Still sucks

Still on the knitting/beading ban. It sucks. It may end up being a 2 week ban. That really sucks.

My hands f-ing hurt

And I'm looking for ways to amuse myself that does not involve gripping needles. Obviously, that means no knitting or beading. Boo! But I do have a few pretty things to show you all.

First up is one of my happiest and most favorite purchases. The first time I heard of Leah Fairbanks was reading an article about her in Bead & Button. I fell in love with her beads. She has a garden theme running throughout and her use of color is amazing! I walked past her booth on my last rounds at Bead&Button on Sunday and I had to stop and admire...and buy. She had a necklace around her neck with one of her beads as the focal bead and strung with gemstones and that became my inspiration. I had bought a few strands of faceted amethysts on the first day of B&B and I knew that's what I was going to use them for. All I was missing were the crystal squaredells and I set off on a last minute hunt for them! The last thing I did before I went to bed after I got back was put this necklace together. I absolutely love it! The price is high since the bead was expensive, but also it's going to take that much for me to part with it :) Sorry all!



Next up...and why my hands are currently hurting a lot...I started working on this almost immediately after I returned from Bead&Button. Laura McCabe had one of these in class and I loved it! I was inspired for the color and in trying to bead from my stash, I realized that I had the perfect beads to make the spiral ndebele strap. The ball is Laura McCabe's "Crown Jewel" design with Swarovski rivolis and bicones. Yum.


This is probably my second favorite necklace right now, right after the Leah Fairbanks bead one. There are probably more of these to come. It's also over on etsy.

A preview and some pictures

First the pictures from Bead & Button. I finally pulled the memory card out of the camera and uploaded the pictures.

Second, a preview. I started this inspired by the Crystal Burst Bracelet class. I also am having a difficult time getting the last row of crystals on that bracelet so this is a diversion. Progress is slow cuz my wrist hurts.

Bead & Button continued

I spent most of Saturday in class. I was taking Laura McCabe's Crystal Burst Bracelet class. It was wonderful! Laura was a great teacher. She was very knowledgeable and gave us many hints and tips. It left me wanting to bezel rivolis left and right. I continued with the shopping at lunch and after class. We had another tornado warning and they even herded everyone who was in the hall into the market place. Physically, yes, it was the safest place. I ended up ordering take out for dinner from one of the hotel restaurants. It was pouring outside, I was not going outside. I ate my dinner and wandered over to the convention center where there was the bead social and auction. The woman who was doing the auction...okay, I understand we have a limited amount of time, but geez, how freakin' rude can you be? She seemed to have taken the social out of the social. I didn't stay long since you basically couldn't talk or auction lady couldn't hear you so I just went back to the room to watch some tv and stare at my loot and sleep.

Sunday was Jeanette Cook's Mastering the Curl class. Having taking Paulette's Totally Twisted class, this was a repeat. Jeanette was an interesting lady and I bought a kit from her. I wandered back to the market place after class, and I didn't intend to spend a lot of money. Well...I bought a Leah Fairbanks lampwork bead. It was beautiful. I had faceted amythests I had bought that I knew I could use for the necklace and went on a last minute hunt for some crystal rondelle spacers. Had the components and it was time to head back to the Hilton to get my bags and go to the airport. Well, my first flight was delayed half an hour. That sucks when you only have 1 hour between planes! The plane landed in Minneapolis and I had 10 minutes to get to my other flight. And I got home.

At some point, I have to get the pictures off of my camera and post them. I did start off with the pictures I took by the Milwaukee River on the phone.

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It was a very good weekend for me. I was able to recharge before the start of a crazy week at work. I was greatly inspired in my beading. Beading is my passion. The knitting and fibers is a hobby. I love the sparkles of the beads.

Bead & Button

Yes, I'm behind the times.

I'm referencing emails I sent to Patricia and Helena to help my memory

Friday

So, I took off for Milwaukee on Friday. The trip there was overall smooth. I took the bus from the airport to the downtown Hilton and got off a block too early. That was also when it decided to start pouring! Of course, I was on the opposite side of the building from where the entrance was so I was a bit wet. Good thing I pulled out the umbrella on the bus. But I was able to check in, get to my room, check in at work and wander to the market place to do some SHOPPING! When I got to the market place, I found out that the tornado warning was over (so that's what the rain was!). I found that lots of the teacher kits were on sale on their websites. I found cabochons and crystals and I met Cynthia Rutledge. I bought her Alyeska's Jewel bracelet kit and held off on anything else. The only thing that kept me from buying her Monet's Garden Kit was that she was out of the color scheme I wanted. I also met the guy at Urban Beader who has been in touch with Patricia. Patricia is still waiting for her bags but I was short on patience and bought one. I finally made myself stop and go back to the room for dinner and otherwise, stop spending money.

