A New Beginning, of Sorts

It seems 2014 has suffered the same fate as the mythical October of the previous year.  It just won't exist on this blog.  Somehow, I managed to go the entire year without posting. I thought about it now and then.  I even seriously considered posting several times.  In fact, just before midnight on December 31st, I tried to post something just so that there would be one post for the year... but then my computer had a nervous breakdown in the middle of my attempt, and all was lost.

I suppose it isn't quite the same as the month that I keep mentioning, and then crossing out as a stupid joke, because that month was miserable.  I am not about to claim that all of 2014 was equally miserable... quite the contrary, I had plenty of fun and worthwhile experiences throughout the year. Highs and lows, successes and failures, completed projects and abandoned efforts.  I just... didn't end up posting about any of them.  I think this is largely because I haven't been sure what the purpose of this blog is.  I'm still not sure. And along with all the times I thought about posting, there were times I thought about deleting the whole thing.  I guess until I decide what in blazes I'm doing and what I want to get out of it, I'll just keep posting stuff... because spending a whole year not posting in it certainly didn't help me figure anything out.

Enough dramatic musing! Here's a necklace!  I finished this last month... I think.  I discovered spiral bead crochet quite by accident last year, and after a few false starts just to test the waters, I designed and made a beaded rope to match an opal and brass pendant I had made previously.  I didn't like how the pendant looked on chain or ribbon, and the beaded rope proved to be the perfect solution.

 

You really can't tell, but there is a pattern on it. The antiqued brass colored beads, of which there are actually three different shades, form little curly vines and flowers that are supposed to match the flowers on the pendant.  No, really.  They're there.  It's just that they're rather lost in the random mix of four other colors of beads that are supposed to match the opal.  Yeah... my first original bead crochet design is not entirely successful.  I mean, it turned out really pretty, and it matches the pendant perfectly... but considering the time I spent planning out the pattern and putting all those tiny beads on the thread in exactly the right order... well, we'll just call this one a draw.

 

I've started another one with a not-so-original design (found the pattern online) that has fewer colors, more contrast, and a wider circumference, so we'll see how that one turns out.  Hopefully, the branches and flowers on it will actually be visible!

 

The Curse is Broken

Okay... so that whole "at least one post each month" thing I declared I was trying to do back in May? 

Clearly that didn't work.

In August, all I managed was a post about how wretched August was. Then in September, I whinged about how much worse September was, and tacked on a picture of a great many ties.  October?  There was no October.  I'm simply not going to acknowledge that October even existed.  That isn't to say I didn't finish any projects... because actually, I did.  I meant to post one of them in November (because there was no such thing as October, even though that's when I finished this thing) but every time I thought about it I had too many other things to do to stop and prattle about a necklace on my blog.

So yeah...  my belated post for October November that didn't actually make it onto this blog until early December is a necklace.  There's going to be a LOT of those on here... just a warning.

I thought it up way back in April of 2010, and then started on it that summer, after collecting all the materials  needed.  For some reason though, I didn't finish it until October of this year, even though I knew how and had all the pieces.  I guess it was just taking a long time and I got a little tired of it and needed a break... and then forgot about it.  Which is almost fitting in a way, because of the story that inspired it.  "Stronger Than Time" by Patricia C. Wrede (found in The Book of Enchantments) approaches the Sleeping Beauty fairytale from a different angle than any other I've seen.  What if the prince failed?  What if she really did have to stay in an enchanted death-like sleep for 100 years?  I loved the story, and the author's description (in the back of the book) of a castle ruin that sparked the idea... so when I found some grey marble block beads on one of my supply sites, and discovered some lovely hand-dyed silk ribbon that came in a color called "Briar Rose", this necklace design started coming together in my head.  Pity it took so many years to come to life.

 

The roses are sculpted out of the silk ribbon, which also makes up part of one side of the necklace, mixed in with some chain, and the vines are twisted satin cording.  With tiny folded ribbon thorns.  Er... those were one of the things that made me abandon it for so long, they were not a fun bit to tackle.  Getting the vine to appear to be climbing up the stones was not much fun either.  However I love how it all came together in the end.

 

The random watch bits and jewels are mostly vintage stuff, with a few shiny new Swarovski crystals thrown in.  The bit of Dragon's Breath glass on the gear is my favorite of the jewels.  I love that stuff, it's so... glowy.  I also seem to be developing a fondness for asymmetry in my necklaces.

It's late, and I'm starting to describe things in a less than coherent manner (...glowy?) so I'll post this and get some sleep.  Hopefully not 100 years of it though, I have WAY too much stuff to do to sleep in that long.

 

Hopefully this is not the beginning of a trend...

September was worse than August.

That is all.

Or... it would be if I didn't feel guilty about having such a pathetic post, so here is a picture of phase one of a skirt made of ties that I hope to finish someday.  The ties are currently pinned together in the arrangement shown and stuffed in a corner somewhere in my workroom.

Bleargh

I'm just glad August is over.

And frustrated that August is over, because starting a new month really isn't going to fix anything.  Tomorrow will be pretty much the same as yesterday... only I'll be going to church instead of the post office.

Unfortunately, I have nothing to talk about.  I haven't finished any projects at all this month, or even planned any new ones... at least, none that I can think of at the moment.  August has been utterly wretched.  It has gone by in a listless blur,  with the passage of time marked by alternating bursts of stomach turning stress and soul-weary apathy.

Some good things happened too... I did some tedious but useful work, spent time with friends and family, figured out how to program walk/run intervals on our treadmill and placed my crummy little TV in front of it so I can get going on my half marathon training, and... uh... ate garden fresh tomatoes.

Anyway, I'm determined to have a far more worthwhile September.

