jewelry.knitting.life

super bulky helmet hat recipe

2012-01-22T08:43:00.001-05:00

i made 2 in the last 2 days. quick and easy. although there is a beautiful girl modeling the hat, it is made for my big, grown-up noggin.

materials: 1 skein Malabrigo Rasta (i used piedras)
tools: 10.5 needles, 16" flexible dp and dp set of 4
gauge: 2.5 st/inch
size: 22"

make earflaps: on 16" dp needle, cast on 5 stitches.
*knit 1 row.
*purl 1 row.
*k1, make 1, k3, make 1, k1.
*purl 1 row.
*k1, make 1, k5, make 1, k1.
*purl 1 row.
*work in stockinette stitch for 6 rows.
*set this one aside and make another.

make hat:when 2nd earflap is complete break yarn and slide it to the righthand side of the dp needle. cast on 15 stitches. knit the stitches from the 1st saved earflap and cast on 21 more stitches. place a marker and begin knitting.
*when hat measures 6.75" from the bottom of the hat (not the earflap) begin decreasing for the crown. when the knitting gets awkward, switch to the double pointed wooden needles.
decrease:
*(k7, k2tog) 6 times.
*(k6, k2tog) 6 times.
*(k5, k2tog) 6 times.
*(k4, k2tog) 6 times.
*(k3, k2tog) 6 times.
*(k2, k2tog) 6 times.
*(k1, k2tog) 6 times.
*(k2tog) 6 times. 6 stitches remain.
*cut a yarn tail of about 8 inches and use that, with a large needle, to close up the top hole-run the needle through the 6 remaining loops. push the needle to the interior and knot off.

finishing: turn inside out and, using the large needle, weave all tail ends into knitted fabric and trim. earflaps might need a little steam blocking.

procrastination

2012-01-21T23:30:00.001-05:00

pinterest, i love it.
everyone should start pinning.

thank goodness for smart friends....

2012-01-16T15:41:00.000-05:00

please excuse the obvious lack of attention to white balance. BUT, check out the translucency! my friend, barb, suggested that alcohol inks mixed in with the transparent pardo might give a better result...and sure enough, it did! I conditioned "denim" and "bottle" adirondack inks right into the transparent pardo. These are a variety of thicknesses. the tapered and straight strips are about 6 on an atlas pasta roller.

all of the ovals and circles (with the exception of the chunky hand-formed one in the front with the hole) are about a 3 on the pasta roller. and here is my polymer nemesis captured on
"film". i believe it's called plaqueing (sp?)...those trapped, flattened air bubbles or whatever?! they drive me crazy! when i took a class with celie fago i was led to believe that that effect was from hand-conditioning the polymer...well, this batch was rolled in the pasta roller.....

and that little bowly there? rolled out at 8 and draped over an armature....VERY transparent! all of these i quenched in ice water right out of the oven.

pardo-n me, i see no transparency.

2012-01-13T07:42:00.003-05:00

um. well, i don't.
not to mention it was extremely crumbly and hard to condition.
gonna try rolling it really thin and see what i come up with....

something lovely came in the mail

2012-01-09T19:47:00.004-05:00

a box from rio grande!
ok, so it wasn't a surprise, after all i DID order the supplies myself....but i really do like to receive things in the mail!

non-marring pliers.

exciting, if i only had a free moment to try it out! maybe mlk day.

citrine. coral. jade. to put in my 4 and 5 mm fine silver bezel cups.

Pardo-n me.

2012-01-09T09:51:00.000-05:00

just about every day i pop on to polymer clay daily to see what cynthia tinapple is featuring. the other day she showed Katrin Neumaier 's work (see below).

Hmmmm...faux beach glass made out of a translucent polymer clay called Pardo. well, of course i ordered myself some from amazon....i'd like to make cabs out of it to set into bezels made from textured pmc...so you can see the texture thru the cab....we'll see.....

arts and crafts mantle/ fireplace surround

2012-01-04T18:23:00.003-05:00

before. colonial style builder's mantle.

fireplace dis"mantle"d (heehee). bricks (unevenly) covered with thinset to create a "smooth" surface to tile on. the top rows of my hand-mixed, hand-painted, hand-fired tiles had to go in first and set overnight.

then i set the rest of the tiles and grouted....oh, boy. the grouting. it took me 3 1/2 hours and each groutline and to be formed with my index finger because the tiles don't lie perfectly flat and i'm slow, so the grout was hardening. i still have a big, raw sore spot where i actually rubbed the skin right off the index finger (about 3 hours into the job).

after. with val's beautiful hand-made mantle.

re-purposed!

2012-01-04T18:12:00.002-05:00

i finally figured out what to do with all of the elements i made to go on the polymer clay bracelets i made at celie fago's this fall. make earrings!

this, too, has been happening...

2011-12-14T16:35:00.000-05:00

this is our new mantle, on the garage floor. no one can tell me that the photos from camera phone rival traditional cameras in quality. this is from my droid which is supposed to have a good camera. pthththt. but you get the idea at least, right?

what's been happening?

2011-12-14T09:02:00.000-05:00

santa had different plans, i think. santa needs to re-evaluate her plan!

i caught maia's first ever point-scored-in-a-game. she's LOVING basketball.

these are the tiles that will be surrounding the fireplace by the end of this weekend. they took SO LONG to get just right. i mixed the glaze to the exact color i wanted and applied 4 coats. then i put 1 coat of clear gloss on and fired. oooo-bad. totally inconsistent matte/shiny texture across the surface of each tile. took them home and hand-dipped each one (206) in clear gloss again, sanding off the thick areas...fired them again and VOILA.....the perfect tiles!

the up side of having a spouse with some time on his hands

2011-11-23T18:19:00.001-05:00

i came home from work one day last week to discover that my life-long dream of having a window seat was half-realized! what a great surprise! stay tuned for pictures of it finished!

goodbye colonial mantel and bricks! the next time you see a picture of this fireplace it will be tiled with hand-glazed 2" tiles (the kids and i will be the hand-glazers) and it will have a handmade quarter-sawn oak mantel. can't wait!

love.

2011-11-11T21:40:00.001-05:00

there are a million and one reasons why i love my sweet husband.

here is a big one.

in the middle of a big, less-than-pleasant yard-keeping chore

a creative idea comes to him,

and he pursues it.

and again, bangle...hopefully not too many more!

2011-11-11T21:31:00.001-05:00

the truth of the matter is, i can't figure out why i'm killing myself to finish at least ONE of these bangles. i don't even wear bracelets. i think it's because i took the class to learn how to make the bracelet - if i haven't made the bracelet, i have not successfully completed the class.

so, after i polished it, i cut this baby so i could slide the doo-dads on it. well, the doo-dads i made in class were for a bangle with a wider diameter, so they are awkward and disproportionate on this bangle. when i was about to hang it all up in exasperation i came upon this...

now this might work. that's 28 gauge argentium wire with 1mm pearls on it. it's hard to photograph because gravity pulls almost all the little pearls to the bottom of the bracelet, so you can't see them. they move nicely when they're on the wrist, though... i'm going to put 4 more spirals on, alternating pearl with 1.5mm leopard jasper. THEN i'm going to stop making polymer bangles. i do actually have another idea about polymer bracelets, just not bangles...stay tuned!

someone turns 12 today

2011-11-10T07:28:00.000-05:00

in 1999, at 9:30 am i got to the hospital, excited to have my first baby. i believe he finally made his appearance at 11:35ish pm.

continuing saga of the carved polymer bangle

2011-11-09T19:29:00.000-05:00

it all started with this homely joe.

then i thought i should have a carved bracelet that revealed another color inside. this was only effective upon REALLY close inspection.

then i thought i should re-fill the spaces with a new color. mmmm.....no.

carve and re-fill. still no. i don't think there's any saving it. also, the proportions of the thickness to the diameter - awkward.

so i made this one. it's thinner, and i actually like the starburst carved pattern (not the dots so much). i believe this will be the one that i place all the little silver rings and bracelet beads on.

bits and bobs

2011-11-08T21:39:00.003-05:00

when i finished up the mokume gane bracelet class at celie fago's i had a hunk of nice mokume leftover. i decided to slice it up into disk beads.

this is one side of a nice lentil bead i made at a beginners metal clay workshop. it's nice to watch a new teacher (teacher new to me) work- i always pick up new tricks.

the other side.

long time no see.