I had dinner at a place called Mo's Irish Pub that was down by the river and a couple of blocks from the hotel. I had some clams steamed in Bass Ale. I don't like drinking beer but I'm finding that I like stuff cooked in beer. I also had some steak and garlic mashed potatoes. After dinner, I walked a few blocks by the river, took some pictures and wandered up to Old World Third Street and the sausage factory. The buildings are definitely unique with old world character but it was getting dark. I wandered back by way of the Hyatt to see what beady goings on there were and I think I walked by Sherry Serafini. She was tiny with long blond hair. But even more characteristic of her, there was a huge but BEAUTIFUL beaded collar around her neck. From there, I wandered back to the room to watch Law & Order and rest up for the next full day of class.

Spinning spinning

I spent a few hours this past Saturday at Stitch DC Georgetown while Amber was working. They FINALLY got a new computer in the shop but with Vista, hadn't been able to look Quickbooks so I went in to take a look. I knitted for a bit on the silk nightie and now I must stop knitting for a bit. Knitting a row and I can feel my wrist hurting again. boo! But my progress:



That's the lower edge. I hope I can finish this before September.


So, instead of knitting, I spun this weekend. I was able to ply the first skein:


I have another half bobbin full of plied yarn. Must keep spinning. I didn't bother with the navajo ply and instead spun up 3 bobbins full of singles and started plying.


Friday, I head off to Bead & Button. Whee!!!

Projects

Memorial Day is gone and past and now we go for a big push at work and an even bigger push on the home front. Work...I won't get into. But on the home front:

• finish up my Pinwheel Sweater. I'm now on the crochet edge of the first sleeve


• spin up fiber to knit myself a shrug. the shrug must be in wearable form by August 2, 2008 to my friend's wedding.


• I started knitting the nightie from Mason Dixon Knitting using some silk I had bought last year. Yes, it's a silk nightie. mmm, sexy. I admit, I hate wearing pants when I go to sleep but I do it when I travel with people. A nightie seems to be a good compromise here. And the silk...well I sure as hell am not going to be making a wool nightie cuz that just defeats the purpose. I also hate sleeping when it's too warm and wool wouldn't help that.


• I've swatched and am also ready to cast on for Flying Fox in some Be Sweet Bamboo. yay!


• oh, and lots of fun beading projects.

Persimmon Tree Farms - Autumn Harvest glitz

Persimmon Tree Farms - Autumn Harvest glitz
Originally uploaded by jyiu7

Happy Memorial Day weekend! Just wanted to show off some spinning progress on the Autumn Harvest. I haven't done much this week since I've spent a lot of that time lying mostly lifeless on the couch. However, the yarn is delicious and it spins up nicely and quickly.

At the end of the weekend

Friday night, I sat at Bead Obsessions and made a ring:

I like it. It's a little loose for me when my finger isn't naturally swelled up. Yes it is for sale if anyone wants it.

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I taught class at Bead Obsessions. It was the calla lily class. I've decided that I must ban the use of gold wire in class. For whatever reason, gold wire is extra fussy and kinks and coils all over the place. While there, I also started work on a beaded hyacinth pattern. I know there are patterns that already exist, but I wanted to do one myself, that also involves a bulb. I like the look/scent of forcing hyacinth bulbs in the winter. The one thing that bothers me about those is how short their lifespans are.

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I also visited evil Amber at Stitch DC Georgetown where she was working. She was knitting with some Be Sweet Bamboo on Thursday night and it felt REALLY GOOD and she mentioned they still had sweater quantities available. And there was a last minute sale at Stitch DC. So I went and picked up some of the stuff in a nice Barbie pink.

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I also finished spinning up the Spunky Eclectic romney in the "Sangria" colorway. It has been washed and is now drying in the bathroom. Therefore, I started spinning up some of the new Autumn Harvest Glitz I had bought at sheep and wool. Spun up a small amount and Navajo plied in the hopes that I would get worsted weight yarn. Set it, dried it and yes! Worsted! Whoo hoo!