Gifts and Curses

First off, we have the gifts, both for friends' birthdays.

One is a Christmas ornament, featuring needle felted miniatures of Rufus and Marlene, the two cute little dogs a friend of mine adopted from a shelter rescue group this year.  It's kinda like those "Baby's First Christmas" ornaments, only... for a birthday.  In July. With doggies.  The dogs are attached to the base with magnets, so they can be removed and placed elsewhere if desired, and because it seemed less messy than gluing them on.  This is my first attempt at needle felting, and believe me, I was not expecting it to go as well as it did.  The base gave me more trouble than the dogs, but we'll get into that later.

The other birthday gift I finished this month is for a friend who loves dinosaurs, and also enjoys Doctor Who, so the obvious thing to do was to make her a snowglobe.  Only, with orange glitter and an erupting volcano... so it's really more of a fireglobe.  It's really hard to photograph a group of miniature things surrounded by stuff that magnifies, distorts, and reflects.  Who would have thought? It was nearly impossible to capture the post-shaking drifting glitter in a picture, so the photos below are unshaken. 

 

Now for the curses.

When I was working on the base for the felted ornament, I was in a hurry and was not being very careful... so I got a big glob of hot glue on my thumb.  A number of rather angry words crossed my mind, but all I actually said was "OW! Ow, ow, ow, owwww!!!!!" Not the most eloquent way to express my feelings, but it was not so much what I said... it was how I said it.  Loudly.  And with vigor.

I hate hot glue.  It's horrible stuff.  When you touch a hot pan or something, you can jerk your hand away and that's the end of it, but you can't escape hot glue.  It clings to you, searing its way into your very soul as you tear across the kitchen toward the sink, yelling and flailing.  Cold water does little to ease the pain as you peel the evil rubbery substance away from your blistered skin, and you may find yourself carrying an ice pack with you for the next couple hours because it's the only way to make it tolerable.  This is particularly annoying if you happen to be meeting someone for dinner at a restaurant.  "Oh, don't mind me, I just like having one hand shrouded in a kitchen towel when I go out. Can I get the chicken wrap?"

The fireglobe was not without its issues either, because it involved resin.  I utterly loathe resin.  Sure, you can do nifty things with it, and I actually have used it on a considerable number of projects, but it almost always goes wrong.  Mostly because I use it for weird things instead of just pouring a bit in a pendant tray or mold like  most people do.  It gets very sticky as it sets up, and then it gets everywhere.  I've had to frantically try to clean up numerous oozes, globs, and overflows, unstick things that weren't supposed to be conjoined, wipe down things that weren't supposed to have resin on them at all, and in the end, try in vain to get it completely off my hands.  Usually I give up and dust my hands with baby powder to get rid of the stickiness. It has often kept me up late fighting with it.  Then the next morning I find it has oozed or stuck some more after I left it, and then hardened that way, or simply not hardened at all.  Yet, I continue to use the stupid stuff...

A Stylin' New Lamp?

I've had a lot of jewelry and graphic design projects on my schedule lately, and this afternoon I needed a break from them.  Now... working on a different project may not seem like much of a break from working on projects, but it is.  Now I feel ready to tackle the troublesome cluster rings and uncooperative artwork with newfound enthusiasm!  Er... well, maybe not so much enthusiasm, but at least I don't feel like throwing stuff.

Plus, I have a new thingamajig! This one has been on the back burner for a long time, ever since I discovered how terrible I am at fixing my hair.  After juggling (not literally... though that would be cool) the dryer, a round brush, and mousse, all while trying to feel what I was doing to the back of my head because I couldn't actually see it, I decided I needed help.  And a new dryer.  Really, mine was a big clunky awkward lump of rubbish.  So I bought a nice little one with the intent of attaching it to the base of an old desk lamp we've had kicking around the house for ages. 

Now, many months later, I've actually put the silly thing together.  It was a little tricky getting the light fixture off, but then screwing the little bracket into the dryer handle was simple.  I've yet to try the thing out, but I'm hoping this self-holding dryer will solve my hair styling problems.

Velociraptor Crate

I'd like to have at least one post each month on here, just to make sure I don't let it slip into the same forgotten state as my previous project blog, but... I let May get away from me.  Luckily, I have pictures of old projects I can toss on here in desperate times!

This was made for a friend's wedding reception back in 2011, which was Jurassic Park themed.  Because who doesn't like dinosaurs?  They needed a fun box for guests to put cards in, and what better way to decorate a box than to make it look like it's meant to contain a man eating reptile?  I looked up some screenshots and a 3D computer rendering of the crate from the opening scene of the movie, sketched out a rather messy diagram on some graph paper to get the measurements right, and then started cutting up some foam board.

Oddly enough, finding reference pictures was the worst part of the process.  The rest was much more interesting, even the tedious gluing of little bits and pieces.  It was seriously frustrating finding anything clear enough to get details and measurements from.  I guess that's to be expected with a fast paced scene that takes place on a misty night in the jungle.  It worked out rather well in the end though.  The sliding door on the front (away from camera) is just a solid piece rather than slotted to match the sides, which is how it was in the movie.  It was just easier that way.

I used candy cane ribbon for the red and white stripes even though it was a little inaccurate. It was just so much easier than painting them, and I'm lazy (see note about sliding door above). The ladders are made out of bendy straws.

Yay, bendy straws! I'm afraid I don't remember how big the thing was.  I guess you can kind of estimate by the floor tiles in the first picture... they're about 18 inches square.

So there's my lazy post about something I actually made a long time ago, which really doesn't make sense since this blog is supposed to be helping me finish more projects NOW.  I have made some things this month... they just weren't terribly interesting and/or I didn't take pictures of them.