Organizing

I'm not a natural organizer. I have storage boxes, but items tend to mysteriously move to temporary boxes, to drawers, to my nightstand - it is normal to have wire spools on your nightstand, isn't it? - my "working box" and to several parallel universes, no doubt.

When I started embroidery, I kept my newly acquired stash in the envelopes and/or boxes it arrived in because I had no idea yet what to put where and how.
Luckily the Royal School of Needlework sends their kits in big boxes with compartments!

So after I had finished my first kit, the box was empty and ready to get filled up with all my stash.
I really hadn't expected that the floss lot I had bought would take up that much space, I just managed to fit it in and this is about three or four layers high.
For now, there's not much left that there wasn't space for, and once I will have finished my second kit, another box will be waiting to get filled up.

Can someone help me do the same with my wires now? ;-)

Lavender

Of course jewelry had been on my list since I tried my hand at hand embroidery for the first time. I was aware that it would be different from working on a larger project because the space is really limited, but when I got my first bezels, I found it was even more difficult to come up with a design of my own that fit the space.

I began with a small silk shading flower, but too many petals meant too much width.
Next I started a little fern, but I'm not sure about that one yet, it's a bit boring and I won't be able to fit in much more, so it's still in the stars if it's going to be finished.

Then I stumbled upon a picture of lavender. Long stalks with loads of small blossoms sounded perfect and there were at least three kinds of purple in my floss stash (which I only organized today asking myself why on Earth I thought I needed that floss lot, but I sure have a lot of green now - ferns for everyone! ;-)).

I really had fun and got wild with French knots (which I already love) and bullion knots (which I don't love that much yet, but think that's a matter of practice), added some brown specks here and there, and then it just needed a bit of a color pop on this neutral background - a bee, what else?

I think it's cute for a first own little design and am definitely looking forward to play some more.

Silk shading flower

Silk shading, thread painting, needle painting - these are all different names for one embroidery technique.
I had seen it more than once before and thought it was really beautiful, but it had never been on my want list.
When I decided I really wanted to give embroidery a try, it was because I had totally been hooked by gorgeous goldwork which is probably not too surprising for a jewelry maker.
I had no high expectations about my own skills, so it took me very long to jump into the cold water, but I finally ordered my favorite kit by Becky Hogg - the little fox (if you haven't seen the blog post, it's here). It sure challenged me and even more my hands, but much to my own surprise it didn't put me off embroidering.
Actually I had just ordered the kit and already knew I would treat myself to the self-paced online course "Introduction to Goldwork" offered by the Royal School of Needlework eventually and bookmarked it, but when I was ready to purchase it, it was not available due to supply shortage and I had to pick another course.
There are 16 courses and I really had a hard time choosing one that I felt confident enough about. In the end I chose silk shading, which I wasn't confident about at all, because I liked the design best (although I was aware I might non like the look of mine that much).

Next I got myself a free-hand embroidery stand and some bias band to bind my hoop.
When the RSN parcel arrived, however, I was very reluctant about starting the kit. I had watched the first video a few times already and had even started to do some sampling for practice. The kit looked so much more intidimating to me, though. What had I been thinking?

It took me two months to complete this project. Seven weeks were dedicated to three petals and the leaf - I needed a lot of long breaks - and in the last week I had become more comfortable with the process and finished the last five petals, the stem and center.

I learned a few things during it, not all of them embroidery technique related.

1. While Gundel is usually fine to watch from afar, der Dekan is determined to get to the embroidery floss and he would gladly try to grab the thread I'm working with at the moment and pull (don't ask how I know). Thankfully he calmed down eventually and after discussing his wishes and mine whenever I started a session ("No! No! You can't have it, Dekan. Don't even think about ... Dekan, go away, I'm holding a needle! Stop that! You don't want to go the vet, do you?"), he usually was distracted by a snack and then went to wreak havoc elsewhere or take a nap.