When you want to make your own ring

I'm doing a little wire work tutorial today. I had bought this cabochon as a set of 3 at the Gem & Jewelry Show. I had bought a ring setting for one, given a second away as a gift, and had this third one sitting around for a while. I wanted to make it a ring, but I wanted a different setting from the one I already had. I looked all over the place and either the settings were the wrong size, or I had to order wholesale and in bulk. Finally, an idea started forming in my head about using wire and making my own ring. I've included the instructions here. You can click on the pictures to see larger images.

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Materials

- 1 ft 16 gauge wire

- 1 ft 20 gauge wire. More may be needed if you want to wrap it a lot or if your stone is bigger

- Small cabochon

- heavy duty wire cutters

- wire working pliers

- ring mandrel or something round of approximate size to your finger with a little bit of extra room

Note that I like to use sterling silver (dead soft). Copper will be more bendable and you may end up with nicks on the wire from your pliers. The choice is really up to you.

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Sizing up your finger

If you already know the size ring you want, good for you. If not, you need to figure out what size ring you want to make. There are various resources on the web to find your ring size like this one at wikipedia. If you don't own a ring mandrel, you would probably want to figure out either the diameter of your finger to fit (so you can buy and approximate sized dowel at the hardware store) or the circumference of your finger (so you can find a similar object around the house).

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Creating the ring

If you are using a ring mandrel, you want to wrap the wire just at the notch just slightly larger than your desired ring size. If you are using a dowel or tubular object, you want to make sure the circumference is slightly larger than your finger. Using the 16 gauge wire, leave about 1.5 inches at the end and wrap it once

then twice

around the ring mandrel. Try to keep the size of the rings you're creating even. That's 2 full rings around the mandrel.



Take the end of the wire and you want to bend it around the two wire rings:


Then, cut the wire from the spool, also leaving 1.5 inches. Wrap that end also around the 2 wire rings:




Make loops with the two ends, or some other free form shape.




Trim the wires down to your desired length. You can stop here if you want. It's a very nice ring.

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Wire wrapping the cabochon

Full disclosure: I have never taken a class or been instructed on wrapping stones with wire. I experimented with copper 26 gauge wire to see how it would work. Please feel free to experiment with the wire and the stone.

I used the 20 gauge wire to wrap the cabochon, leaving a 2 inch tail at one end to be used for securing to the ring. Then I proceeded to wrap the wire around to stone so that the stone is "trapped" in a cage.
 

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I secured the 2 ends of the 20 gauge wire to the ring by wrapping each end 3 times around the ring. I then trimmed off the excess.


The stone was still wobbly on the ring so I took a small piece of the 20 gauge (you can use scraps at least 1 inch long) and threaded that through the wires under the cabochon and wrapped it around the ring to secure:

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Finally, the finished ring:

Confession time

I am a teenie bopper at heart. I love my boy bands. Now that I've said that...New Kids on the Block is going to be at Verizon Center on October 2, 2008. Is there anyone in the area who would want to go with me? Tickets go on sale 6/9 at 10am. It's been 15 years!

Did anyone catch them on the Today show this morning?

Yes, I love the New Kids. I love NSYNC. I love 98 Degrees.

Cyrstal necklace - refinished

I posted about two finished objects the other night. When I took the picture of the necklace, it looked a little tilted and I thought it was just me. After the photo session, I put it on. When I walked by a mirror, I realized that it wasn't me that was tilted. The necklace itself was tilted. Urgh! The middle 14mm rivoli was not centered under the 27mm rivoli. So of course, I had to take it apart and redo it so that the crystals were all centered. Now, this is better:








I have a friend with a hobby in photography and I've been threatening to send him some flowers to photograph. I've always found beads to be difficult to photograph because you put too much light in and they're reflecting everywhere leaving everything out of focus and fuzzy. The picture showing the entire necklace is out of focus and it drives me nuts. Those crystals are pretty but damn, they're throwing me off.

How it sparkle. How it shines. - Rubyhorse



It's a strangely appropriate song to pop into my head since the NHL used this as their theme song...I believe it was the 2002 Stanley Cup playoffs. They had the cup all nicely polished up and silver. And now I'm watching the Stanley Cup and looking at this pretty sparkly thing. Wait. It may have been the 2003 playoffs. I think 2002 was Andrew WK's "Party Hard". Yes I remember my life by music.

2008 Maryland Sheep & Wool Haul

I finally got some pictures and loaded these into raverly. First, I got a basket:


My first purchased of the day, right at about 8am was from Persimmon Tree Farms. It's the Autumn Harvest Glitz blend. I saw this last year but I tried to hold off and by the time I decided to buy some, they were all out. So this year, I realized that I could spin this up in worsted weight and make Rowan's Cressida pattern.



