Oldies but Goodies - Cats and dogs

Due to vacation I haven't been blogging for two weeks. What topic would be better to come back with than the Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge and on top with something I love so much - animals, in particular cats and dogs.
You have noticed I am a cat person, right? ;-)
I think it would be very hard for me to deny that convincingly.

Now let's jump right in and have a look at what the talented members of JAC have to offer this week.

1 Salara Jewelry
2 Jewelry Art by Dawn
3 The Crafty Chimp
4 MC Stoneworks
5 Cat's Wire
6 Violetmoon's Corner

Tackle that stash - Digging into those seed beads!

It's my sister's fault or maybe it's the fault of the girls at her workplace.
Some of them have found the way to beading. In a future post I will show you a few of their pieces. When sis had the idea that my Francie had to wear a daisy chain headband, I had to look up the stitch. I passed it on to her, she passed it on to the girls and they started making daisy chains.
When I made Herringbone bracelets and necklaces with Twin Beads to use up some of my stash, I passed it on to her, she passed it on to the girls - and more, but as I said already that will be topic of another post - and they made Twin Bead bracelets.

I guess it was a natural consequence that we had to branch out. Me and off loom stitching? Unbelievable.
While my sister explored the St. Petersburg stitch, I started with RAW, the right angle weave.
I used crystals, seed beads, cube beads and varied the number of beads between my accent beads.

Together with the Daydreamer rope bangles after a design by Jill Wiseman I used up tons of my Czech seed bead stash.
The bangles are great for stacking in these bright colors, by the way!

What do you think which stitch I should be trying to learn next?

P.S. The first bracelet is in my DaWanda shop, the others are still waiting for their photoshoot.

Oldies but Goodies - Jade

When you think of jade, you probably think green and you may think of carvings.
There is so much more behind it, though. Unfortunately I am really late with today's post already as I haven't had the chance of being much on the computer the last few days, so I have to keep it short.

Talking of jade we can mean two different minerals, nephrite or jadeite.
Jade comes in different colors, from yellow, blue, black, red to violet tones. Be careful, however. Dyed jade has been a thing for hundreds of years. It can be enhanced, but it's also possible that you get a stone which is not jade at all, but prehnite or quartz for example.
If you want to read a little more about this stone and its symbolic meaning, you can find an article here.

Not everyone at the Jewelry Artisans Community's Oldies but Goodies Challenge is working with jade, so once again we were a little generous with the rules and settled for jade and jade colors.
Enjoy!

1 Adams Handcrafted Jewelry
2 Violetmoon's Corner
3 Jewelry Art by Dawn
4 The Crafty Chimp
5 Robin's Jewelry, Antiques, & Collectibles
6 Cat's Wire

Quote of the week

I don't go to class reunions. I was there once and it didn't really do anything for me. I do like the idea of meeting only a few special people from back then, though.
Gary "The King" King has convinced his gang from the old school days to come back to their hometown with him and have an epic pub tour which they hadn't been able to complete when they were fresh out of school. Reluctantly they follow him into the adventure and get into his old Ford Grenada, "The Beast".

Gary: And we're back. Just like the Five Musketeers.
Steve: Three Musketeers, innit?
Pete: Four if you count D'Artagnan.
Gary: Well, nobody knows how many there were really, do they, Pete? I mean, history's a sketchbook.
Oliver: You do know that The Three Musketeers is a fiction, right? Written by Alexandre Dumas?
Gary: A lot of people are saying that about the Bible these days.
Steve: What, that it was written by Alexandre Dumas?
Oliver chuckles.
Gary: Don't be daft, Steve, it was written by Jesus.
Steve (sarcastic): Oh.
Gary: Anyway, five sounds much better. I think they missed a trick having only three. 'Cause you'd have five, then two could've died and they'd still have three left.
Andy (annoyed): Are we there yet?
Gary (yelling): Let's do this!!!

The World's End, UK/USA/Japan, 2013

Tackle that stash - Mini wire crochet pendants with pearls

There was this pearl necklace. Big, bold, with a huge crystal. From the first time I laid my eyes upon it, I was determined to rip it up and make something else with the pearls.
You know how these things go. From the first time to now meant a few years in which I picked it up, put it down, picked it up again ... until I finally felt I tried to push this into the wrong direction. Why did I think the result had to be another big pearl necklace? Why not use the pearls individually?

Sometimes we need color and it doesn't even have to be much. So I ended up with little affordable pendants, just one freshwater pearl in a colorful wire crochet setting on a ball chain. No silver, no gold, but pink tones, purple, orange, green, light blue ... and who knows, there may be more to follow.
Which color do you like best?

Available in my Zibbet shop

Oldies but Goodies - Whimsical

What is "whimsical"? I picked a random online dictionary and got this: "1. spontaneously fanciful or playful, 2. given to whims; capricious, 3.quaint, unusual, or fantastic".
Another site gave me an example to make it even clearer. "An example of whimsical is a little girl pretending to be flying around the house like a butterfly." I wonder what a grown lady who is doing the same is called.
This Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge promised to be interesting. Unfortunately I can't give you a butterfly girl, but ... oh, why don't you look for yourself? :-)

1 MC Stoneworks
2 The Crafty Chimp
3 Violetmoon's Corner
4 Jewelry Art by Dawn
5 Cat's Wire

No quote of the week

Sorry, no quote this week. Time ran and I haven't been able to prepare one earlier.
Maybe you wonder what takes me so long to put these posts together. What is there to prepare?

First I pick a movie or a TV series. Sometimes I just stumbled upon a quote to use, but most of the times I didn't and have to look for one.
Then I have to pick the perfect quote. As you might have noticed by now, it's rarely just one or two sentences, so I have to decide how much exactly I will use from a scene.
I can get obsessive about quotes. I know how easy it is to change a quote over the years if you didn't get it right the first time. You'll add a word, you'll leave something out. That won't do for these posts. A big pet peeve of mine are incorrect quotes on IMDb.
So I work with the quote itself and sometimes subtitles. Very often subtitles don't give you the original text, though. What to do if you have a mumbling actor? Just the other day I listened to just one sentence more than ten times to finally get it right!
Then of course I have to do the same thing for my German blog.

It takes time. And patience. And it helps if there's no nagging cat sitting beside me or on the keyboard.
Yup. That's why there is no quote today. No time, not patience, and a beautiful but nagging cat.

Instead I give you a random picture of some koi. Tomorrow you will understand how and why I stumbled upon this in my folders.