Finished Objects!

I've recently been doing some cleaning and I came across these forgotten beaded beads. I plan to get some white rattail cord to make a necklace from the pink bead. The other two faces were intended to become angels.So, I scrounged about a bit in the stash and came up with materials and made up the tassel angels this weekend. The halos and wings are glittery felt. The bodies are perle cotton, wool yarn, ribbon, metallic threads and some silk threads.A friend is graduating at the end of this week so I made her a bright beaded bracelet. It's posing on top of the start of my knit to felt tote. My hands are still painful so I'm pretty much limiting how much I work on it but I still am seeing a bit of progress each day--it's on size 11 needles so even one row shows. And it's an easy project to pick it up and knit one row and not be lost when picking it up next time.Here's a close up of the bracelet.

Not much stitching going on here

I haven't been doing much of anything except try to get over this endless cold. So I'm going to show off some older stuff--the above tea towels are now gifts that have been received. I used the Transfer-eze and I was really pleased with the detail I was able to capture.This Sashiko is a new project taught last month at the Homewood Embroiderer's Guild. For a while it was just the perfect mindless think I could do while sneezing. You can see how each stitch is mapped out for you.We're gearing up for a new group of classes at the YMCA. This is a spiral beaded bracelet we're going to teach to some adults looking for a beading project. It took about an hour and one package of size six beads (I can't tell you how many of these I've made--I taught it at my EGA chapter a couple of years ago and so have done piles of them.) I haven't yet made up the kids' project--a memory wire bracelet.

Party Time

Tuesday night's holiday party for my EGA chapter was great fun. Everyone got a table favor--mine is below. It was filled with chocolate kisses and floss for stitching. There was also a giveaway to one lucky winner at each table--various gift certificates were the prizes.I also received some lovely gifts from friends: This luggage tag was stitched on finer linen than I can see. I love the quiet colors and traditional design. I think it's going to hang in my office for now.I love this sparkly holiday temari ball from World Embroideries. She is so very ambitious!Here is a Brazilian embroidery ornament from a good friend--she used a pattern book from the 70s for the design. Many many techniques were featured in the gifts and ornaments exchanged at the party. I was great fun to see what everyone was getting!My draw in the ornament exchange was the charming embroidery below--I got a bonus. I adore the little beaded ornament that was in the bag with the ornament. I am so very lucky! They were made by Karol of Rosebud's Stitching. The room where we had our dinner was beautifully decorated and looked out over snow covered fields. This is the best start to the holiday season possible!

Finished project

My requested beads arrived from SJ Designs on Saturday, along with some other cool goodies, Thanks!, including this cool M tin stencil (for whitework). It's tiny, the M is about 1" high, I think.

I got to work right away and before I went to bed (um, mabye 2am?) I had the stocking beading complete. The stocking is also quite small (less than 2" wide at the cuff). The beading in my plan laid flatter and a bit longer. I think this is less limp because I feared the single strand of beading thread would snap if snagged so I doubled it.

catching up

I spent much of last weekend outside. We've been cool and wet here and while I had the chance, I got some garden plants in. We had a mostly nice weekend. On Saturday we bought plants, always a fun excursion, and dirt and on Sunday I got busy and planted them.

We buy our plants at a local place, Field of Flowers (Joe Orr Road in Chicago Heights) and enjoy seeing their changes and additions each year. They do wonderful hanging basket and planters. I wish we had a place for a hanging basket, but I've never figured one out. (We have a very shaded house and yard, good for the electric bill, bad for pretty flowers.)

Most of our garden is perennials, I got a few photos this weekend of the roses and peonies. We also have lilies of the valley going strong and violets, the phlox, day- and tiger-lilies are on their way, the passion flower vines are poking up...

I have some huge pots around the yard and I planted some flowers in front (the same as last year, I still can't remember their name), dill, rosemary, parsley, and thyme in the back yard and cherry tomatoes in the new pot.

I did some stitching. I mostly worked on the Hardanger State Day project, hours spent, little to show for it, so I took time out to stitch Susan Johnson's new beaded design--a pretty and quick project. Here's the booklet with my stitched heart below. It was a fun project to do. (I kind of felt bad, but I walked into her studio and said "I WANT IT!" and then made her kit it up for me. I don't think I'm usually quite that pushy.) The kit is available to order from her website.

I stitched it on perforated paper like the model. I haven't worked on perforated paper for a long time and I enjoyed it. I've been contemplating finishing possibilities. Of course, I've thought of stitching it to a slightly larger wool felt heart, perhaps pink, and making a pin. Or backing it and making it a scissors fob. Or adding it to a collage of some sort. The design is charming and I can see it added easily to a lot of projects.

I need to get some more beads from Susan and then stitch a few more hearts on canvas or linen.

