Sometimes I Don't Knit

The other night I got tired of my knitting. Maybe I didn't like the chair I was sitting in but I felt possessed to jump up, go into my office, rummage around and find some jewelry-making supplies. I bought beads to make this wrapped cord bracelet nearly a year ago and I finally made my bracelet. Fortunately neon is still a thing so it doesn't look too dated. Yet. I used the instructions from Fusion Beads. I mixed the colors randomly and tried to go light on the neon pink.



Materials: Leather cord, .008 Fireline, 4mm Alexandrite beads, 4mm Smoky Topaz beads, 4mm Hot Pink Lumine Round Czech Pressed Glass Beads all from Fusion Beads and tagua button from The Fiber Gallery.

Slow and Fast

Here is Cria. Cria is slow.



Here are wrapped bracelets. Wrapped Bracelets are fast.



I took a little break from my glacially-paced crawl through Cria to make a few bracelets last night.



These things take no time and no skill at all. I used hemp cord, Superlon thread, some green Fluorite and blue Amazonite chip beads and two recycled glass buttons. All supplies I had on hand. I used these instructions from Fusion Beads.



Easy, easy, easy! I want to make about a million more of these. You should all expect one from me for a holiday gift this year.

Fusing

I took a silver fusing class this week. We used fine silver and a small butane torch to fuse rings and then make chains and texture them. It was surprisingly easy and not at all scary and lots of fun.

First we made headpins with a balled end. You can place a bead on them and then wire wrap them to add to jewelry. They are beyond simple to make. Take fine silver wire and hold it in the flame. The end melts into a ball. Voila. If you want a bigger ball, hold it longer but remember to start with a longer piece of wire.



Then we learned how to make fused rings. We hammered them to flatten or give them texture.





Then we make chains of rings.





The rings are very soft and easy to shape into ovals, squares or whatever you like. The pieces all got to spend some time in a tumbler to shine them up and work harden them. We got a lot done in 3.5 hours!

Everything we worked on is covered in this book from Interweave.

I've been busy knitting too. I started another pair of socks for the Sock Stash Knitdown. First I tried Shur'tugal but the pattern was completely obliterated by the yarn. So now I'm doing Aquaphobia.



But then I got back to my Garter Yoke Cardi and that is monopolizing my knitting time.



This is handspun, hand-dyed Shetland in the yoke with Imperial Stock Ranch Columbia 2-Ply for the rest.

Gems

I'm still having a lot of fun learning about jewelry-making. There's an excitement to discovering a whole new craft I haven't felt in a long time. I still love my knitting best but this is a really entertaining diversion. For instance, last night, while I knit, I watched all these videos from Cool Tools about Precious Metal Clay. It's amazing stuff and the things you can do with it--if you have the talent--are really incredible.

Here are some more wire wrapping projects with various gemstones.



Peridot wired to a rhodium-plated pewter ring for a pendant.



Assorted gemstone pendant. I don't know for sure what any of this is since most of them came as part of assortments. Mostly quartz, I'm guessing.



More of the same but this one has a lot more movement. I couldn't get a great photo of it but I think it's pretty.



More rhodium-plated pewter components with watermelon tourmaline. I bought a strand of these and love the colors. They run from dark green to pink.

New Jewels

I've been having lots of fun making some jewelry.



This is made from cheap glass beads.



More cheap glass beads, some Czech glass beads and a few crystals with a large unknown stone. I got it in a big sale bin.



More cheap glass beads. I love the color.



These have Labradorite briolettes with some seed beads and unknown white stones (again from the sale bin).



These are horn. I had another glass briolette on the end of the chain but I had left the chain too long and the stone just didn't go well with the horn. I will leave it plain until something else jumps out at me.

New Skills for the New Year

I've been trying to teach myself wire wrapping lately. My first efforts were pretty sad but with better tools I'm getting better results. These are just some cheap glass beads I got at Jo-Ann's and some cheap wire to go with them. I've gotten myself a few nicer gemstone beads and some silver wire for when I feel like I've got the hang of it. At least if I mess them up I can reuse the beads but it would be good not to waste a lot of the wire. Silver prices are going up! This book, Wrapped in Gems: 40 Elegant Designs for Wire-Wrapped Gemstone Jewelry, has been providing a lot of inspiration. It's pretty thin on instruction though but there is so much information online.

I was also trying to learn to do a little bead crochet. These tubes look so simple but I tried about eight times on Thursday night and could not get it right. Each attempt looked better than the last but they still looked like ass. The free "pattern" has virtually no instruction and no illustrations. I got frustrated and gave up for now.