2. I have absolutely no mind for directions and although I absolutely understood the stitch and color diagrams in theory, I had problems to translate that to my stitching. To be honest, I think it has a lot to do with my being so used to working without a plan (except in bead looming) and follow my guts rather than my head. Which wasn't bad for most of it, but I didn't like my second petal much, and to save the look I made the last petal bigger than designed before then ripping out the unloved petal after all.
Actually I'm fine with that, but it's also typical for me - drawing outside the lines ;-)

3. I like finishing embroidery, but I still haven't put up my fox and I'm completely clueless how to frame the flower.

4. I'm as hard on my embroidery needles as on my beading needles.

5. "You're gonna need a bigger boat ... erm, embroidery hoop." Actually I'm going to need more hoop sizes, I think, but I'm trying not to go nuts now and buy supplies like crazy, as tempting as that thought is, also ...

5.1. ... I hate Brexit because so many of the supplies are much more readily available in the UK, but custom fees and taxes add up quite quickly. Yes, it is a very selfish reason.

6. Bullion knots and I are not good friends yet, but I love French knots, both seeing and stitching them, in fact that was one of the first stitches I consciously noticed when seeing embroidery pieces.

6. I really loved the self-paced course. I watched the videos in full more than once and sometimes I just went to a spot to remind me of something. Kate Barlow is a wonderful tutor who explains and shows everything very clearly.
I often say I'm not good with tutorials as I'm too impatient and that's true, so it was a bit of a surprise for me that I pulled this through and I also credit Kate's tutoring for that.

There is probably more, but you have suffered enough already, so I'm finally going to show you my flower and not point out the flaws because I'm really happy with it!

Labradorite and amethyst

About two months ago I blogged about my "jewelry burnout" and what I did instead. So far things haven't changed much. I am struggling my way through my second embroidery kit, but only touched beads once during the last month to loom a custom bracelet.

Are there sounds you like in crafting? I love the tiny pop in bead looming when pushing the beads into the space between the warps (not just the sound, but also the way it feels) and I love the sound of a needle and thread going through bead embroidery foundation - so much that I started missing them more than actually making jewelry. They have something deeply satisfying to me.
I know, it's really weird, isn't it?
However, that is what finally did the trick and made me grab a labradorite cabochon from my stash without any plan whatsoever. Just glueing the cab onto the foundation felt like a good start, even if der Dekan tried to steal the cap of the glue tube once again.

I picked some bead colors for the bezel that I thought would work well with the colors of the labradorite, a grey shimmering kind of golden, metallic silver, and - maybe a bit surprising - a kind of green-golden metallic.
After doing the bezel, which was the easy part, I was completely lost.
I would have wanted to make some unusual, playful, but all I could think of was quite classic and, to me, not very imaginative and a bit boring.
In the end, I just succumbed to the idea of a classic bead embroidery pendant. I still have some lovely frosted amethyst in my stash from years ago which actually was another color working beautifully with the stone, but this edging looked a little bland to me, so I added another layer to it with tiny silver "rays".

This pendant developed over a few days which is pretty slow for me, but the heat and a hurting thumb joint didn't help and there were quite a few breaks.
So I'm still not sure if it has been enough to give me a good kick in the butt, so I will finally be tackling my list of ideas again (without forgetting about my embroidery which came to a stop due to heat and a mistake which means there will have to be some ripping out, argh). We will see, I guess ;-)

The first nest

There are some things you can't learn early enough and among those is how to choose a comfortable spot for hanging out - literally in this case.

Melisande and Schwabhild, the new arrivals in the farmyard, were lucky to have a mother and aunts who are experienced in that sort of thing and found the perfect nests for the girls from where they don't just have a great view, but in which they can also swing!
You can tell from their wide eyes that there is truly a lot to see there.
So many new experiences for a pair of little chicks 💕

10 on the 10th - Summer memories

This is not something I usually do because I'm just not very good at it, but when I read that Marsha from Marsha in the Middle chose the topic "Special Summer Memories" for "10 on the 10th", I figured I would be able to do a bit of nostalgia.

Sooo, let's try this. There won't be any particular order, I'll just put the memories down as they come to mind.