2011-11-07T19:38:00.007-05:00

i'm still here.
work-in'.
mom-in'.
knit-in'.
make-in'.
shovel-in'.

this fall has been odd.
we did all the normal autumn things

but then winter came and knocked us for a loop.

most of the branches of this pretty tree came cascading down with a giant crash. you can see in the back right of this photo that there are giant, broken tree-sized branches dangling in that tree back there. they're still there, waiting to kill me when a breeze kicks up and i'm working in the garden next spring.

that's my road, totally blocked. some kind neighbor with a chainsaw cut a single-car-sized hole in the trees so we could drive through. the town says they'll get to fully clearing all the roads "in the next couple months".

it did get AWFULLY cold in the house after 4 or 5 days of no power.

but, really, how beautiful was the light the day after the storm?

stay tuned.

2011-10-20T21:56:00.002-04:00

struggling with the template, but no time to get it right, right now....
i want it to look better than THIS, but also have all my sidebar info (etsy, etc) available.

beautiful late september: cape cod

2011-10-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

warm enough to get in the water!

lovely walks on the beach...

bracelet bizzaro

2011-10-11T07:00:00.000-04:00

i don't think i will be a bangle maker in my next life....or just maybe not a carved bangle maker.
this is my first (quite possibly ONLY) try re-making the godawful carved bracelet i made at celie's. i used a linoleum cutter rather than the dockyard micro cutters...the size of the carving is better, but you can barely see that the core is a different color (my green layer should have been MUCH thinner).

the next step, i think, is to inlay a new color in the carvings...photos to follow...

mokume gane/ bracelet class at celie fago's studio

2011-10-10T08:59:00.012-04:00

what a wonderful weekend...inspirational, and time with my great friend, barb.

here is my mokume billet (stack) of translucent bronze, gold, green and gray topped with bittersweet chocolate (color, not food)...with layers of "gold" leaf between....

after the billet is made, you use a variety of tools to press the dark color down into the stack to create patterning.
then you start slicing away- thin, thin sheets of the patterned polymer...

and this is the bangle that resulted from the layers...it's not quite done yet...i'm going to add some fused silver rings to it...

we also made polymer bracelets set in brass channels....

and this atrocity...these bracelets are designed to have a lot of rings, beads etc. dangling from them...that's what all those silver elements are....i believe i will use those silver elements on something that looks a lot less like poop.

look what came in the mail for me today!

2011-09-19T19:30:00.002-04:00

that kelley, of kelley's bead studio, is a genius with glass.
these are just gorgeous. i'll be taking them with me to a class i'm taking with celie fago this weekend, just in case i might be able to incorporate 1 or 2.
if not this weekend, they will be incorporated into SOMETHING soon!

i'm SO looking forward to this class this weekend....it will be a bright spot in what has been a less-than-perfect few weeks.

gratuitous kitty-hugging-doggie pic.

i'm not really a cat person

2011-09-09T15:33:00.002-04:00

so bear with me for just a little bit while i document how cute these boys are.
my interest in taking pictures of their cuteness will surely not last long.

getting to know the yetti monster.

sleepy, shy cats.
the little one up front is named coco, i'm not sure why. you'd have to ask MY little one.

late summer antics

2011-08-25T23:31:00.003-04:00

someone's been spending a lot of time with his mama this summer.
i SWEAR i didn't even suggest getting the knitting out to see if the beanie could be finished before winter.....

peer pressure in our house is all about the knitting....what's a girl to do when her brother and mother are sitting around knitting in the early morning hours? join in!

current work

2011-08-19T17:11:00.003-04:00

while making this toggle clasp i was desperately trying to place those balled-end wire loops in BEFORE firing...i did, and it worked out ok in most cases, although 1 got stuck to the pmc in the 2-hour firing. only THEN did i realize that there's no reason to fire them in....you can make them after the pmc pieces have already been fired....duh.

silver metalclay and sunstone earrings....i love this incredibly subtle apricot and blue LOS patina BUT it somehow looks a bit to "colorful" to me and i'm considering polishing it down to a plain brushed silver surface....it just seems that if i'm going to work in silver, it should look somewhat like silver!

mysteries - 1 solved, 1 ongoing

2011-08-19T17:05:00.004-04:00

the mystery of how to condition a rawhide mallet so it doesn't mark your silver? solved! soak the face in water overnight and file with a metal file; twice (that is - soak overnight and file on two separate days). it's nice and soft and non-marking now.

the mystery of why kitties that don't belong to me like to stay for days under my deck? ongoing. look at this tiny one! i have the stair in there for scale....she's a tiny kitten...here 2 days, then gone...

INteresting....

2011-08-14T14:21:00.004-04:00

(in my mind i'm saying "INteresting with a heavy emphasis in the IN and also, with an eastern eauropean accent)

while i was watching The King's Speech last night i was fiddling around trying to figure out how to create a tear away that looks somewhat photographic....then i remembered some work i did MANY years ago in a printshop and realized a halftone of an image might just work...
there's a halftone filter in photoshop...

if you click on this photo (of the woods in zakopane, poland) to open it bigger you will see that i most likely need to adjust the dot size a bit.

this one of foxglove might work just fine.....

THAT'S what i'm finding so interesting this afternoon.

i re-shot all the photos from last night on the tungsten white balance setting. they're quite nice now. this evening i will ready them for etsy (re-size and save in a different format) and THEN i can finally add some new work...maybe monday, who knows....

grrrr........

2011-08-13T20:26:00.003-04:00

sketchy photography skills strike again.
i set aside several hours for photographing a bunch of new work for etsy.
i DID check the white balance when i started because the photos did seem the teensiest bit on the warm side...so i checked the tungten light setting and that was WAY too cool. so i switched back to the white fluorescent setting (by the way, the bulbs in my sockets were white fluorescent) and snapped happily away for almost 2 hours.
well, where they seemed the teensiest bit warm in the camera, they were warm as can be on my monitor.

this example below is a photo from today desaturated as far as possible (i had to set up a consistent desaturation standard so that when the pieces had colored beads, i wouldn't lose that color completely).

the bottom example is approximately how gray the background is in all of the current etsy photos.
turns out i can't use even one of the photos from today.... thank goodness i have a couple of free hours tomorrow, too, to re-shoot them all. and i might even have a lovely 25-year-old neck to photograph the necklaces on if my sweet niece will agree!

2.5 inches+17 pounds+1 year=

2011-08-03T07:24:00.001-04:00

finally taller than gramma!

what's that word again?

