat it.

I also don't like the way the fringe beads around the top obscure the pretty rounded cap. I guess the pale turquoise beads didn't exactly help either.

I did work on giving it a nice, tight, frilly bum though.

Once More

2011-05-09T00:01:00.002-05:00

Except for the fact that it's after midnight and my alarm will wake me in less than six hours (if the cat doesn't do it first. Which she probably will), I'm not sorry that I made another one.

I was going to use the same oval beads but with different other beads, but then I found these green tube beads which I've had forever (probably about fifteen years) and have never quite figured out what on earth to do with them, until now.

I like the length, but I honestly prefer the rounded oval-rice shape of the reddish beads.

Still, it was a useful exercise in determining where the fixed proportions should be, and where they can flex.

I think I might need to make another one with rather long beads again, because I have Another Idea.

Sleep first.

My Day

2011-05-08T18:38:00.002-05:00

I'm a mother, aren't I?

My day.

My daughter is somewhere over the Atlantic, on her way to Italy for two weeks.

I don't quite have the words. I'm so proud and pleased that she sees beyond her here and now, and wants to experience another country as more than a tourist, even if not quite immersed - she's doing a photography class.

I'm empathetically and parentally (but not parenthetically) nervous for her: how to find the shuttle to the train station, meet her friend from London, find the D bus to the hotel. I know though from experience that the nervous anticipation is so often unfounded. You do find the bus, you do get to your hotel, you do get to where you need to be, when you need to be there.

I went to Europe for three months when I was nineteen, before the internet, before cell phones and text messages. My parents had to rely on my occasional collect calls and retain their sanity and not throw a nervie, so I guess I'll have to be equally stoic.

It's only two weeks after all.

Meanwhile (because the battery in my nook died just before the denouement, while I was being suitably decadent [my day!] reading on a chaise longue in the sun) beading.

A right angle weave bail that I saw on a round bead, but which works nicely on a marquise bead, and probably would equally on a teardrop.

A little dull though.

This one, not so much. (I'm quite pleased).

I had only the vaguest of plans (bell-shaped, using long oval beads), making it up as I went along.

If I'd put more thread on the needle, it might have more stuff around the bottom (and still may if I don't get side-traced by something else), but I like it well enough to call it Finished.

Divergence

2011-05-07T22:19:00.002-05:00

In all honesty, there wasn't a whole lot of beading this week. There was a small amount of only marginally productive knitting (no pictures of course), some planning for a brunch this morning at which I may have converted a friend to cheese grits (yeah, I'm a Southerner ... from waaaaay down south: below the equator south), some craigslist action (in which I gave away some stuff) and some playing with my new toy.

I love toys.

My intentions were neither good nor bad when conceiving of what became the pendant below, which I think means that I may not be on a path to a mythical bad place paved with good intentions, but either way, this ended up diverging quite a bit from my original plan.

It's still hollow and has one pointed end at least (plan called for two), but then it started irking me such that I wanted to be working on something else, anything else, so I finished it as quickly as I could. I suppose I could have tossed it into The Bits And Pieces Drawer, but it's getting discouragingly full, so I opted instead for a Finished Something. Pendant.

My oldest leaves for a two week study-abroad in Italy. I'm pretty excited for her, and really pleased that this was something she pursued.

More in the Same Vein

2011-05-01T22:25:00.004-05:00

I liked the pendant so much I made earrings too.

I would have started on a cuff or a necklace, but I had to finish off the instructions for Tuesday's class, for which a sample (almost inevitably) resulted.

Only if you squint and are in the know can you tell that it doesn't actually have a working clasp, just two jump-rings, in readiness.

Naturally I got side-tracked before I could start on a commission that's been languishing since before taxes.

I had this brilliant idea which required a cumbersomely long and wide peyote strip which I was sure would somehow fall into place with my Very Brilliant Idea, but unfortunately only after stitching said tediously long strip and embellishing half of it (very nicely, I might add: I really liked the way that part of it turned out) did I admit to myself that my idea just wasn't going to work out the way I'd wanted it to.

So instead I started on what looks to be a more promising version of it.

