Reboot

Hi, I'm back. I know it's been a while since I've blogged, but I thought I'd try it again.

I've been doing less jewelry these days and more quilting and other textiles, but I'm looking at trying to combine the two (like the spool earrings to the left, which will be up on Etsy as soon as I can get my act together to finish photographing them and writing ad copy!)

I also have a very interesting project "on the docket" involving vintage textiles and resin jewelry. Keep your fingers crossed, it could turn out very cool! (...or not at all...)

Last week I went to the Vermont Quilt Festival (not as a vendor OR an exhibitor) and took some classes. One was awesome, one was great, and one "did not float my boat." However, I learn

ed a few interesting things, one of which will enable me to incorporate my Kumihimo braids into my quilts.

So, I've decided to restart this blog with not only jewelry info, Peggy's status, and my quilting obsession (which seems to take over everything), but with pretty much anything that goes on around here.

So I'll just leave this current note with a picture of the awesome Libby Lehman's quilt (or at least a part of it since I couldn't photograph the whole thing since someone else was standing in front of it drooling, too.)

No Resolution

I know better than to make New Year's Resolutions.

I seldom remember them after a couple of months, and those that I do remember, and keep, end up better than I SHOULDN'T have kept them.

For instance, several years ago, I listed all my unfinished quilting projects and told myself that if I didn't finish any of the projects on the list, I couldn't start a new one...so I ended up spending the entire year NOT quilting.

This year, however, I'm trying a new strategy. I do have a list of unfinished projects (not just quilting, but other needlework, and knitting.) I took the list and whittled it down to five ACTIVE projects.

These current projects are things that are "no brainers" to work on. I've left them out and put everything else away, so if I'm sitting by the TV with my hands idle, I can pick up the blue sock I'm finishing, or work on the beaded braid on the marudai. No pressure. No deadline.

I'll work on them until I'm done (or I'm bored with them), a little at a time, and either finish them or put them away and "replace" them with something else from the list.

And I don't have to commit a heavy dose of time to any one. For the Hexagon Stars quilt, I set up one day's worth of quilting (about 15 minutes of actual work time) in advance. I sew 12 half-hexagons to 12 small triangles for for 12 larger triangles. I take 4 od these triangles and sew them in pairs to form units, and finally, I sew a third triangle onto the triangle pairs to finish a half hexagon star. Then, I press them, set them up for the next day, and cut new half-hexagons and small triangles to pile up for the next day. Then move on to something else

I plan to have three active quilting projects, one knitting project (until it's done), and one jewelry project (probably two when then knitting is done.)

I'm also working on the "bit by bit" strategy for my reading. I have found that I've been reading several books and once and not finishing them. I have a TON on books on my wall that I've started, but not finished. Now I have a box of books that I plan to read and then decide to keep or give away, and I'm reading them ONE AT A TIME.

It's not a resolution, but we'll see how long I can keep it up.

Shiny, Quilty Jewelry

As you may have noticed from the blog, I've been working on quilting much more than I've been working on jewelry.

Part of this is due to the fact that I've been participating in my local quilt guild as web manager, but also part of it is due to the feeling that I am actually moving forward on many of my projects.

Have no fear, however! No matter how many projects I finish, I find I seem to start almost as many, so the project list doesn't get any shorter (although it does have different projects.)

This quilt is one of my "new-ish" quilting projects. It came from our box block exchange project last year. My only criteria for fabric choice was "no blue", because, silly-ly enough, I wanted a challenge in putting it together. Finally I decided on this chevron sashing, but is it too much? Does it distract from the blocks, or does it unify the whole thing? Anyone who has an opinion on it, please let me know!

I got a bit of a shock last week went one of my most consistent customers said "of course, I'll be up to look at the new jewelry at Thanksgiving."

And, of course, while there's some, there's not as much as I'd like, so I've been working on some new stuff (although probably not for her! Luckily, she didn't get to see the new Spring stuff when we did our fundraiser, so even though we've been slow at creating new pieces over the summer, there are pieces I'm sure she'll like.)

However, May 2010, my quilt guild is having a show, and they're allowing members to sell stuff on consignment. Well, I could never make my living out of quilting (I'm waaaaay too slow!) but I thought I'd develop some quilty jewelry. These will be pendants when they grow up, and they'll be put on kumihimo necklaces. I have some other ideas for earrings that will be so cute, I think I'll save them until after New Years.