2011-08-02T09:00:00.001-04:00

hu·bris/ˈ(h)yo͞obris/Noun

1. Excessive pride or self-confidence.

the kids these days, they have a phrase they say...."well, THAT'S a fail" or "EPIC fail".

today was the kind of day that cleared up any romantic notion that someday i could make jewelry as my day job.

in trying to find a way to use the giant bezel i made in celie fago's class last fall, i thought polymer and resin might do the trick.

well, definitely not these murky colors, for sure.

i re-read kate mckinnon's structural clay book (fantastic) and realized i had a lot of dried elements around that i could assemble into something quite nice (without opening a new package of metal clay). well, i assembled it without allowing enough space between the elements and they stuck together, so it is no longer kinetic.

speaking of stuck together....

way back in 2004ish i took my first class in metal clay and my teacher was so persnickety about not firing things close together so they wouldn't get stuck to each other....over the years i've had lots of experience with trying my hardest to MAKE things stick together that have just decided to pop apart....so it never occured to me that i couldn't make a little shim (out of already fired metal clay)to keep my ring level in the kiln....

it's stuck right on there! kids, don't try this at home, but i actually pried it off with my teeth...disaster averted!

i am trying to keep perspective....my teaching has kept me out of the studio for a LONG time; it is natural that i'd be rusty, that my instincts wouldn't be as strong.....but GOSH, what a frustrating day!

zakopane and warsaw

2011-07-19T10:46:00.013-04:00

the southernmost portion of poland is it's mountainous region (zack-o-PON-ee). we spent 2 days there climbing mountains, enjoying cold, aqua-colored streams fed by snow melt....

and, of course, visiting a water park!

our last day was warsaw, which was much like krakow, but not as nice, i thought. it was raining like crazy, so we spent some time in the royal castle, which had the most beautiful wood inlay floors.....

and a cool oval marble staircase (darn that person who stepped into my shot at the bottom of the staircase!).

some wrapping up pictures...we had some fantastic sniadanie (shnee-a-DON-yeh....breakfasts) while we were there (my favorite meal of the day actually)....

croissants with bowls of chocolate, honey and fruit preserves to dip into....

mmmmm....my favorite...farmers cheese with green onion and slices of fresh veggies....

fresh-from-the-hen eggs with bacon....

and thank goodness i finally learned how to correctly order kawa americano i mleko about halfway through the trip....

and, really, my favorite part? having them discover that when left on their own, they're great pals....

on to krakow

2011-07-17T21:51:00.007-04:00

to break up the long drive to krakow we stopped for a night in lodz (pronounced woodge). lodz is the home of the largest mall in europe. of course we stopped by! it was oh-so-lovely, even though it was a mall! 12 defunct textile factories dating from the late 1880s (but producing textiles continuously through the early 1980s) were renovated for mall and apartment spaces....it was quite beautiful, and the "mall" included museums and entertainment, too. my favorite thing (because i happen to have a soft spot for graphic design) was the signage....

what a refreshing departure from the rest of the ENTIRE country. we found the signage in poland to be really poor.....extremely difficult to understand and interpret (even when we understood the words!).

we also dropped by czestochowa (t-chestchahova)...to see what is unarguable the most famous artwork in poland, the black madonna. below is a mosaic representation of it that was in another part of the cathedral....i got a look at the real one but couldn't take a decent photo because there was a mass going on....darn catholics-always praying!

we spent three days in krakow....spent a day in the city center, shopping, looking at 1600's architecture, taking a horse-drawn carriage ride

admiring one of the many cool pedestrian bridges...

another day we took a tour of a rock-salt mine...i didn't love being HUNDREDS of feet below the earth's surface, but it was quite impressive...

our last day in krakow was spent at auschwitz.
no pictures; you've all seen them a hundred times before.
harrowing.

let's finish off on a lighter note...maia's favorite meal?

1/2 of a smoked eel-including the head. she loved it!

next up? zakopane and warsaw and memories that have no pictures!

siemiany, revisited

2011-07-14T20:27:00.006-04:00

malbork castle

this is a typical yard in siemiany (not sure WHOSE yard it is although most people in the town were family or close friends from the old days!).

many people asked about "the party"...yes, we did host a gathering of aunts, uncles, cousins and friends the night before we left....it was in a restaurant which had a hunting theme.

below are some of the cousins...that sweet face at the bottom? well, that is the OTHER
maia c....except i'm pretty sure she spells her name maja.

there was a lovely dinner, a selection of fine meets, and salads and appetiser-y stuff, desserts, (vodka) and the evening ended with the presentation of the smoked leg-of-wild-boar.....(yes, that's a sparkler sticking out of it!)....

speaking of hunting? one night, through the light fog, we saw two 8-point bucks...beautiful. we did NOT mention the sighting to my brother-in-law who would have been out hunting them down in a second!

what a trip!

2011-07-12T22:46:00.007-04:00

2.5 weeks in poland...that's exactly what you need to get a good sense of the country...
we started in val's hometown...

and spent about 5 days there, meeting (reuniting with) family

and enjoying beautiful northeastern poland.
this is the house he was (literally) born in...

our only regret is that we weren't able to get in there.

while in that part of poland, we spent a day visiting gdansk and malbork castle where my photographic theme was "beautiful doorways".

i must have 50 pictures of beautiful doors!
my sleep head is still kind of on europe time...more pics later....

missing him on this day of fathers....

2011-06-19T07:49:00.003-04:00

i haven't cried in such a long time; i wonder what's different about today.

bowl of rocks

2011-06-12T10:55:00.002-04:00

we went for a brief visit to my mom's a couple of weeks ago. we found lots of stripey rocks, but the stripes are generally skinny and just not nearly as contrasty as i'd like.....

long time no see

2011-06-09T20:46:00.006-04:00

sorry i left such a downer post on my blog for so long!!!!
so here's how today went for me.....
i spent almost 8 hours in my un-air-conditioned classroom...it must have gotten up into the high 80's in there. it was so hot that i left immediately to do some grading at home.
when i got home i noticed how lovely my garden was looking, so i took my new canon powershot out to test the macro function...

a lovely foxglove (i think) that joined us, uninvited (thank you, garden gods!).

a home depot peony that's super pretty, but smells like....nothing ( :o( ).

i don't know what this little shrub is called...but i love the shapes of the blossom before they burst open.
and then? well, then black clouds descended. and the winds started to blow. and i hustled the kids inside with an eye to getting in the basement.....
and when we went outside after it was over, this is what we found.....

dang. pain in the butt.
at least the giant branches that came down in the backyard didn't squash any of our pretty ornamental trees.....

why i cannot celebrate the death of osama bin laden

2011-05-03T11:22:00.004-04:00

"I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives,
but I will not rejoice in the death of one,
not even an enemy.
Returning hate for hate multiplies hate,
adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that."

Martin Luther King, Jr

thanks to meammama, i stole this from her!

i keep coming back to the children who were apparently in the compound when the firefight began. what will be the repercussions of the terror they must have felt...

washington, dc

2011-04-19T22:06:00.008-04:00

a few days away...we've never been to washington before...
rode the metro

had our first (but definitely not last) batch of crabs...

checked out the washington monument...

the capitol...

the zoo... and the white house, too.

we did let evan skate anywhere there were no signs forbidding it (that we could see) with the understanding that if anyone asked him to cease and desist, he would. he developed a pretty good fan base jumping steps at the lincoln memorial...

and out of 4 days of a couple hundred pictures (many of which had weird facial expressions and/or were out of focus) this is my favorite photo...

isn't it beautiful? val took it of the WWII memorial....

