Back from Charlottesville

Drove down last night with Jean and dined at Outback. Yum! Steak! Today was a day of beading and catching up with the Charlottesville ladies. It's interesting to see what everyone is working on and to get a preview of the flower seminar flowers. Whee! I've got sunflower parts made but I don't have enough for a complete sunflower yet. The weekend of the Philly distance run, I do believe that I will be going up to New York City on Monday for some beads. Yay!

Weekend!

Weekend is fast approaching. This Sunday is the get together down at Studio Baboo in Charlottesville. We're going to bead for a day...I'll be working on Reshma's birthday present.
Ya know, I love Bon Jovi. Something soothing about them.
Also in the works...a gerbera daisy...I'm still playing around with it though.

Daisy Topiary - Finished!

I had started this in June, as you can see from this entry. As of that entry, Nisha had found out she was being sent to Hong Kong...or maybe it was within a week or so of that and so I put off working on this for a while...until Monday, when they informed me the housewarming was today. Well...hell.
I would guess that there are close to 60 daisies on this. Topiary form and boxwoods at the bottom was made following Donna Dickt's tea rose topiary pattern and her daisies.

• 6 inch styrafoam ball
• 18 inch dowel, I don't remember diameter...5/8 inch maybe
• 9/0 3 cut Light luster yellow (Shipwreck 9SC322-T) for the centers
• 9/0 3 cut Lime green luster (Studio Baboo and York beads) for all greenery
• 9/0 3 cut Pearl white for daisies (Shipwreck 9SC612)...and then I ran out. 9-10 hanks of this
• Finished up daisies in 9/0 3 cut crystal AB from York - another 4 hanks
• 9/0 3 cut brown or maybe bronze. I have no idea where I bought these...Star's Beads maybe...

Yup, so I ran out of the pearl white and there was still a bit of a bald spot on the topairy so I moved onto the crystal.

If you look closely, you can actually see a slight difference in some of the flowers.

So I had taken Friday off, originally to sleep, due to a couple of weeks of living the life of a burnt out programmer. Oh well, beading, sleeping...same thing. Woke up at 9am, started beading. Ate lunch, back to beading. I also watched A LOT of "The Family Guy" on my laptop. The only break I really took yesterday was going to the gym cuz my feet were feeling swollen and I figured exercise was good for circulation. Finally went to sleep at 1am and the topiary was short 2 daisies. Got up this morning at 9am and started back up again for another hour. Went grocery shopping, made food and returned to the beading at noon. Finally finished around 3:20, took some pictures, which came out nicely, took a quick shower, packed this baby up and went to the house warming.

So, I spent a good deal of time last night pondering...genius...or madness? It's a fine line. But I'm not doing this again...at least for a while.

Topiary Inspriation

I had wanted to make some flowers for some friends as a house warming present. We're all young and bad with plants. You can't kill something that's beaded! So they had said daisies. Well, sometime this spring, I was at Michael's and came across these babies. Picture courtesy of my cell phone. Inspiration struck and I actually followed through. Usually this only happens with jewelry at the mall and I don't end up buying or making anything. But aren't these cute? They were $15.

Day off! and lots of daisies

It's a day off for me. I think I'm spending it somewhere between my bed and the crafts room working on finishing up the daisy topiary. Damn the short notice on the party! Hopefully there will be pictures to come later. Silk corset is getting its buttons sewn on. Then just need to do a quick washing and blocking. Yay!

Projects, projects and a $40 fill up

Daisy topiary...aiming for this Saturday as they had decided on a last minute housewarming party. After that, there are the sunflowers for a birthday. The silk corset, I'm binding off right now. I bought the buttons tonight. And my next project? It's a cute top called Hopeful for a good cause that's near and dear to my heart...breast cancer. The pattern costs $5 and for each pattern purchased, the designer donates $6 to Susan Love's breast cancer foundation.
Yesterday, I went to go fill up the tank and I actually hit $40. Yikes! I think I'll be taking public transportation to work more often! Less gas to buy, no need to pay attention to traffic and I can knit or read or bead!

End of a long week

I am a burned out programmer. One of our projects at work took a turn for the worst so we were under a lot of pressure to get it right and in a short amount of time. I've just been brain dead.
Where am I on my projects. I want to go work on the sunflowers tonight but I don't know if I have the energy to sit there and work on them. I'm in the middle of the chart D twisted stitches section on the second corset. I'm going up to NYC for the weekend tomorrow and if I'm not asleep on the train, I should be able to finish it in the time up and back. Not much else has happened other than me being really tired.