Missing the Sun

Happy Saturday to everyone! I am sitting here staring at the wall of grey out my window and dreaming of sunny days. I am very ready for spring this year. It's been cold and bleak here.



I have continued working with the wire wrapping and I am just in love with it. I find myself dreaming of new pieces so I know it has sunk a hook in my heart. So this is the new piece I started. It is not finished yet and I have many plans for it still but as you can see...I went a bit crazy with it!


I also did a nice big batch of silk gauze and habotai this week. Seems I have completely sold out in the shop so I thought I would make a few more. Every time I dye the big pieces of silk I fall in love all over again. There is such beauty in this cloth. Ironing it out after it comes from the wash I marvel at the sheen, the iridescent quality of the colors laid upon the surface. I do so love to play with these!

Fun with new mediums

This week I received the means to try my hand at a few new techniques: My bead loom which I already showed you and a set of small jewelers tools and two rolls of silver plated wire. I've been interested in trying both the beadweaving and the wire wrapping for some time now so I was thrilled to acquire the tools and materials to do so. I have had a lot of fun playing around with both this week and here are my results:



I think I like the wire wrapping over the bead weaving. Simply because of the freedom of design. I really enjoyed making this piece and I plan on trying my hand at another this week


I liked the bead weaving but I also felt hampered by the restrictions in design. I am used to being able to do whatever I want when stitching. With beads you are confined to squares of color and so it really restricts the flow of your design. Also the beads must all be the same size. Even though I used good Japanese seed beads(miyuki and toho) the different colors varied in width and caused the design to ripple.
I do like the bead weaving but I don't think I like it as much as the wire wrapping.

Hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!

Moving on

Life is looking up this week. I no longer sound like a frog. I can get out of my chair without a great struggle and the temperature is actually on the positive side of the zero for the first time in weeks. To make things even better I had some great success with the dye pots this week AND my bead loom arrived in the mail. I am a happy camper =D

When getting this last dye batch together I was having such a difficult time coming up with a color combination. Iwas getting ready to dye the largest amount of material at one time that I have ever done. When you are staring at several hundreds of dollars of gorgeous white fabric it takes courage to start dumping dyes in that pot. I mulled for days over what to do and finally I picked this palette:

I was a little worried about the combination because I knew I would get greens in the mix with the yellow and blue tones being present but in the end I decided I didn't care. I also knew that the blues would not be as deep unless I wanted to use a different dye. Silks can be quite picky with certain colors especially blacks and darker blues. So I threw caution to the wind and mixed up my giant dye batch.


The results in my mind were glorious! Does it exactly match the palette I picked? No, but it has the spirit of it and that's what I was going for.


The velvet of course is much deeper and way vibrant and usually I enjoy that more but the softer touch is what appeals to me in this batch, though I love them all. I adore the silk gauze and habotai. The ribbons are just luscious! I am quite thrilled with this one and I can't wait for my next batch.

My second highlight of the week was receiving my bead loom and I love it! I looked at them long and hard before I bought one and decided before hand that I wanted a wood one. This one is perfect for me. Although I may make some more side bars that are longer if I want to do bigger pieces.


I set to work right away making up a pattern and this is what has come of it so far. I wasnt sure if I would like doing loom beading but I love it. It is another way to satisfy my urge to create with patterns and color and it is not a great strain on my eyes. I find myself more and more treating my eyes gently. I think the eye problems of the last year scared me more than I wanted to admit at first. I am trying to find ways of expressing myself creatively without the great eye strain I was putting myself through. This looks like it might be a good one!

Hope you have all had a wonderful creative week and have a peaceful and renewing weekend!

SO... you know the chinese curse that goes "May you live in interesting times"? Well this month has been interesting, Starting off with the fatal back move. You know the one...the one where you bend over to pick something up and something just didn't move right? Next thing you know you can't get out of a chair without making moves like Micheal Jackson in the Thriller. Well that was me for over a week which softly faded into... The Sickness From Hell. You know the one where you can't sleep at night because you can't breath and you continuously sneeze, you go through your entire stock of Kleenex and you sound like a frog. plus your head is pounding so hard is sounds like a heavy metal music practice session? Yeah that's me and that saga continues though I don't sound so much like a frog anymore. I forgot how much grossness a body could produce. Could someone please turn off the faucet?!? To top all this off, just as my backache is fading and still in the middle of this snotfest my laptop decides to give up the ghost. Poor baby just couldn't take it anymore. It has went to play with all the other outdated and over abused technology in the sky. I am typing this on my brand spanking new shiny white laptop that I am just falling in love with. It has a keyboard that actually works!
So my reasoning is that all my bad luck decided to show up right off the bat at the beginning of the year and the rest of the year is going to be devoted to fun times and good stuff, right?
So I have been experiencing a big hankering for playing with beads, beads and wire. I can't get either out of my mind. So I have pulled out all my beads and pieces and that is what I am playing with. Oh, and I also ordered some wire *big grin*