ArtJewelry, may 2011

2011-04-04T06:17:00.000-04:00

i really enjoy getting my magazines every couple of months, no matter what's in them, but the may issue of artjewelry had SO MANY things i was interested in!!!
for instance, jewelers of hudson valley exhibit in from april-june....i was raised in the hudson valley and it's quite close by...

my favorite type of rivets is tube rivets. i've been using my agate burnisher to flare, but this tool (Tim's Tube Riveting Tool)looks GREAT....

i've never been interested at all in chain-making or chainmaille, but these illustrations really caught my eye! i might try that full persian!

this ad made me a bit sad... i won't be able to make it to the metal clay world conference this summer, and it looks like they are pairing up with the polymer clay people...i would LOVE to attend some polymer clay seminars/demonstrations...

the gallery pages are always inspiring...

love that jasper in lee rumsey haga's work...

great, simple instructions to make a box clasp (someday i will)...

gosh, i love the use of line in christy klug's work...

inspiring earwire design options (kathleen dustin)...

and finally, i've never made a pin/brooch and i think maybe i've never worn one, but i know just where to go if i want to make a simple pinback in metal clay...

what a GREAT issue!

danger, will robinson!

2011-04-03T09:00:00.000-04:00

this is not the danger part....
last weekend i spend an intense 28-or-so hours trying to get a handle on managing molten glass. the plate below is the result of the first 14 hours of demonstrations and work time. quite a small pile for so many hours!

my second day had some lovely beads...

i discovered that it's great fun playing with molten glass, after you get over the fear of lighting the torch! i can definitely see some applications for glass skills in my work, although i do not see myself dropping everything else to become a glass artist! one of my "complaints" is that glass is so darn shiny...with that in mind, i contacted overstock.com to see about this...
THIS is where the DANGER comes in....

had i been able to read the small print on this bottle in the picture on the website, i might not have bought it. i generally don't like to have anything that can be FATAL hanging around the house. i have reasonably sensible, middle-sized kids living in my house who i REALLY don't think would even open this jar (they tend to stay away from things that say FATAL on them). but i DO have toddler niece and nephew. i'll have to find a high-up (possibly locked) place to keep this.

here's a dark square of mystery (amber and turquoise) shiny, and then etched...

much better!
and here's a disk bead/button...

shiny first and then etched...

much better!
and another disk bead/button

i do MUCH prefer them without the shine, but i notice that the perception of the depth of the transparent dots is much diminished after etching. i can live with that.

so proud

2011-04-02T22:33:00.007-04:00

of the work my drawing and painting students have done this year. today was the opening of our spring show, and if you click on these, you should be able to get a (slightly) better look at them. unfortunately, they were in a room with a window across the way, so i was getting a lot of reflections on the glass. i'm noticing now that while i got them all, some are barely visible and/or parts are cropped out...shoot.

2011-03-17T21:47:00.007-04:00

i was inspired by barb fernald's wire drape forms to be used with thin, floppy sheets of pmc...
i made a splishy-splashy

a ziggy-zaggy

and a meandering-bumpy...

i draped on the meandering bumpy and got this...

kind of uninspiring, but more attractive from the open side.

i was thinking of closing it up with a smooth sheet of untextured clay, but i might just leave it open and drill 2 holes and string a pearl in the interior.
for some reason, i'm not really smellin' what the wire forms are cookin'...so i went ahead and made some drape forms out of polymer...i'm not sure why those seem to me like they'll work better...

i probably have to do a slow air dry (not accelerated on the cup warmer) on those...i imagine the pmc would stick to the baked polymer drape form if i popped the 2 onto the cup warmer...

surveying the damage

2011-03-16T17:50:00.004-04:00

finally, today, the front lawn was entirely revealed (with the exception of one small patch of snow).
damage caused by feet and feet of snow seems to be minimal, but those darn deer...

my holly, and my newly-planted-this-fall hydrangea....grrrr!

and then there's this mystery...

what causes the rhodys to die from the top?! these are really big, well-established bushes that look like they may need to be removed-ugh!

but then there was this lovely sign of spring under there....daffodils poking through!

a dubious tradeoff

2011-03-07T19:05:00.006-05:00

goodbye old friend.....

hello, new...

my morning routine has been altered significantly. it all started when the winter weather kept me from my walks outside (months ago). my middle-aged body rebelled against the sitting-around with creaks and rattles and aches and pains.
so, my leisurely weekday mornings which used to start at 4:55 with coffee and knitting now start at 4:25 with treadmill and sweat (followed by coffee and shower).
goodbye morning knitting, i loved you.
the truth of the matter is, 6 mornings in and i feel better already....sad but true.

revealed

2011-03-07T17:11:00.006-05:00

2 days of 60 degree weather and a torrential rainstorm last night (here and north of us in massachussets at the headwaters) set the rivers in town to flooding, causing the kids' school to be closed today (my greatest condolences to those whose houses and farms were/are inundated). i used most of the personal day i had to take to work on grading (so what else is new) but late in the afternoon i went outside to get a look around and saw GRASS for the first time since christmas! that's the backyard...

and a whole lot of broken shrubs that will have to be pruned down to nothing, or taken out entirely.

also, this little friend came to visit....

she was around for 5 days last week...very friendly, not skinny...she must belong to someone but she has no collar, and she was in heat (shouldn't someone have kept her in?!). she went away for a few days, but she came back today... i think she wants to be my cat....

the high price of silver is gettin' me down

2011-03-07T09:20:00.005-05:00

so i pulled out all (most) of my unfinished projects (the number is considerable)...

i'm in the process of assessing their worth....continue on or send to the scrap heap....
after the assessment is made i will focus on actually completing the unfinisheds, rather than starting something new.
maybe in the next few weeks the price of silver will plummet.
anyone who knows me will be surprised to hear that i'm thinking of trying again with the base metal clay...trying to have a positive attitude after my past experiences...

new necklace

2011-03-01T12:00:00.005-05:00

finished last night and placed on my beautiful faux-wood school desk.

it's a good thing i like it, because it used a LOT of material and took a lot of time...it would be a very expensive necklace if i wanted to sell it.

i hope to carve out some time this weekend to get my light tent and good camera out....

tear-away on ceramic clay!

