fibre friday

wire fibre art pendants

Finally got around the listing these cute and fresh spring pendants, both handcrocheted wire with wool roving embroidery felted into the mesh.

Cute, funky, totally original and available here.

Make It March: wordless wednesday

glitterball pendant in silver artistic wire plus glass seed beads

Make It March

 

In January I recovered from Christmas.

In February I set up a work from home routine and dealt with all the paperwork.

In March I will have to do my taxes, but as some light relief my blog posts here will have the theme "Make It March". I'm planning on creating some new pieces and listing work for sale ie. making stuff, and hopefully making some money to pay the taxes! It's not going to be as intense as Design-A-Day April from two year's ago but I will be posting WIP and finished pieces almost daily.

I already have some inspiration, as you can see above. This beautiful lampworked glass bead fits onto a handknit wire chain. I'm working on a clasp for the chain and testing out its strength in the final design. It's a kind of knitted orbitals design but with the bead strung instead of incorporated into the mesh as in this gold wire bracelet.

fuzzy friday

 

A new ring and a new technique.

Exploring needlefelting with wire crochet - voila! a flower ring (and the loos end of wire will be 'incorporated').

wordless wednesday: speechless with joy

 

 first gallery submission accepted .........

monday "mojo"?

 

Maybe I've got my handcrafting mojo back?

I finished off the wire crochet evening class last week (relax! there's another set coming up after Easter if you're in the Lower Mainland BC) with making wire beads and stringing them up. This (above) was just an example but I think it will soon be part of a whole necklace (something similar to this).

Ah ... inspiration!

wordless wednesday

.... just finished some jury application packs (wish me luck!)

wordless wednesday

path of an electron in orbit or a jumble of freshly tumbled sterling earwires for a custom order?

what can you do out and about?

portable crafting projects completed

Maybe some inspiration for what can be created with just wire, a crochet hook and some pliers?

pattern play

simple shell stitch pattern in 28G copper

I've been itching to try this for some time but as usual time itself has been conspiring against me! Finally I tucked a crochet hook, the 28G copper wire and the pattern details into my portable crafting pouch and set off for the great outdoors.
Feeling slightly rebellious, I left my crochet hook safely hidden as I knitted alongside other local knitters at the Rocky Point Knit in Public session held on Saturday. Yes, I knew they would be OK with me crocheting .... but with wire?
I held off with the wire until most had departed then built a foundation chain and started the pattern. It's really a simple trebles and DC shell pattern built up over a multiple of 3 chains (similar to the pattern rows here). I had tried this pattern earlier on some 'proper' fibre - the 28G copper was perfect to work with though I'm not sure how well the shell pattern comes thru.

buttonless knickers

wire and fibre felted buttons
(alpaca and tinned copper)

Phew! After Sunday's most incredible Got Craft spring opener I have relaxation in mind. Once that's been achieved portable crafting will have to take a bit of a back seat as I reload my online shops and attend to my website. I need to photograph and list my inventory - all of which translates into much computer time!
I also need to road test a new design - wire and fibre buttons (shown above). They look beautiful and will survive the washer/dryer but I need to find out how they function as functioning buttons. For example, since they felt they are unsuitable for certain wools ie. those which are not machine washable, and how stable are they for pushing in and out of a button hole? Normally I test out my fabric-related stuff on ..... knickers since they suffer a lot of abuse (?) and are laundered a lot. None of my knickers have buttons so I'm a little at a loss ......

Stay tuned!

the structured chaos of organised personal time

Last night I switched off the computer, removed myself from the lure of the interwebs and the seduction of twitter ..... and Made Stuff. This follows on from my previous blog post kvetching about not having enough personal time over Spring Break.

I poured a good big goblet of red wine and the creativity flowed(?).

accomplished =

• a new pair of copper earrings

• three flotsam wire and fibre items ready to be felted in today's batch of laundry
• the prototype for a new flotsam wire and fibre design
• set up some portable crafting projects for when I'm out and about
• an inventory check of wire crochet for upcoming craft fairs and B&M's
• prep for the promo items I need to make for the upcoming Got Craft! fair at the beginning of May

Once these housekeeping items were out of the way I then settled down to some real creating, something I've been 'itching' to do for a long time. I've been making wire beads for about a year now and using them in necklaces or as focal points. Recently I've started felting them (my beloved fuzzy balls!) but last night's project was a wee bit different.

I made a graduated set of fine silver wire beads and teamed them with some beautiful white agate to make a "purity" choker-length necklace. For some reason I gravitate towards pure white with the fine silver and the pieces always end up being "purity". Ho hum - makes sense to me I think.