1. The first one coming to mind is the birthday of my best friend when we were kids. Our birthdays are about a week apart, mine end of June, hers beginning of July. She used to have around ten or so kids at her birthday parties and one of our favorite games was "vampire" which was basically a variation of hide and seek, but the "victims" were put into time out for a certain period of time in a small storage room on the first floor. That wasn't as bad as it may sound because they had a little basket on a string which they let down through the window to have it filled with cherries from the garden by those who hadn't been caught yet (they were so good!). We were very proud of that game idea ;-)

2. This one also has to do with birthdays and fruit - my birthday and strawberries. When I was a kid, there were a few times (probably not as many as I seem to remember because that's how those things go) when my grandfather would go buy strawberries with me and my grandmother made a strawberry pie with them for my birthday.
This year a family member brought me some strawberry pie for my birthday and the memory popped up once again.

3. While we are at birthday memories, here's another one. I have been a fan of Jane Goodall ever since I got one of her books as a gift when I was about 12. She's absolutely amazing and of course her portrait is on my fan wall.
Some years ago, there was an evening with her in Munich which is about 125 miles from here. A friend, knowing how much I admire her, but also that it would have been hard for me to organize this by myself, turned up with tickets and an overnight room reservation.
It was truly an experience to remember, hearing Jane Goodall talk, then spending the rest of the evening in the small self-service bar at the hotel talking to some other guests and driving home the next day not via "Autobahn", but through little towns and villages, stopping here and there like at a field full of poppies.

4. There's nothing like a sponteanous field trip, don't you think?
There is one I remember especially well. A friend called me very early in the morning asking if I wanted to come on a quick trip to the source of the small river Lauter to hang our feet into the water. It was a very hot August that year, the night had been very humid, and the idea sounded great.
The Lauter source is a small spring surrounded by nature. You walk there from the church, through the woods, birds singing. There are only a few houses and a historical inn and except for a couple taking a quick peek, we were all alone, talking, laughing, enjoying the water.
Then all hell broke loose, just rain luckily, no thunderstorm. We are both no runners, but it really didn't make a difference because we were soaked through to the skin within seconds, anyway. We laughed all the way back to the car (and luckily my friend had extra tees in the car which was better than nothing).

5. This memory is as stereotypical as it can be. When I was 13, I was invited to stay with an aunt (actually she was probably more some kind of distant cousin) for a few weeks during summer vacation. As luck would have it, a cousin of mine (we had the same great-grandparents on one side) lived in the same little town. He was my age and so were his friends. My aunt said I could use her old bike, and from then on, we were out there all day and came home in the evening very hungry and full of stories what we had done. As the only girl I even got an honorary nickname and for a while we even sent one another letters after the vacations were over.
Had we been looking for a body instead of mushrooms, it would very much have been "Stand By Me".

No pictures exist of our adventures, so my needle felt/embroidery mushroom will have to do.

6. My last trip in 2011 was to Cambridge in the UK. I loved it. I loved the town, the museums, the atmosphere, I didn't even mind the other tourists. The weather was a perfect mix of sun and rain. In the afternoon we just sat in the lounge for a while and had a cup of tea while reading.
The special memory has to do with breakfast, though. We tourists love our breakfast and this one had so many choices, we could have eaten all day. What was the biggest fun about it, however, was that they didn't have an ordinary toaster back then, but what I called - for lack of a better word - a "toaster tunnel". You put your toast on the conveyor belt which ran it through the tunnel, and at the end - voilà, nice browned toast. I was actually amazed how well it worked and could have just made toast all day. I know, I'm such a child.
The hotel got a complete makeover in 2018, though, so that huge breakfast room has changed a lot, it seems, and the toast tunnel is gone :-(
Now I wish I had taken a picture of it.

7. Although I'm not a summer person, I have to admit that sitting outside somewhere quiet in a warm summer night can be wonderful. Being next to a body of water is not the worst thing if it's hot. For me, that was the only reason to join the ex and family members for night fishing although I am a vegetarian and don't fish (not that chances of catching fish were very high where we went, anyway).
A comfy chair, a cooler bag full of goodies, and a book for the evening when there was still light - and once it got dark, just listening to the rustling in the bushes and trees behind us (joking that it was bears when it was probably hedgehogs and other small animals), the waves in front of us and the muffled curses of the men when there was another missed bite, and relaxing until it was time to get ourselves home again.