2011-03-01T11:38:00.008-05:00

my friend judi teaches with me. one of her specialties is ceramics, so we got to wondering if the tear-away technique that i use for metal clay would work on her ceramic clay. we spent a couple hours of our staff development time last friday working on the idea.
first, i taught her how to make a tear-away...look at those beautiful florals (she was a textile designer in another life, long ago and far away)-so different from my geometric tear-aways!

here's the example i made while i was teaching her the tear-away steps...

and would you look at that!!!! the 2 ceramic clays are from amaco-one is white talc and one is indian red....we used spray Pam as a release agent...

and here are judi's florals!

works like a charm on a flat surface. it's hard to get a good image on a curved surface. i imagine a REALLY fine clay like porcelain would be incredible...
we're going to fire these and judi's going to see what happens with glazes, etc...while it is very beautiful, it is extremely subtle on it's own....

so, here she is...the unlikely mama

2011-02-22T07:33:00.004-05:00

that mama looks to be a plain, simple girl.
look at her perched up there on top of that beautiful egg.
i wonder how many people, besides me, are astounded by the extraordinary qualities of their own children.

the necklace is strung with a single strand of tiny amethyst and labradorite beads with freshwater pearls at the very back next to the (lobster) clasp. i was disappointed to realize i had run out of handmade toggle clasps, so i decided to throw a simple purchased clasp on here, since this one is for me. last night i got to work making clasps so that the unlikely mama that i have planned for etsy will have a handmade clasp!

minor accomplishments

2011-02-20T07:56:00.005-05:00

well, yesterday was supposed to be my day to GET THINGS ACCOMPLISHED with the rest of the fam away snowboarding. well....... i did get some things accomplished, just not nearly what i imagined!
the day started with my yearly(ish) mammogram appointment, then home for a bowl of cereal in front of hgtv. when the cereal was done i finished this up. hard to tell what it is, no? i knit it with my fingers crossed, hoping it would do what i thought it would do...AND IT DOES!
my mom has some trouble breathing in the cold air of the northeast. i've made her scarves, but they don't cover her mouth unless she holds them up with her hand...this here is a super soft alpaca (cascade eco-duo) tube of ribbing. you pull it over your head and it's snuggly, but not in the least bit tight. you can scrunch it down to be like a leg-warmer for your neck OR you can pull it up over your face and double it to protect your lungs from the cold air, no hand needed. SCORE! now, the unfortunate part is that that creamy-beigey color might not really suit my mama...she is beautiful with silver-white hair and bright blue eyes and she carries bright jewel colors beautifully...but i don't have those in my stash because i don't do those colors. so the other skeins in the picture are the closest i could find in my stash...if she would comment here about her preference i could whip her up another one before she gets here thursday!
the following pic is an example of me STILL struggling with white balance. photography does not come easily to me.

in the afternoon, i did get quite a bit of jewelry started, pushed to mid-project and 1 item completed. there are just no photos yet. except this one. am i the only one who can't get argentium to ball up properly? i used up 4 inches making droopy ball-ends and clipping them off.

i really needed a length of ball-ended 18 gauge wire and i only had argentium, so i finally took a droopy one and filed some of the uneven off and used it...but it should be so hard!
so, i appreciated the time i had to myself yesterday but was disappointed to be reminded about how hard it is to get a LOT accomplished....

"spring" 2011

2011-02-18T07:21:00.003-05:00

it's supposed to be in the 60s here today. it's the first sock-free day of 2011.
if i was a teenager, i would have slipped on my flip-flops a couple weeks ago.
pathetic post, i know, but tomorrow my little family flies away for a day of snowboarding (without me!) so my plan is to install myself in the studio first, for several hours, and then down in the kitchen with my camera. hopefully some reasonably engaging posts will follow!

nine years ago today

2011-02-15T08:11:00.000-05:00

this beautiful girl was born.

the first nine went so fast; i can't wait to see what the next nine bring!

haven't felt this way in a long time

2011-02-11T18:09:00.005-05:00

look at these sweet tiny silver birdies.

i have a couple of these in progress, and i'm not sure why (well, i do know why, but i want to organize my thoughts and write something a bit less casual about it) but i'm LOVING them so much that they pop in my mind in the middle of the day while i'm doing all the other unrelated stuff....
she's an unlikely mama.
(beautiful egg beads by kelley wenzel)

more polymer clay inlay

2011-02-10T11:44:00.000-05:00

here are a few pictures of the process...

that bittersweet chocolate brown is a fair representation of the color i mixed up, but the blue is MUCH brighter in the photo above than in real life.

1st color inlay...carve and add color 2...

and 3 and 4 and 5...

these babies have been sitting around in this state for a few day because i realized that i love to put the colors together, but i don't love to sand. and i like wet-sanding even less. i'll get to them eventually....
and then this little lovely - i couldn't bear to fill the carved spaces...i just love the way it looks like this.

birds of a feather

2011-02-09T22:00:00.007-05:00

or, actually, birds of TWO feathers (ceramic and unfired silver metalclay).

it's too bad i didn't include something to show the scale...these ceramic guys are pretty tiny! i believe i like them better with the distinct neck-crease, rather than with the head and body blended together. the little guy on top? i think his noggin is a bit too big.
trying to decide if these guys will stay white, or get painted with a wash of acrylic...

on the other hand, the even-tinier metalclay birdies below will probably not even get a patina at all...we'll have to see when they come out of the kiln.

i think i prefer the design of the fatter birdie with the less prominent wings. anyone else have an opinion?
i also have to work on refining the positioning of the hole....how could i continue to be surprised at the fact that EVERYTHING matters....a bady positioned hole makes the bird look like he's dive-bombing...

look what i found....

2011-02-01T22:53:00.001-05:00

in my 6th-grader's schoolwork pile.

guess he's not going to be a hindu.

polymer inlay experiments

2011-02-01T07:05:00.001-05:00

well, now. this seems to be working out pretty nicely!

i started by rolling out the black polymer clay on the #1 setting on the pasta machine, to make a bunch of blanks. that i did a variety of things with the blanks...some i baked without doing anything to them, and some i played around with a bit before i baked them.
for the dotty one on the right i used 2 different sized ball burnishers (tiny) to indent in the soft clay before i baked it. the one on the left was carved with a dockyard tool after the polymer was baked.
then i went ahead and squashed and smeared in different colors and baked after the addition on each new color.

you can see here that this is what i decided to do in that hanging-around ring. when i sand it down i'll decide if i want to keep it or not. the frontmost one made me think about the possibilities of creating little illustrations...that one in particular makes me think of a little stylized garden.
this is what they look like in the middle of the wet sanding...

this is really fun and not expensive and i've been trying to figure out ways to incorporate polymer with the metalclay for months....

mission: accomplished

2011-01-31T06:54:00.000-05:00

the snow days last week did allow me to FINALLY finish 2 necklaces that were 90% completed over the summer.
i was waiting till i needed a bunch of things before i ordered the 1.5mm 2-strand crimp clasps that i needed for these necklaces (that $9 shipping fee is a stinker, and my local bead store is run by a woman who hates kids, so i try not to shop there).
so finally i got them ordered, and then they just sat there. during a free hour last week i put the black skinny leather cord on and crimped the crimps.....and realized that the black leather cord should REALLY be dark brown because my liver of sulfur patina is on the warm side of gray...it's exaggerated in these photos.

for now the black is going to stay, but you can be sure my next order to rio grande will include some skinny brown leather!

sad to say this one lost it's sunstone with some reasonably vigorous polishing...

but i think it looks ok without it. also, this one should really have the brown cord too....

snowboarding

2011-01-30T08:11:00.000-05:00

that's a funny title for this picture, no?

i'm trying to figure out just exactly how i feel about my little henyocks growing big enough that they are going off into the world to do things that i cannot.
i sat in a ski lodge all day saturday, after i helped my littlest get her snowboarding boots on. she's essentially outgrown the bunnyslope, so i'm pretty much obsolete. it was a long day in the ski lodge, and while i did get some creative work done (carving polymer clay blocks so that i can inlay new colors), i could've gotten a LOT MORE done if i had just stayed home.

the fun part of today? meeting a whole bunch of 10-year-olds who wanted to know what the heck i was doing with my carving tool and polymer clay blocks! so many self-confident, interested kids approached me to say "hi! what are you doing there?!" and then proceeded to ask me lots of questions!!! so sweet. i would NEVER have approached someone, no matter HOW interested i was, when i was a kid!

who's this?