At the Clover Hill Yarn Shop booth, I picked up some Spritely Goods Fey in the Manzanite in Bloom colorway.


And then I also drooled over Mama E's C*eye*ber Fiber in the Raspberry Ganache colorway.

While I was there talking to her, I was telling her how evil she was with the flashing of the Garnet colorway on her website and she mentioned that she had some in her warehouse...so of course, I had her bring me some on Sunday to be sent home with Amber.


And then I got some Shelridge Farm Soft Touch Ultra to make Eunny Jang's Anemoi Mittens.



And finally, in the Woodchuck's going out of business sale, he was getting rid of some of his wife's yarn stash at a really good price. I picked up 10 skeins of this wool/viscose yarn:


All in all, I stayed in my budget and didn't touch my credit cards or go into my food money. Yay me! Lots of spinning and knitting ahead.

Two finished objects!

These were the two items I was hoping to finish this weekend. First up is the Simple Knitted Bodice. I'm hoping I can get a better picture of this at some point, but here it is:


It's Stefanie Japel's Simple Knitted Bodice. This was knit using Elann's Peruvian Highland Wool. The lighter green is 797 and the darker green is 7359. This was knit on size 5 and 7 needles. I'm going to wear this to work tomorrow. It will be cool enough. Next up...

Now I am done with this necklace. Give me a week to throw it on etsy. Sorry the photo sucks. This is one of the problems with photographing beaded objects. Beads reflect light, which makes them difficult to get the lighting adjusted correctly. When you're dealing with crystals, that just adds to the problem. Those silver beads are the new Toho permanant finish silver (no more galvanized, whoo hoo!) stitched in the St. Petersburg chain. I used 1 27mm pink Swarovski rivoli and 2 14mm pink Swarovski rivolis. The rivolis are joined using 6mm bicones.

Weekend goals

• Photograph my yarn stash and get them into ravelry


• Finish the Simple Knitted Bodice. I'm almost there. I just need to weave in some ends and do the collar.


• Photograph ALL of the jewelry I've made. They'll be getting tagged with prices and will all be going to etsy

Pink Ribbons

If you want me to donate to a cause, you can usually do so if it's related to breast cancer. It's something near and dear to me and I hope that it's not hereditary. And when you combine that with something like cute pink socks, you end up with me paying for The Pink Ribbon Sock Kit. She is putting together 100 kits. The total cost for those of you in the US is $45. That would be $5 for shipping, $20 for the sock kit, and $20 donated to the Susan G Komen foundation (the Race for the Cure people).

I finished some socks

These were the Caps playoff socks. I did two increases up the leg. What really bothers me about the increases is that I did the first one during one of the intermissions during Game 7. The Caps went on to lose that game. Boo! So when I walked out of Verizon Center, I had literally just finished the increase row, so I had to keep going! And I couldn't just do 1 increase so I had to do a second. And then I started running low on yarn so I finished it up. These will be good in the winter for some boots.

I'm not done yet

Really. Yes, you can wear it out, but I'm not done yet. That strap is made with the permanant finish silver beads that Patricia has recently started stocking over at Bead Obsessions. It's in a St. Petersburg chain. That is a 27mm Swarovski crystal rivoli there in the center.

Maryland Sheep & Wool 2008

Well, it was MD S&W weekend. I was good this year. I only spent the cash I brought with me! All of my goodies are still in the car since I'm carting it all around for show and tell. I bought some yarn and some fiber and some Noni patterns (Tulip Tote, Cascading Fuschia Market Bag, Prism Bag). I'll have pictures once I have finished with show and tell. My pictures from Sheep and Wool are here. I did a bit of a scavenger hunt and tried to take pictures of everyone I knew that I ran into. Hmm...did not see Amber and Stephanie. I am missing a picture of Beth who I even chatted with for a bit. I am also missing a picture of Lauren who made a last minute trip down. She IMed me on Friday to say that her boyfriend had decided at the last minute to visit his brother who just happened to live in Columbia, MD. She sent the boys off to do boy things while she got herself all overwhelmed with all things wooly. She is actually my friend Josh's sister and when she first started knitting, she didn't know anyone else who knitted and I was the first person he thought of :). So overall, it was a good weekend with good loot and good friends.

Hockey commercials

It's the NHL playoff time...so I've been watching a lot of hockey. Some of my favorite commercials:

• Verizon Wireless Maternity Ward


• the one with Ryan Miller and the yo mama jokes