Sorry, we never took pictures, so you have to make do with one of my handmade fishes ;-)

8. July 27, 2018 was the day of the longest total lunar eclipse of the 21st century, and a lot of people were really excited to see that one, including my friend and I.
We drove around for a while to look for a good spot and finally ended up on the "Aasrücken" (literally "carrion back", I have no idea why the vantage point near our local mountain, the Hohenstaufen, has that name) in a farmer's almost harvested field (he was still working on it at the far end) with hundreds of other people. Some had huge telescopes and loads of photo equipment, others set up rich picknicks for the whole family. Although it got rather cool eventually, my friend and I were among the last few who sat it out until the very end and didn't regret it. It was rather magical.
Again, no pictures, but here's a time lapse video (not from our area, though).



9. Fleamarkets are not restricted to summer, I know, but this memory is about a very special June fleamarket. One reason it was special was that my American friend was there for a visit. We had met her via Steiff and no matter which country, a fleamarket had always been a favorite activity of us. This particular one was a city fleamarket that only took place once a year and it spread out all over city center.
We usually did one round and then sat down somewhere for a drink and some food, then did another round.
I was always slow at fleamarkets and usually relied on the "hunting master" to find the good stuff, but this time it was my friend who called me to tell me she had found a Barbie case with contents and she thought it was old.
One glance at the case and the two dolls in wedding outfits and I asked for the price without even knowing what else was in it. The price was so incredible that I almost fell over. All I could say "Sold, just let me get to the bank." as I had very little money on me. I was very glad the bank was nearby and the lady put the case under the table because others had shown visible interest when I had looked at it.
Only when we took our usual break, I allowed myself to take a closer look. While I had been looking through children's books, my friend had found a real little treasure for me. I still feel as excited now when I look at those finds in my collection, for example this sweet pink and black outfit called "Atelierfest".

10. This isn't really just one special memory, but more of a mix of all the summers my best friend and I hung out in the woods and had "adventures" - I think making them up ourselves doesn't take away from us having a lot of fun being out there with the bikes, picking wild flowers, pretending to be in a jungle, solving cases or re-enacting our favorite books.
I'm not saying these were better times in general, but we had some great times which I'm looking back on fondly.

If you really made it down to here, all I can say is thank you and you definitely deserve to get yourself a stiff drink and/or some chocolate now ;-)
My summer memories may not have been what you expected, but I sure had fun remembering all of them.
Happy Summer everyone!

I made an octopus!

You may want to say that you already know that I made an octopus ... or two or five or ten ... after all I had shown a collage of them in 2019 in this long post. Of course I didn't stop making them after this, but the wire had been on the back burner for a while now because new techniques had to be explored which also happened to be easier on my hands than the wire most of the time.

That doesn't mean the wire has stopped calling me, though, so when I was asked to make a custom octopus pendant, I couldn't say no.
I love that none of them comes out the same. Tentacles with one or two wires, with beads or without beads, the head with a cab or without, and best of all - I never know myself what they will look like in the end. Making the tentacles go wild is really the most fun about this. It may seem they are random, but they are not.
The first one starts out randomly, but the next ones are based on it, and often I go back to fiddling on the first again, too.
I like to think the octopus head is telling me what to do ;-)

For this one, a cab was required and the choice was a lovely moss agate cab.
I used moss agate on a custom order before, only in that case the stone was large and dark green and not just the size requirements for the pendant were very specific, I also had to use exactly 23 moss agate beads in the two-wired tentacles which weren't supposed to spread out, all of which made the job a bit of a puzzle.

This time, I was allowed to go wild as long as I added enough moss agate beads to the tentacles and achieved a certain length, and I enjoyed it immensely.
So this is the latest addition to my little octopus family (and I'm already hatching new ideas in my head ;-)).