2011-01-29T20:06:00.006-05:00

a little birdy.
made out of polymer clay.
just to see if i could produce a pleasant birdy shape.

and to see if birdies should have wings.

i couldn't quite figure out what to do about legs and feet,

so i baked her without them...

ring-a-week(ish) 2/52(?)

2011-01-28T08:00:00.000-05:00

sterling silver 14 gauge wire. hammered.
a simplification of ring #1. that pearl and weaving business on #1 was not neat-and-tidy enough for my liking...i believe i need to research/practice wire weaving further before i can use it successfully.
and i'm working on finishing this one for #3.

that's eggplant colored polymer clay as a based and pearl colored polymer clay elements (confetti or linear...anyone want to offer an opinion?) to be covered in resin.

WHAT a winter...

2011-01-27T23:04:00.005-05:00

we have gotten a huge amount of snow this winter.

the snow on our (should've-been-shoveled-weeks-ago-now-it's-not-possible) deck is up to the bottom of the livingroom windows.

and this rhody is about four and a half feet tall!
and they're saying ANOTHER big storm next week....ugh.

beading challenges

2011-01-19T07:00:00.000-05:00

i've decided that since beading/stringing is my nemesis, i will start documenting my failures (usually i just unstring quickly and look surreptitiously over my shoulder, hoping no one saw the ugly thing i made, thinking it was going to be lovely).

here's the first. i think, usually, i will just document the different manifestations of beading until i come up with a good one, and then post them all in a single post. i hope this will allow me to see the progression...maybe having a visual record will help me more quickly visualize and execute attractive and meaningful and well-balanced necklaces.
this first one was homely enough (too many bloopity-bloops on the sides, tho i do really like the pearls and labradorite in place of the missing rung) i decided to post it by itself!

as an aside, these are my little scribble beads. they're made out of 28 (i think) gauge argentium wire wrapped around a 1.25mm knitting needle.

the left is a 3" length (too short and messy), then 4" in the middle and 5" at the end. i like the 5"- i expect i will use them on earrings....

ring a week (ish)

2011-01-18T07:00:00.000-05:00

and this isn't even the one that was mostly finished!

it started out as a 14 gauge sterling silver spiral.

and then i did some wirewrapping with a pearl and learned i'm not much of a wirewrapper.
and the pearl's a bit on the petite side.
BUT what i realized is that rings will lead to other rings...i already have ideas about how to more effectively and attractively utilize the spiral shape. ideas interesting enough that i quickly whipped up a new spiral so i can get to work on next week's tomorrow! here it is...

moo has arrived :o(

2011-01-17T07:53:00.000-05:00

well, i'm underwhelmed. these mini-cards are cute as the dickens (at a quick glance) BUT...
1. there is significant user-error at play (the pdfs i made had text much, MUCH too small to read)...

this earring card is barely usable. that small line of text is not readable, but it only says "limited edition and one-of-a-kind".

this carecard/hangtag is completely and utterly unusable. the care text is too small to see, as is the contact information.
i take full responsibility for not having the exact dimensions of the mini-card nearby, so i could have understood exactly how tiny it would be. i DO wish there was a human involved in the process who could have shot me an email before they printed these bad-boys up; but i do know that it is ultimately my own fault.
and ALSO...
2. i really think there's a fault in their template design.
this is a screenshot of how i set up the 2 sides within their template..

and this is what i got...

i assumed that the 2 right edges were a common edge (the bottom), so that when you flip the card on a vertical axis the image and text would be right side up. instead, they're opposite...so when you're looking at the image side of the card above and flip it vertically, the text is upside down like that. that just doesn't seem right.
it's not like they're unusable, but they annoy the hoo-ha out of me.

p.s. the tiny text at the top is only BARELY readable. duh.

a strange thing is happening to me....

2011-01-15T23:15:00.000-05:00

this is a screenshot of my "favorites" on etsy.
notice a theme here?
lately, i have not been able to get the shape of fat little birdies out of my mind. i don't know why. it's been brewing for a bit....i'm interested in birds, in general. i have various friends who have specific bird interests (bird calls. bird watching. crows.).
all of a sudden, i'm buying little carved wooden birds. bird xmas decorations. and i think i might need felted and/or ceramic birdies from etsy!
who knows, i might make a little silver birdie...

a ridiculous idea

2011-01-14T07:08:00.001-05:00

there's a challenge in the art jewelry community called Ring-a-Week.
if this was last year, i could DEFINITELY take on a challenge like that (last year it was Ring-a-Day...i'll NEVER be up for that!). i wonder if i could make my own challenge "Ring-Whenever-You-Can". lame, i know.
if i was to take on Ring-a-Week, i would start by committing to finish this one. this thing has been hanging around, half-finished, for 6 months.

here's the main problem. i designed it around his gorgeous pietersite that i am madly in love with and want to keep for my own.

but the ring is too big for me (way too big) and so if i put my pietersite in that setting i'll have to say goodbye to it. OR I COULD...
*put a found object in that bezel.
*make something from polymer to put in that bezel.
*make sure there are no gaps and collage and resin that bezel.
*hmmm...mosaic?
what haven't i thought of?

i could maybe do Ring-Every-Couple-of-Weeks....

something strange is happening to me...

2011-01-13T07:17:00.003-05:00

disappointing...

2011-01-12T21:12:00.008-05:00

over the course of the last few months i have been working (in tiny dribs and drabs) on an IDEA. obviously i thought it was a pretty good one, since the precious few minutes i'd get, i spent on this one idea. it started when i was at the workshop at celie fago's in september...i was inspired by EVERYTHING she taught, but what really caught my eye was the teeny, tiny textured tube beads she made as bails for really elaborate bezel settings. i thought "how hard could they be?"...famous last words.it's not that hard to make them, it's just really hard to make them look GOOD.

i made a few and i got this IDEA in my head about ladders (as a symbol). ascending and decending. and destinations. my idea was that those tube beads would make great ladder rungs. well i suppose, in theory, they eventually will.

here's the first one. i really hoped it was going to be great, but instead....

oops.

and kinda wonky.
now don't get me wrong, i'm not out of hope...i'm pretty sure i have a reasonably good idea about how to string this one with it's missing rung and have it still look darn good.
and the rung?

i think it looks like it has potential to look good with it's brothers and sisters in support of one of kelley wenzel's beautiful, handmade headpins.
i think the ladder IDEA is one worth pursuing, unfortunately it looks like it will have to be at a very slow pace this year....

granola

2011-01-12T17:57:00.003-05:00

oats. oat bran. pumpkin seeds. sesame seeds. sunflower seeds. flax seed. cashews. coconut. cranberries (not in the photo).
honey. molasses. cinnamon. vanilla. canola oil.

tonight i will get photos of a recent studio disappointment....and try to figure out how to work past it.....

hello, snow!!!!