Meanwhile I'm holding out for the healing power of sleep, as I have a back which is emphatically Not Thrilled about the yardwork that had to be done today which started off as cleaning the gutters but very soon devolved into trimming a hedge-like series of bushes in advance of the next ice storm or very heavy snowfall which I realize is hardly imminent, but is nonetheless still inevitable, at which point if those (now) ex-branches were weighted down with precipitation, they would most assuredly not be up to the task, falling onto the power lines - and I have been without power when temperatures are well below freezing, and it's not, shall we say, ideal, though the pyjama party at Amy and MJ's was fun.

Still, I'd rather avoid that nonsense, protests from my back notwithstanding.

A Funny Thing Happened

2011-04-29T23:01:00.002-05:00

I lie.

It wasn't actually that funny and nothing actually happened per se.

I was on the way to making this pendant, which I'd really intended to be a component of a bracelet, when I noticed that in a partial state of undress, it was quite pretty.

I really like them both.

My plan was always for the seed bead outlines around the bigger beads to add definition and polish, but it really holds its own without them too.

Perhaps a two-tiered pendant? With matching earrings?

Not the worst idea I've come up with in my entire life. At this point I'm not so keen to enumerate some of those less-than-stellar ideas I've had, in part because it's bed time, but trust me, it could be worse. More seriously worse too.

Better Alternative

2011-04-27T19:51:00.002-05:00

I almost titled this post "Precious Moments" but the associations were inordinately more saccharine than I could tolerate, so I didn't. Yay me.

What I really should have been doing this evening was Putting Things Away and Doing Bills and other equally responsible, adult things, but what I really wanted to do was to bead.

Sunday's version, while eventually more or less what I had aimed for (and missed a few times, but that's all right), was somehow a little messy-looking, thrown-together and altogether not quite right.

Not that I've been bored at work (although today's forty-five-minute optional-but-expect-to-see-you-there Webex on the new Global Review System, or whatever they call it, certainly provided ample opportunity for thinking about beading, sketching beading ideas, and writing beading notes as WELL as taking in the perhaps minute and a half of actual information which could just as easily have been in a short, pointed, company-wide email which would have actually been more useful without the forty-three and a half minutes of quote-unquote important information about a process in which I have been forced to participate in almost every job I have had, and which I found almost exactly the same in every job I have had, but apparently our HR people either (1) think the rest of the world incapable of understanding such simple concepts. Every year, or (2) just enjoy giving lame presentations in a monotone, or (3) have it in for everyone not in HR and are attempting to bore them to death or at the very least waste their time, or (4) think we need a nap just before lunch, but I'm guessing that's probably not it), but I did get home kind of itching to stitch.

So I did.

There Was Beading After All

2011-04-24T22:21:00.004-05:00

Colour aside (always problematic for me), this was a bit difficult to photograph such that the structure shows well. I might have to make another.

I've had the sketch around for a few weeks, and it took three cut-up samples (I mean that literally: I took scissors to them) until I got something close to what my mind's eye saw when I drew them.

The bail part should accommodate a herringbone rope, but I didn't have one handy for the picture.

I actually had no thought of a particular lampwork bead either when I conceived of this, nor when I started stitching, but once I saw the interaction of the seed beads and fire-polished beads (all fairly random selections, not even slightly carefully considered), I knew exactly which bead to use.

The not-white background is due to my frosty acrylic mini-bust which a sort of a dingy not-quite-white about which I'm Not Pleased.

Some years ago when my friend Gayle started selling her lampwork beads on eBay, she mentioned a particular glass artist with whom I was very taken. At the time, this artist maintained a web-site (as well as selling on eBay for sometimes thousands of dollars per set) on which she advertised either gift certificates or special orders which weren't too (relatively) hideously expensive.

My boyfriend at the time wanted to give me a gift certificate for my birthday; unfortunately the above-mentioned glass artist no longer actually offered them, due to the lucrative nature of her eBay gig.

[As an aside, her beads were lovely, her copy and photography were outstanding, but no set of lamp-worked beads is worth $7000 or even $4000 or even $2000 in my opinion].

Anyway, in lieu of a gift certificate for a set of beads made by this artist, the boyfriend gave me a virtual gift certificate for lampwork beads on eBay, and with that, created a monster of sorts.

Long after the gift certificate was used up, I continued buying lampwork. The only reason I stopped six months later was that I got laid off, otherwise my collection would be in the nature of an investment, rather than merely slightly impressive.

This is one of the beads from this period, and all I remember about the artist was that her first name was Elizabeth, and the bead came from Canada. Either way, I'm fairly happy with the way it's displayed.