New Crafty Crap...

So, as I believe I have said earlier, I dig in my heels and fight the urge to get into new creative endeavors. But eventually, I cave. And when I cave, I go deep.

I really just started with the beading here in the past month or so. I finally found the books that made sense to me: Bead Simple: 150 Designs for Earrings, Necklaces, Bracelets, Embellishments, and More as well as Teach Yourself VISUALLY Jewelry Making & Beading. Bead Simple gave me visual inspiration, while the Teach Yourself book gave me the detailed how-in-the-world-do-you-do-that directions. It's a learning process for sure, but in all things, practice makes better. I'd love to hear from my sisters regarding what they think could be improved upon as they were recipients of my Christmas gifting.
And no matter how many times I tell myself, I'm not going overboard with this (whatever it is!), I still end up with a pile of tools and supplies and then there is the storage part of it. Yikes. Fortunately, most of the supplies needed for jewelry beading are small and compact, and for a while I was storing them in a small art box I had found some time ago. Recently though, I've had to expand into the art tackle box that I originally bought for paper crafting, only to overflow in a hurry.

Beads are "ooo-shiney" and I always think, hmmm, potential. I'm only buying beads on a by-project basis right now, but the excess is starting to add up. I'm finding that in the future, I'm going to want to get bigger beads to make more of statement pieces. There's some jewelry that I've admired from afar that I think, maybe, just maybe, I can riff on that.

A New Day, A New Dawn, A New Year

It's finished, it's done, it's ready to be wrapped and gone! Just like 2008. Although 2008 "The Year of Bad Money" was in some aspects better than 2007 "The Year of Coulda Been Worse", in other ways, it was just plain ugly. Here's hoping that 2009 is better in all ways.

The picture is from a few months ago when I sent the quilt to my friendly machine quilter. We met up, and picked some threads and a pattern and a few short months later, the fabric became a quilt and not just a quilt top. I finally applied the binding last weekend and finished the last bit of hand sewing last night. Just in time for it to be a FO (Finished Object) for 2008. My MIL has been having issues lately and the hope is that this will warm her heart as well as her toes and maybe perk her up a bit.

I'm going to call 2009 "The Year of the Done". I have some projects that have been languishing for years, quite literally, and at least one that's a decade or more old, let alone the IOU's from T-Day Christmas. I'm not going to list them all, but you know I do have a list. Now, just because I want to finish things, doesn't mean that I am going to not start anything new. I just plan on finishing at least two projects before I start something new.

I have some quite large projects in mind - large projects that will require a good block of time, and large projects that can handle bits of time here and there. And then I have smaller projects to do too. I have projects for me and projects for others. I have things I want to do, that haven't even been started yet. I have creative projects, home projects, and personal projects. I'd like to get at least 3 major WIP (Work in Process) projects completed this year and as many of the smaller WIP's off the list as I can. And I'd like to start and complete 2 major projects. The smaller projects that I want to start, and finish, will depend on the smaller WIP's that get done.

So there. Now my main goal is public. Out there for your inspection, comment, and follow up. Hold me accountable, because you never know, one of the projects might be for you.

Two Things

My Eyes! My Eyes are burning! This weekend I attempted to make some eyes out of sculpey clay for some Christmas projects I am working on. This is my absolute first time working with the stuff and it seems to be pretty forgiving. But. User error indicated that I am not very good at following directions or even pictures. My eyes were lopsided, fingerprinted, and not even as cute as the pictures showed. Regardless, I baked them for the time/temp indicated on the side of the clay and my "translucent" clay burned. Underneath the black is the translucent clay - now an interesting shade of burnt. I think I am sticking to button eyes.

It rained this weekend. It was the first rain of the 2008-2009 rainy season. We picked up all of .85" in 24 hours. Now, it probably won't rain again for the next three weeks or so. It hasn't rained since April 23 - and we received nearly 40" of rain in the last rainy season. Saturday afternoon I kept looking out the window - alternately seeing misty rain in the sunshine, or, the flutter of freshly hatched semi-transparent wings on the ba-jillion bugs... Ugh.

New Start

Well, what do you know. I'm back, hopefully for just a short time actually. I'd like to be working again soon. But it is what it is.

In the meantime, I'm going to spend some time catching up on the projects that I didn't quite get finished last time, and hopefully, start and finish some new ones. The room in the last post is on hold. We've pulled up the carpet, and I think we've decided to replace the sub-floor before we put down new carpet. It smells in there. And I'm afraid that if I put new carpet on top of the sub-floor, it's still going to smell. The problem is, I can't replace the sub-floor myself. It's one of the jobs that I would actually need to hire out. But other than that, I can't wait to move forward on it. I love my new light switch plates, and I'm anxious to see how it all ends up looking.

I've been working on a Christmas present the past couple of days. I'm using a Debbie Bliss Soho Variegated yarn that I bought when I was a fresh knitter, oh three years ago. The yarn is a single ply, thick & thin wool yarn that will probably felt if it just sees water. But I am just loving the fabric that the yarn is producing. It's soft and stretchy and bumpy and full of color. When I purchased the yarn, I felt for sure I was buying more than enough to do any project - larger than a scarf. Silly me. I didn't know to check yardage back then. And, I thought the colors were cheery and happy, only to find out that personally, I prefer the near-solids of a kettle-dyed yarn instead of a true variegation. So the yarn has been languishing in the stash, just waiting for the right project. Languish no longer!