2011-01-12T12:40:00.004-05:00

these are not beautiful photos because photography is still not (and most likely never will be) my native language. so i went out and took a bunch of shots (some-not these- kind of artful and interesting) and downloaded only to realize my white balance was off. and you just can't fix that with the editing functions...you can make it a bit better, but not fix.

so, anyway, lotta snow, no?

holiday break review

2011-01-09T08:00:00.000-05:00

hangin' around on christmas day...

multi-generational jam...evan had been waiting all year to get together with these fellas...he's playing with his second cousin (?MY cousin...what does that make him to evan?) ryan and his great uncle alan...rock on....

an unexpected snow delayed our trip to vermont, but we got a good snowman out of it!

evan and his pop got 3 beautiful days of snwboarding in...

and we got to swim in the heated pool OUTSIDE....

and the girl with mono who wasn't allowed to snowboard COULD climb an indoor rock climbing wall since she was tethered to ME at the bottom!

snow day, yesterday

2011-01-07T18:36:00.004-05:00

anyone who knows me knows that i am AT BEST a mediocre, uninspired cook. (at worst, really bad).
some days it just seems that if i have some time, i should get some food cooked.
this is a record of my afternoon yesterday...from right to left-steamed brussel sprouts about to be sauteed in butter and garlic, the beginning of chicken soup, a cherry pie and an onion/pepper/tomato mix to bake with haddock. productive, if not culinary masterpieces.

well, hello there

2011-01-07T11:50:00.005-05:00

the last month of 2010 was pretty hairy.
when we last were together, here on the blog, i was in the hospital with my mother, who had peumonia. when i got back to connecticut i got a stomach bug and a few days later my sweet little girl got a mysterious ailment with high fever and a variety of other symptoms (turned out to be mono). then i was trying to get ready for the holidays and then the holidays.....and blogging just got away from me.
i've been missing the studio a lot...an unusually heavy work load paired with the absence of my usual 4 or 5 GREAT ideas for jewelry constantly rolling around in my head has made for a pretty creatively sparse few months.
a couple of my students asked me to donate some jewelry for a fundraiser for their spring trip to Nicaragua to build houses. i gave them a pair of earrings from the inventory and then another pair that i made specially from my (finally!) successful experience with keum-boo, argentium scribble beads (finally an idea for that super skinny wire i bought by accident) and freshwater pearls. sorry, no time for pics. when i was getting them all packaged up and ready to go i realized that i was out of the care cards i usually print out by hand and then hand-trim to the right size. while i was madly rushing around trying to make some more i realized...HOW DUMB. there are companies out there that specialize in reasonably priced printing!!!!
so i spent a couple hours last night downloading fonts and re-creating my logo from scratch (no original copies available on any of the computers i use) and putting together some moo minicards.
business cards....

care cards that can double as hangtags, if necessary (with room to hand-write the specific materials in each piece of jewelry)....

and earring cards....

the fact that my ideas weren't accomodated by their extensive template options meant that i had to spend a significant amount of time designing JUST how i wanted things layed out in Adobe Illustrator. Then i saved the documents as pdfs and uploaded to moo. time consuming, but now they look just the way i want.....
can't wait for them to get here now!
oh yeah...happy new year....wishing everyone a creative and fulfilling year ahead!

cape cod hospital

2010-12-02T10:09:00.002-05:00

mom has pneumonia. we're on day 2 and she reports that she's not really feeling any better.
this is a picture of me because she would climb out of bed and use her last breath to KILL me if i took a picture of her!

rest in peace...

2010-11-27T23:26:00.002-05:00

sweet hammy.

poor, poor maia.

o, malabrigo, how i love you....

2010-11-27T09:26:00.000-05:00

i enter my local yarn shop with my eyes averted from the far wall, because that's where i know they keep the malabrigo. i spend a lot of time looking at the yarn at the near wall, hoping to find something i love there. i try not to even go in the vicinity of the piles of beautiful malabrigo. looking for something sensible and worsted weight to make a sweater with, i got too close, and i was drawn in.....and this darn skein jumped into my arms. c'mon, it's orange, green and purple...and MUTED....it doesn't get any better than that! i could only afford 1 skein, so this had better make a reasonable sized scarf!

ever so thankful

2010-11-25T10:11:00.001-05:00

people and places

great friends
creative impulses
seeing the sun rise almost every day
professional opportunities
health
happiness...

every day, not just today.

treasure

2010-11-24T07:19:00.003-05:00

i am so lucky to have a friend who knows i love beach stones, and i especially love beach stones with stripes. not only does she know this about me, but she collects them and then has them delivered to me via snail mail (who doesn't love a surprise box in the mailbox?!)!!!
many thanks to my dear, dear friend barb....

also, this

2010-11-16T07:16:00.004-05:00

i spent yesterday rushing pell-mell thru my responsibilities to get an hour in the studio. made 4 awkward-looking tube beads (pics later). the first was the worst, the last-the best...maybe if i make a few more tonight they'll get even better. anyway, then i had some extra time, so i strung these(by "these" i mean my first pieces with my own successful tear-away texture AND my first attempt at using fine silver bezel cups fired into metal clay) together with leopard jasper and carnelian beads.

as usual, i recognize that 6:50 am, in my classroom, with a point-and-shoot camera are not optimal conditions for taking photos of jewelry. it's that-or-nothin' these days.

something new

2010-11-13T23:46:00.000-05:00

it seems that much of my time this "year" (as in school year) is going to dedicated to getting myself accustomed to my new teaching assignment (advanced drawing and painting-portfolio prep).
i have had very little time to get into the studio. very little, but not NONE.
here is a necklace i made with metal clay elements, freshwater pearls, labradorite beads and one of those beautiful handmade glass headpins i got from kelley's bead studio.

maybe in a month or so i will have a few new items to list in my etsy shop.

yahoo, keum-boo!

2010-11-12T17:27:00.001-05:00

finally!!!!
last week i was finally brave enough to cut pieces out of my sheet of 24k gold (NOT aura 22, i must say), put on my leather gloves, crank up the hot plate to about 900 degrees (using the woodburning stove thermometer)...and burnish the heck out of it! and it worked! on these pieces...

but not on this ring...

i must have tried keum-boo on the little squares of this ring 6 or 7 times with aura 22 and 4 times with the sheet gold. 10 attempts is all i have in me. i quit. i will be trying to use liver of sulfer to make the squares look gold instead, because won't that be beautiful with the pietersite stone?!
i suspect that perhaps that particular spot on the ring was not reaching the temperature required to bond the gold to the fine silver.
the funny thing is, i'm glad i finally successfully accomplished the keum-boo (challenge-MET!) but i don't actually like the look of gold on the pieces i make. it just doesn't look right....

long time no post: fall update

2010-11-11T10:50:00.006-05:00

here, finally, are the halloween photos...my sweet girl went as a vampire and my sweet boy went as a skateboarding corpse.

he was much perturbed when i told him he couldn't actually skateboard in the DARK!!!! so he just dressed the part.

here's his sweet face yesterday, on the day that he turned 11!

this is the cake his sister made for him....
the most disturbing part is that he seems to be growing .5 inches by the week...he might be taller than me by christmas!

more glass beauties!

2010-11-01T11:30:00.000-04:00

kelley, from kelley's bead studio strikes again! she was making glass buttons and posting them on her etsy site and i thought....hmmm...none of those matches with any of my yarn....so i dreamed up some color/design combos, asked her about them and shazam! she made them for me!

then, while i was admiring my "reserved for holly" items, i noticed she's been making glass bead headpins...people were snapping them up SECONDS after she posted them! so i "convo"ed her (etsy speak for send a message) and LOOK! my very own headpins!
that kelley, she's amazing!

i really think they need to go with metal clay tube beads....but with some kind of silver bead between the tube and the glass....

stay tuned!

hello, toner copier!

