Look!

Look! This is Jane. She is wearing her favorite red dress.

Look! There is Jane's cat. It's a girl cat. Her name is Blacky. Blacky likes to play with her cat toys.

So does Esme. Look! This is Esme's favorite toy these days, a knobbly, yellow ball, going thunk, thunk, thunk on the wooden floor ... early in the morning, late at night. For months this ball was as uninteresting as the organic cat kibbles I dared to offer the lady, but suddenly it turned up again. It falls down the stairs and gets carried back up.

As soon as I try to take a picture of the fascinating dribbling games I get to witness however, this is what I get instead ... a face with no expression whatsoever and a lonely ball wondering what it did wrong to suddenly be ignored.

"What? Ball? What ball?"

"That's not mine. I have never seen it in my life."

Not for long, though ... (no joke, of about 30 pictures I shot into the darkness this was the only one showing her with her paw actually touching the ball)

And if you want to know what else I am doing beside drawing stick girls and their cats and watching Esme playing with her ball (and listening!), here you go.

I'm taking beads and put them in wire knit tubes. They are not knobbly, but just that addictive (and some of them are already listed, here for example) ;-)

The ninth door - a shimmer on the tree

Ornaments - they come in all colors, materials, shapes. But what do you know about the history of Christmas ornaments? Christmas trees used to be adorned with mostly edible pieces in the beginning. There were sugar figures, apples, nuts, gingerbread and marzipan. Some families still follow that tradition today. Then there came the ornaments made from paper, cardboard or cotton wool, sometimes amazingly intricate designs. In Rothenburg ob der Tauber is a Christmas museum and I really loved the vintage ornaments. In the middle of the 19th century finally the glass ornaments that we still know today were invented. Of course there is a legend to it, telling that a glass-blower couldn't afford to buy the expensive apples and nuts and therefore made his own glass ornaments in 1847. There are facts that speak against that. Whoever may have started it, though, at any rate it's fact that a glass-blower's order book from 1848 exists with an order of six dozen Christmas balls in different sizes. This was in Lauscha, a name that is not at all uncommon to lampworkers. Lauscha, a town in Thuringia, is famous for its glass-making and glass-blowing tradition. Discount store owner F. W. Woolworth imported the glass ornaments into the USA around 1880 where they became a big success as well. The Christmas ball, ornament, bauble or whatever you want to call it is still around today. Around mid-20th century in the Western countries the acrylic kind became more popular, due to the fragility of the glass variety (who doesn't remember the typical sound of a glass ornament hitting the floor and shattering to tiny pieces?), but that doesn't mean glass has disappeared from the tree. Different designs have been developed as well, with a touch of whimsy or a little more modern - and still you recognize the beloved old bauble. Check out these examples from ArtFire artisans - ornaments quilted, painted, with beads, with polymer clay, paper, even from wire or felted. Enjoy!

   

Playing with sapphires

Quite a while ago I bought half a strand of tiny faceted sapphires in all colors of the fall, orange, yellow, greenish, almost everything but blue. At that time I had no idea what to do with them. Every, now and then I took them out and waited for the muse to tell me what she wanted me to use them for.
You know my muse by now. If she is not in the mood she just stays quiet, and if she is she gets violent easy ;-)
So the last time I took a peek at the stones she told me to put them on the wire and then let her take over (she hates the part of stringing the beads first, I guess it's too boring for her). And boy, did she suddenly take over!
I had had a vague idea when I reached out for the marquise shaped closed form of silver wire and I thought about giving it some sparkle, but suddenly there was sparkle all over.

Then I remembered I still had a silver spool knit necklace and although I hadn't been happy with the last pendant I had teamed it with, in this case it gave just the right extra kick.



Now there were still a few sapphires on the wire, so when I took it out a few days later I wondered about something little that I could do with it.
Here's the result - a fine silver wire ball with polka dots. Not quite what you let your children play with. Also I doubt it'll jump very well.


This is a night picture, I hope you can imagine what it will look like in the light ....

Christmas - already??

My goodness, are we really that close to Christmas already? Today my coworker told me she already has bought my present weeks ago (that's what I called prepared!), the stores don't play Christmas music, but ginger bread is offered in abundance and we just put up the Halloween decorations at work yesterday!

But to be true, I am getting ready as well. I ordered some wire a while ago (from my favorite place) and just had to play with colors. I am not done yet!
The idea developed from my ball pendants and the baskets, it grew, the hooks became bigger, I needed more hooks, I played, tried and experimented and suddenly I had a Christmas ornament I was happy with.
This is just a part of all the colors available, I'll keep you up-to-date here when adding new colors or even combinations.



And now they were featured in this great treasury, Ornament time! Yay! Thanks, Cindy!!

Let's have a ball!

Tricked you. I might have a good time, but neither alcohol nor dancing is involved. No flirting, no movies, no night on the town, no girls' night out.
Still my muse and I had, well, not just one, but actually two balls today and I am almost sure they won't be the last ones.
Maybe you remember my wrecking ball? The name comes to you courtesy of Maureen, an SJA friend (by the way, you should check out her blog and shop sometime). These balls are different. The wrecking ball is almost solid. These ones I wanted to make hollow, so I could fill them up, like a candy. Well, not really. A filled candy is meant to be eaten. I love liquid fillings and the sensation on the tongue once the outer wall is breaking. You shouldn't try to eat the ball pendants and I will tell you why.

First I made this one.


It is from black coated copper wire. I tried different things to fill it with, but in the end I decided to take a silver-colored kind of embroidered ribbon because it gave the best contrast.

Now I was eager to try other combinations. As I often do, I reached into the "current project bag" in my nightstand without looking inside and out came the green-golden colored wire. I tried different ribbon and beads for the inside, then I found the last bicone crystals that were left over from my "Green Fairy" necklace. Perfect!


I guess now you know why you shouldn't eat these pendants. Ribbon feels strange on the tongue and is hard to chew and crystals could break your teeth out.
Better stick with wearing them around the neck! ;-)

How to turn a disaster into a pendant

I often say that I like my hook and the wire to lead me to a design. That doesn't mean I never have a plan of what I'm going to do. When I make a setting for a cab, I know it very well. Sometimes things don't work in my favor, though. That's what happened on one of my recent projects.
It started out harmless enough. A cab in the shape of a drop which usually is the easiest to work with for me was supposed to end up in a crochet bezel of fine silver wire, but somehow it didn't want that. It wasn't so much that it kept slipping out, I had that before and I have forced smaller cabs than this one in a bezel, it wasn't so much that the wire wanted to run off the spool and start kinking, it wasn't so much that from too much kinking the wire gets tired and starts breaking easier - it was all of that together! I used a very fine hook which can give fine silver wire even more stress (from my experience). I had already fixed three accidents although it would have been smarter to stop there and then, but it worked out. The wire breaking in the last row was the last straw, though. My patience had been tested long enough. I ripped the bezel off the cab and started squishing it. I would have even jumped up and down on it, who knows, but the tall guy was watching me with that sceptical look he gets when he feels I am overreacting.
Now I had this squished almost solid piece of silver - what to do with it? I got out my hooks and the wire spool I had in reach, light purple and started to make a little silver ball that was held together by purple lines of crochet. They are not straight, they can't be as I just followed the stitches that I could use in the silver.
For an extra color kick I added one of my handwrapped bails in purple.

Actually I am quite happy with it now. Maybe the wire breaking was one of my muse's jokes!! ;-)