Small Projects

This weekend I got a lot of little things done. In addition to finishing October's TIF on Friday, I tried my hand at needlefelting a pumpkin. I started with some fleece and rolled it up to make the pumpkin and then tried to add a scary face. I have a ways to go with this but I learned a lot about working with the fleece. I also did much better than ever before at keeping my fingers safe. Those needles are deadly!

I'm finally getting into a bit of a holiday mood. I put together some pieced mini-containers, based on the pieced paper fabric versions I did a few weeks ago. I used old Christmas cards and cut the shapes and taped them together with double-stick tape. I had cut out the shapes last weekend and put them together this weekend.

Then I got out the beading supplies. I made eleven pairs of the tree earrings. It would have been twelve but one of the wires flicked as I picked it up and the beads went flying. I was able to find all but one crystal. Most likely I'll use the remaining crystals for something else but for now I've put all the makings for that pair of earrings into a baggie. Perhaps that rogue crystal will turn up.

Last, I made a couple of bracelets using a spiral stitch and size six beads. These are prototypes for a class and I needed them for tonight. I had the materials together but had completely forgotten needing to do this until Saturday night. It's quick--I made both in one (long) evening. I'm wearing one today and it's comfortable.

I did a lot of cooking this weekend, which was fun. I made up a big pan of lasagna for a neighbor (with a small pan for me), salmon in parchment, and vegetable stir fry. We made up a big pot of soup stock, too, and froze it. My husband's diet is very restricted (no salt whatsoever, no wheat, no sugar, no dairy, no spices) so we cook from scratch (which we've mostly always done anyway) and the stock is my main cooking liquid/flavoring so I try always to have it on hand.

I got the basics for the recipe from a 1970s holistic living book and have made the soup ever since: Garbage soup: scrub veggies before peeling and save the peels (if you peel, we usually don't). Save the cooking liquid from steamed vegetables (we save all but broccoli and Brussels sprouts). Save tomato skins and seeds, asparagus ends, stems and stalks, tough outer layers. Freeze as you go. We freeze in large tall containers so there are layers. The 70s recipe ended here and went on to cooking the stock down. We add meat.

We add meat trimmings and carcasses from roasted (organic) chickens, giblets, etc. When the freezer gets full, I dump it all into a big canning kettle, bring it to a boil and then let it simmer for a few hours. We strain out all the solid bits, pressing to get the juice out and then we refrigerate it overnight so the fat congeals on top.

I skim off and discard the fat and then freeze the jelled stock in ice cube trays. Once frozen the cubes get put into one of tall freezer containers. (I went to a lot of Tupperware parties back in the 70s and we're still using it all.) It's nicely condensed and I usually use one cube with a cup of water, mostly in cooking or as a base for vegetable or chicken soup. We do this about once every six weeks or so (less in summer, more in winter).

The vegetarian version is very good but once we decided to eat meat, I hated the waste involved and determined that it would be a good addition to the stock.

beading fun

I've been singularly unambitious this week, doing nothing much more than flipping through magazines in the evenings. I think it may have something to do with my new blood pressure drug.

I made this necklace last Saturday from stones I'd gotten at the Glass Onion while at my niece's graduation in Appleton, Wisconsin. I finally got out crimps, clasps and wire and made up the necklace. I've worn it most every day this week and really like it. While I was at it, I made up two pairs of earrings--at the bottom of the second picture.

I think of these as Navajo colors: turquoise, coral, black and silver. I may be totally wrong on that but they're colors I've used together since my college days.

I made up this bracelet for a friend while I was at it. I'd hoped to take her out to celebrate her graduation but it didn't happen. It's blue stone beads (some kind of natural crystal) with Swarovski round and bicone crystals.

Stringing beads like this is quite quick once you have all of the components together.

More pictures are on my Flickr site.

Beaded Stars

This cute star was featured in Bead & Button magazine in the October 2006 issue. Jane made me one for Christmas in 2006 using fine beads--it's very delicate. (I had planned to scan it and then completely forgot.)

Mine are not delicate. The colorful one uses 6mm bicone crystals and size 6 beads. The clear snowflake uses 4mm bicones and very irregular size 11 beads (rejects from a friend's business).

Each took one evening to make and I must say the second one went quicker than the first, since I'd learned the ins and outs of the pattern.

I did think it was a bit helpful to make the larger, colorful snowflake first, the beads were a bit easier to handle and see. I think it would be fun to make the clear snowflake using colored thread.

The crystals were leftovers from Liberace and the beads were in my stash!

Other than that, I haven't gotten much done this week--I haven't been home in the evenings long enough to do anything. I've been fiddling with finishing up some felt flowers from a kit I got on sale at Hobby Lobby a couple of years ago. I love working with felt but am not sure what I'll do with all of these flowers! (roses, pansies and a forget-me-not like posy).