2010-10-29T21:37:00.000-04:00

here are the first REALLY successful tearaways i've made of my designs...so excited to use them! i have tube beads and lentils and wheel shaped beads in mind...

imagine that... a post about jewelry!

2010-10-28T21:39:00.005-04:00

today the pmc guild annual (exceptional work in metal clay - 2010) arrived in my mailbox. i was honored to have 3 pieces selected for publication... (available soon at amazon!)

it made me think about what i might submit for next year's annual...and what i realized is that i currently have NOTHING to submit, although i have recently hit that state where every loose thought in my mind is a new idea for a piece of jewelry. i wake up with ideas, i pull over on the highway to draw ideas in my sketchbook, new ideas pop in my head when i'm cooking dinner....i suppose it just took this bit of a dry spell to get things flowing...
now to find studio time.....

honoring LGBT youth

2010-10-20T12:48:00.002-04:00

wearing purple in memory of the young people who recently committed suicide because of anti-lesbien, gay, bi, transgender bullying.
so proud to be teaching in a high school where MANY students are wearing purple, too.
thank god the world is changing (albeit very slowly).

fascinating....

2010-10-18T21:41:00.003-04:00

i've had 13 pageviews from pakistan this week.

really?!

2010-10-18T21:35:00.000-04:00

i find it appalling that a school (my son's) arranges a 1-day trip to new york city, and it costs...

really?! One hundred and twenty dollars?!
have they not heard that the economy is not in great shape? are they not aware that people are out of work?
listen, i'm all for a trip to nyc, and i know the buses are expensive...but i have deep concerns about how educational the trip is going to be if they're visiting 2 museums (who tries to visit 2 museums in 1 day?! with 11 year olds?!) and lunching at the hard rock cafe.
my suggestion? brown bag lunch and 1 museum.
this smells like more "cool" than school, to me.
so there.

the only silver-colored metal i have in my life right now...

2010-10-14T10:19:00.007-04:00

is stainless steel.
we're doing colored pencil studies of metallic objects in my drawing and painting class.
aren't these spoons beautiful?

some results of the workshop with celie fago

2010-10-14T07:26:00.008-04:00

well, i don't have the pendants done yet. i'm hoping that when fall sports end in november i will have a wee bit more time to get myself into the studio.

in the meantime, i have been carrying a folder of potential tearaway designs around with me and working on them in spare 10 and 15 minute chunks of time. what i learned from celie is that the really successful tearaways have about an equal balance between black and white, so i took my original designs (which were extremely linear-skinny black lines on white background) and started filling with black.

i have quite a few done now...enough that i'm REALLY excited to use them for tearaway BUT the toner copier at my local grocery store got replaced with a digital one. so i have no way to get copies...

in my excitement to get started, i might have placed an order with amazon last night......
come to mama, little toner copier!

columbus day weekend

2010-10-10T18:11:00.005-04:00

got a run on the beach in this morning (gosh, that's hard-i've never actually run on the beach before) and went to skull island for skatepark, minigolf and arcade action. checked out how much sand has eroded since the summer. reading, movies and good company.
aaahhhhhh...
what a beautiful weekend at the cape.
weather was(is!) perfect and mom's doing great.

coveting

2010-10-07T21:36:00.011-04:00

a new rio grande catalog came in the mail today.
it felt a bit like it did way back in the 70's when we'd get a sears catalog in the mail and i'd go through with a big pen, circling everything i wanted!
before i get to the coveting, i have to show what i found just a few pages in... barb's necklace and quote!

when we were at celie's workshop in vermont a couple weeks ago we were talking about how we do things. i spent a long time describing my "technique" for filing out holes in greenware to fit faceted stones. apparently, i just need to get these stone-setting burrs.

i've never been much of a template girl, but i like the ones in the top row.

the gasket on my rubber tumbler barrel is leaking every time i tumble. maybe it's time for this new plastic one...

someday i will learn how to do lampworking...hot, melty glass looks like so much fun to me!

and if i was a lampworker i could justify buying little jars of this colored frit!

here, i see that rio has a TUBE CUTTER. in the tools/equipment catalog they have a tube-cutting jig that holds the tube so you can cut it with a jewelers saw. i am definitely buying one of them (i have a lot of tube that needs cutting!), but don't know which one to go with. any ideas? anyone?

which of these gloves is appropriate for working up close to a hot plate doing keum-boo?

and also, enameling. someday.

i'm looking forward to finding out how much rio will be crediting me for the HEAVY box of uglies i just sent them to recycle. maybe some of these new tools, etc, will be making their ways to my house!

peaceful start to the day....

2010-10-06T21:02:00.004-04:00

4:55am finds me sipping coffee and knitting.

fast forward through lunchmaking, getting dressed and driving and you will find me at 6:55am-setting the mood in the classrooms.

then, everything accelerates and i go skidding through my day like a mad-woman.
i think i wouldn't make it through a week if i didn't allow myself those quiet moments at the beginning of every day.

it's been too long....

2010-09-30T06:26:00.009-04:00

the start of the school year and the challenge of teaching a new class this year has kept me busy and tired and wishing i had something new to post here. nothing much is happening in the studio right now- when i learn how to QUICKLY assess and give feedback to 120 young artists, i'll be back in full force (see you in july!)

i had a free few moments this evening, and i remembered i had this to offer up....the last necklace i assembled before school started up again. the back story to this (the REAL story, actually) is that i went poking around on my friend barb's blog in july and found a new blog posted there...Kelley's Bead Studio. well..i fell in love with the lampwork eggs she was making and put in an order. soon after, i received a box of beautiful glass eggs.

my work table has not had such an inspiring pile of loveliness on it in a long time.

i had been thinking about making some longer necklaces, and using some chain, so i tried it out with a gray and purple and ivory egg. i made a ball-end on 16 ga. fine silver wire with metal clay. i threaded the egg as well as some small beady things i made with metal clay and hung it from a fairly delicate chain. also, labradorite and amethyst beads.

i have lots more ideas about ways to use these eggs, but honestly, i'm conflicted. i love to just LOOK at them on my bench. my own little pile of treasure...

(about the photography-sorry. since i now leave for work in the dark and come home in the dark, the few moments i catch to try to take photographs are generally inappropriately lit!)

unexpected loveliness

2010-09-20T18:26:00.007-04:00

in vermont at celie fago's workshop...early morning and lunchtime meanderings revealed moments of unexpected loveliness.

Polymer Inlay Pendant Workshop

2010-09-20T09:48:00.008-04:00

some photos from a wonderful workshop.....

lovely view from the patio in front of the studio...

working....

great demonstrations....

my premo polymer sheets with tearaway texture, embellished with paint....
more pics to come....

going away

2010-09-20T09:40:00.002-04:00

Is always a little hard for me. And by away I mean away from the family. We prepare for it by loving each other extra hard. Two nights before I left for a 4-day workshop with celie fago in Vermont I had my son’s first middle school open house. When I got home my baby girl was looking meaningfully at the refrigerator…where I saw this…

Inside I found this…

She said “you’re so busy mama, so I made you a sandwich for tomorrow’s lunch. I hope you like ham and honey mustard”.

What a sweet thing, no?

middle school starts monday

2010-08-24T15:37:00.005-04:00

one of the kiddles doesn't mind causing gender confusion with new people she meets, but the other does NOT like being mistaken for her sister!

voila! new middle school haircut! it's hard to tell from the picture, but he loves it!