I'm hoping with a couple of good nights sleep and some productive days, I should be able to start the photography for the web site and for the etsy shop both of which have suffered from my pre-occupation with quilting.

So sayonara for now!

Scarcely No. 8 and 20 gauge Kumi

After a summer of trying to get quilting projects done, I decided to start working on my kumi projects again.  

As I may have noted before, started out I using cotton embroidery floss to make most of my braids.  However, I have collected several nice colors of silk and some lovely bamboo threads, so I thought I'd gear up to work with them by switching to perle cotton.

Now, I first worked with perle cotton when I moved to the marudai, and I didn't like it because it had a twist.   However, it turns out that THAT was no. 5 perle. After a couple people on the kumi2 mailinglist recommended No. 8 (which, like larger numbers of wire, is thinner), I thought I'd try that. It is still twisted, but you can use multiple threads to give an appearance similar to kumihimo silk (although not nearly as thin as that!)

The fun thing is that compared to embroidery floss, No. 8 perle works up fast because the scale is so much larger. When I talk about 3-4 strands of embroidery floss, I mean, you take the 6-strand length apart and use 4 of of those...it's TEENSY!  On the other hand, four strands of No. 8 perle cotton I can see without my glasses, thus making any problems with the braid really obvious early on.

The big problem for me about No. 8, at least in my neck of the woods, is that it seems to come in white, ecru, off-white, eggshell, light tan, light ecru... well, you get it, not many colors at all.   When I came across some in actually non-white colors unexpectedly, I bought all I could, which included red, blue and black (and white, but no ecru :>)

But other than playing with No. 8 perle (which someone described as "shimmery" but I didn't get that effect) I started noodling around with some 20 gauge copper wire.

I've wanted to play with kumi and wire, but I had so many more projects I wanted to try first that I never actually gave it a shot. When I found some pre-cut  scrap wire, I decided to try a very simple 4 strand braid.

Unbeknownst to me (at that point), very thin wire is recommended for kumi with wire, and then it behaves a bit like thread. Using a bigger wire, means that I did not need the Marudai OR the disk/plate. This is okay if you're only using 4 strands, but I think I'd like some references if I work with more strands.

For my next experiment, I have cut 8 strands 22g colored copper wire, but I still need to contemplate how to kumi without the disk or marudai but still with some reference.

More later!

Life Gets You When You Can Least Handle It

Well, I apologise for not keeping up my blog. It's been more effort to paint my life in a positive light that I could handle for a while. Yes, it's true. Life has been bad...and not-so-good.

One to of the "bad" spots is the death of my Aunt Madge. She was who I always wished I could grow up to be. Smart, compassionate, full of faith and energy, world-traveller. She was who my family always turned to when we felt overwhelmed with medical stuff since she had been a career Navy nurse. She died of cancer last month.

Towards the end I was trying to write her every week since the cancer was pressing on her diaphragm and it made talking on the phone difficult. So even though *I* wanted to hear *her*, it was all I could do to make sure she had something not depressing to think about come in the mail every week or so. I felt helpless, and in the end, I knew that was all I could do, so I kept writing.

There, not here.

I lost hours on my PCA job, so even though the PCAs in MA got a raise, it translated to a wage cut for me. I've had a hard time cutting my living expenses (there's literally nothing left to cut), so I tried to throw myself into cutting other stuff from my life.

The good part of that is that I've been able to finish a bunch of quilting projects, like the Jane Stickle quilt with the double sized blocks called "Bright New Day" (at the top of the post), the Arrowhead Quilt (which ended up as a surprise gift for my brother, and Pasta e Faglioli (below, which went to my mother.)

Oh course, more bad news is that now Blue Cross/Blue Shield has raised my monthly premium, I have to apply to the state to get coverage...I simply cannot find $60 more per month to pay them.

This means, of course, officially admitting that I am poor, a blow to my ego. However, the bright spot is that my memory is so bad that I suspect I will soon forget that I am poor again and go on as before, scrimping and saving and thinking fond thoughts of solidarity with people living through the Great Depression.

