Recent Finishes

Crafting lately has been rather difficult, mainly because 90% of my stuff is in boxes. I’ve been trying to find ways to keep it up though. I dug out my sewing stuff for my quilting class, I got my beading stuff out after a trip to the bead store, and I always have “My Activity Bag.”

That’s Jem and Cheetara at the scene of the crime – my poor murdered overstuffed rocking chair. Reupholstering that is on my list of things to do for the new house.

My activity bag is actually a dog carrier I got at Z Gallerie a few years ago. I never leave the house for more than a few hours without it. During my super-bad endo days I would always take a knitting project to church with me so I could distract myself enough to stand sitting down for three hours straight. I actually found it extremely helpful in getting more out of my church meetings. By keeping my hands engaged, it was much easier to pay attention to profound things and ignore any distracting thoughts or growling stomachs.

I have tons and tons of things I want to make for the future house, but I’ve started very few of those. I don’t have any measurements or anything, so I can’t make curtains, and I don’t have anywhere to store things, so I can’t buy furniture yet. And since I don’t know which room the big rocking chair is going to end up in yet, and therefore a color scheme for the fabric, I can’t reupholster it.

I went to a bead store the other day to get beads for my “I Can Make This Friday” project, and I couldn’t help myself from grabbing a few other beads and making this:

I fell in love with a few of these beads and I scoured the store looking for something I could use as a pendant. I finally grabbed this ceramic bead just to have something. Of course the hole was too big for a standard eye pin so I used these random little bead caps I had lying around. It was like magic. I suddenly fell in love with this bead that I almost didn’t even buy before. I read all the time of crafters liking to make things up as they go and allowing the project to unfold, but I am wound way too tight to work that way. This was the first time I saw the appeal in serendipity.

This was a bracelet I finished a while ago, and the necklace made out of the rest of the beads is in progress on the sidebar. I just love seed beads, and I love these colors, so I made it up as I went along. It took me easily a dozen tries, but I figured it out in the end. Look at me, again with the serendipity.

This was a necklace I made to match one of my favorite bracelets of all time. I bought these square beads in both the matte and gloss finishes and then just wove them to make a stripe. It was my first bead weaving project and I absolutely fell in love. So even though I really don’t do matchy-matchy, I had to make a matching necklace. I just wove another rectangle, strung a wire through the top and made a loop at each end, and then hung it onto two lengths of tigertail and beaded the rest.

I’ve also caught the apron bug, so I had to sew one up. Oh gosh I love it. Prior to this the only apron I had was this really sweet velvet leopard print apron my brother-in-law gave me one year for Christmas. Now I’m thinking I need a whole apron wardrobe. Isn’t is beyond retro-fab?