Just so you don't think I have been one huge quivering mass of pitiful these past six months, one of the good things that has happened is that I have taken over my guild's web site (a good challenge always makes me feel less pathetic...or should I say apathetic.)  I spent the summer redesigning and recoding it, and it's been up at full tilt for the past month or so. I moved it from its old host to one with more "bells and whistles" so, I hope I can implement some of those starting in the new year.

As for the jewelry, we did well on our Spring Sale, but I haven't been able to put my mind and hands together to create much new stuff. I am hoping to photograph some of the pieces I made just before and after the Spring Sale and put them on our site and on etsy, but my creativity in photographing the pieces has been languishing. I have a couple of nice copper kumihimo bracelets, and a new assortment of silk and ribbon kumihimo necklaces, but nothing earth-shattering.

So, that's my last half-year. I will try and update my blog more often, but the problem with Depression is that Prozac really only takes the edges off, and sometimes you find yourself just hiding under the covers for the day.

Bit by Bit

I am overwhelmed.

Late last month (and early this one), I made a list of all the things I must (actually should) do ASAP. You know, projects I've started that I want to finish, web sites that I'm supposed to maintain that have not been touched in years...that sort of thing.

I feel like I have no energy, no space and no time to do what needs to be done.

Every time I contemplate that list, I feel like taking a nap and not waking up until the next day.

So, I have developed a strategy for dealing with the (at least half dozen) projects which need attention: work on them bit by bit, break them down into manageable pieces.

For instance, I haven't updated my "home" web site since 2005! Up until that point, I had been trying to put everything I was into and all my favorite links, etc on that site. 

It had the oldest version of the Piece by Piece site as my jewelry page, with pieces long since sold or taken apart and remade. It had my flying page, when I haven't been able to afford to fly in over 8 years. It had links to projects from classes I took over 5 years ago.  

Needless to day, it needed to be cleaned up!

What prompted my contemplation of my sites is that I'm looking for a place to post the new quilt block directions which I have decided to write once a month.

My first thought was to post them on my Dear Jane site, but I have been planning on reorganizing and recoding that site longer than my home site and it's in much worse shape (although probably a better place for handling alot of web traffic.)

Then, there's the Rafael Sabatini site, updated every January to a greater or lesser extent.

Then, there's the several dozen quilt projects, jewelry projects, chores, etc that need to get done.

The only way I can do them, I have found is to schedule myself to work on 5 Rafael Sabatini pages per day, 3 Dear Jane pages per day, 5 quilt blocks per day, 3 chores per day, etc. If I get MORE than that done, great, but that's the minimum.

It seems to be working for now, though the results are mixed.  My home site is mostly cleaned up (except for my resume.) And I have come up with new templates for Dear Jane and the parts of Sabatini that were not redesigned last year.

I finished my sister's half of the DNA project except for one final border and the embroidery.

I have time to work on my kumihimo (although not as much as before, since I'm scheduling time to work on these other projects as well) and my jewelry, which is good since we're looking at scheduling a jewelry sale/fund raiser for Peg in the spring.

And I can now actually think of things like SCHEDULING and ORGANIZING the jewelry fundraiser (and, oh joy, gathering and updating things for my taxes) without also looking longingly for the bottle of No-Doz.

Another Catch-up Post

Well, it's been a while and I've been kumi-ing my little heart out (is that a word?)

I had been meaning to write, but I've been busy.  Well, I thought I was busy until I tried to remember exactly what I have been doing in the month and a half since I've worked on the blog and couldn't remember having done anything (well, grocery shopping, etc doesn't really count, does it?)

One project was to scan some slides a relative of my friend Claudy had left her. I gather they travelled extensively after WWII until they died because there were ALOT of slides from many different places like Spain, England, Mexico, Switzerland.

I put the slides on the scanner about 20 at a time and put my light table over them, light on, to scan them.  Then I cropped and saved them. I supposed I could have fiddled with Photoshop on some of them, but Claudy said not to bother, she'd go through them and  use the ones she wanted.

Another thing I've been doing more of is quilting.  

I joined the Chelmsford Quilt Guild in the Fall and have been trying to do their block of the month for exchange and another block exchange in boxes. Since we're supposed to been surprized at the results, I'm not going to post either of the blocks I've done for that so that if the ladies whose boxes I've done read this (however unlikely) they won't see their squares until the box exchange is done.

This past meeting (about a week ago) was the annual UFO Auction, where people bring their UnFinished Objects (or projects) and everyone else gets a crack at them.  Mostly, it was fabric. I brought in about 4 projects (small ones I knew I was never going to work on again), but came home with a bunch of fabric (and two books.)

I guess my resolution to not buy anyone else's project wavered...although, technically, I didn't. The fabrics I bought were lengths between 2-4 yards, which I hope to use for backing to finish some of the UFOs I kept (like the Feathered Star to the left...still unfinished.)

One bright spot in these past couple of weeks, my uncle "shared the wealth" a bit with everyone and send me a check telling me to splurge a little. I did. A very little.  Most of the money I used to pay off some of my debt, but I bought a beautiful maple Maru Dai from The Braider's Hand. I've only had it about a week, but I've done two braids on it, and it's very nice.

October's September Update

Well, you know and I know I planned to write more in September after catching you up with the previous month, but it didn't happen.

What did happen was our apartment got flooded just about Brimfield (like the night after Katie, Joe and I came back...Katie was sleeping on my futon in the living room!) so I didn't get to go to New York and see Makiko Tada (and shop at all those legendarily wonderful suppliers like Metalliferous.) Actually, I didn't even get to do the research to plot on WHERE to go.

*sigh* 

With the help of Jo Ann and Shelley (and Katie, before she had to return to NYC), we carted boxes and boxes of books, so the property maintenance guys could move our bookcases so they could replace our under-carpet padding so we wouldn't have  mold.

Unfortunately, they only did half of the front room and the hallway. No one thought to check Peggy's room, so the second half of the month was spent cleaning her room up (which is now mold-free, but still exceedingly cluttered) and going through our belongings, 'cause, yes, I finally admit, I've got too much stuff.

You heard it here first.

We've gone through the storage bin and gotten rid of 9 plastic bins of 

clothes.  Who have I been kidding? Am I ever going to wear those suit jackets and skirts ever again? It was hard, but I kept only 2 out of 9 jackets, and a similar ratio of skirts.

Peggy was not as brutal, but she did trim her clothing in storage by at least a third.  And I can now say that I know what is in each and every box in that unit. (AND, they're all labelled this time!)

Other than that, I've been studiously trying to avoid the political discussions (Does it bother anyone else that the news/broadcast people seem to be treating it like professional sports? Who's ahead? Who "won" the debates? What "new revelation" about their personal lives has been planted as a story on Entertainment Tonight?  Do I really care?)

AND, I've been working on my kumihimo.  I'm up to 16 strand braids. I hope to have new  photographs up on the Piece by Piece web site, and new product on etsy. I've shot some earrings outside (see above), but I have to do close ups and write copy before, so it may be a bit.

A New Useless Skill?

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I wish I could say I had been out making money, but the truth is, I have been out spending it.

Since the last post, I have been to three bead shows and Brimfield.

Brimfield in July, and, apparently, when the economy is bad, is full of things you want and need, and people are really motivated to deal.  In fact, I, who am the world's worst negotiator, snagged a couple of deals of which I am extremely proud. 

The first of which was a large Amethyst Moderntone Tumbler, which I got for less than $20. The truth is, I've never seen the tumblers, large or small in Amethyst, and the Blue ones go for big bucks.

I bought several other cigar boxes (I now I have enough that if anyone wants me to make them jewelry showcases or jewelry boxes, I can.) I am also looking for a new source since I see this one only three times a year at Brimfield.

I also went to Intergem, the day before Brimfield.  The huge mistake in this was that Intergem is massive (held in a convention center) and they had the tent "extension."  Too much walking for someone who would be walking the next day as well.

But, I got some great deals there, too. These lead-free multistrand bead separators (or whatever they're called) have come in really handy. They've inspired me to try to do more bracelets than just the Edwardian-inspired mesh that I designed in May. This one, the first, seems almost Zuni-inspired.

The other two bead shows were last weekend in Concord and Nashua. They were interesting, too, and I finally broke down and bought a kumihimo disk to learn Japanese braiding. I got off to a bang of a start (see the first image), because I just knew they'd be a great addition to our jewelry.

Unfortunately, I doubt that the casual viewer will even notice that the necklaces are hand-braided. It's fun, but I don't know if it enhances the jewelry enough to make it worth the effort.

Oh well, until I lose interest in it, I have another "useless" skill and another aspect of my "Japanophile" side: I guess anime really is a "gateway drug."