The mystery is solved!

My mother-in-law posted a comment on my previous blog post that the unexplained stand is for clip earrings.  She even found a link to an item on Etsy that's for sale which looks exactly like it.

I e-mailed the seller and asked how she knew it was for clip earrings, and she said purchased one from an estate sale years ago - they had clip earrings on it and beaded necklaces hung from the handle.  She even sent me another link for another one of these for sale on Etsy.

Amazing!  I do have a few pairs of clip earrings, and I'll be using this stand to show them at the next craft fair I do.

Thanks for finding this in your basement, John!  Thanks for figuring out what it is, Mama!  Thanks to everyone who checked it out yesterday (I had a surge in page views!).

And, since it is Memorial Day, thank you to all who have served our country, from my ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War to my father, stepfather, and father-in-law who were in Vietnam to those who are serving today.

Anyone know what this is?

My stepfather found this, uh, thing in their basement.  It seems to be a stand of some sort, and it turns very smoothly.

The other, uh, thing pointing at it is some sort of utensil dog(?) that had the "What's this?" sign in the holder when my Mom and John bought it.  It moves around the house pointing at things that defy description.

Getting back to the stand, there are no markings on it to give a hint about the company that made it or what it's for.  There are rubbery things on the feet and on the ends of the spiral, presumably to protect the table and..... yeah, I don't know what else would be protected.

The handle on the top is what turns the spiral.

Here's another picture next to a ruler so you can see it a bit clearer and get an idea of the size:

Let me explain my parents' basement (and attic, house, garage, shed....).  Near as I understand, John's mother and her second husband moved into HIS mother's house, with her belongs in it.  They moved about two households' worth of stuff into the house.  Time passed, none of the stuff was moved out, and the house was left to John and Mom after Grandpa and Grandma passed.  They moved in with all of their stuff.  We like to joke that Jimmy Hoffa is probably in their basement.  I actually have some of my stuff still in their attic from my move to Wisconsin, but we're moving it here a few boxes at a time.  I have a lot of books.

Slowly over time they have been trying organize and get rid of superfluous items by donating, dumping, and selling on eBay.  John's seller ID is 3gensofstuff.  Right now he's selling a telegraph key, a tabletop planter with light, a cast iron Asian lion incense burner, and a few other things.

Anyway, back to this stand.  John thought I might be able to use it as an earring holder.  Well, the earring cards don't fit on the spiral, and we think that individual earrings might slide down.

I will do something with it, but we'd love to know what it was originally for.  Anyone have any ideas?  Let your imagination run wild and post a comment!

What I've been doing this week

Since I last posted, I've been feverishly working on my tubular peyote necklace to go with the bezel I just showed you.  It's a slow process, but I think I'm getting quicker at it.  I have 9 inches of the necklace done - I think that's about halfway.

One unfortunate thing... my black and white herringbone necklace that I'm wearing in my picture under "about me" seems to be coming apart.  It was my first stitching attempt, and the thread I used isn't very good.  I now have better thread (the Fireline I posted about this week), so I think I'm going to have to remake the necklace.  I thought about strengthening the part that is coming loose, but I have a feeling I'm going to have to keep doing it.  On the plus side, I know exactly how many beads I'll need!

The other thing I've been working on is the website for my web design company.  I have a name registered, my Employer Identification Number, a bank account, business cards, and as soon as I get my site up my shingle will be hung, and I'll be open for business.  I'll let you know when that happens!

Have a good weekend and Memorial Day!

Starting Stitched Bezels

Recently I learned how to make bezels using the Peyote stitch.  I had seen a number of pictures in magazines but thought they were too ornate for me, but my friend Cindy from the Loose Bead Society showed me how easy it was to make bezels that better fit my personality.  The center doesn't have to be flashy or gaudy - you can bezel  basically anything flat-ish and round-ish.

While our husbands were playing Risk, we were in her craft room with polymer clay bicones that Cindy had made herself.  Okay, the husbands were playing Risk for only part of the time - we did have to start over because our first attempt was WAY too large for the shapes.


Here are a few pictures of the bezel so far - one of each side of the bicone - they're both so pretty!

For this bezel I'm going to keep it simple - I'm not going to embellish it at all.  I have started making a tubular peyote necklace with the green beads that I'll dangle this from.  While the bezel is started with tubular peyote, it's a much larger circle and is easier to figure out than doing a small-diameter necklace.  It's going well - I've done 2.5 inches of the necklace so far.  I'll post the completed project when it's done!

This has sparked interest in me to do other bezels.  Stay tuned!

Before I sign off I'd like to tell you about something I found online.  I got introduced to Fireline by my Loose Bead Society friends as great for stitching.  I found it for a really good price on Amazon a few months ago - $29.95 for a 300 yard spool of 6 lb line of the Smoke color.  Shipping was free!  I'm looking to get a spool of the Crystal color and noticed they have mail-in rebate offer if you get any 2 or more Berkley TEC tool, Classics tool, line, or bait.  If you've purchased any Fireline this year (and you still have your receipts) or if you plan on purchasing any, check out my link over there ---> for ordering from Amazon, and send in the rebate offer form.  You can get up to $15 back from Berkley!

Twisty-twisty tale

We're going to keep the mystery of the stamped clay discs for a little while longer, as I may be in need of a tube of Delicas before I can work on them some more.

In the most recent Bead & Button magazine there's an article, Layered Ladders, which is a modified ladder stitch and right-angle weave project which causes a really nice curvy piece.  I decided this was a perfect style to go with that coral crocheted sweater I showed you the other day.  It has a nice open neckline, and I didn't like anything I already had with it.

Last week I was at my friend Susan's house, and she had a tube of coral seed beads that seemed like it would match pretty well, and she didn't have a use for them.  So we sat down to figure out this new stitch.  The instructions were a little hard to decipher at first (there's a lot of backwards and forwards and at-an-angles), and after I figured it out I had a little difficulty getting the twists to form. The instructions say to use beads of different sizes to create the spiral, with the smaller beads on the inside.  It took a number of tries to get the piece to twist, but I didn't like how any of them looked.

I finally decided to use some irregularly-shaped white beads that I had used on a black and white twisted herringbone necklace.  You can see that on the Expand Your Horizons page on the Loose Bead Society website.  I'm not terribly fond of the beads, but I always wear the sweater with a white tank top underneath, and I thought the coral and white beads would go well together.

Lo and behold!  I got a twist!  The first few inches twisted nicely, but then it flattened out.  I figured it was due to the irregular nature of the white beads and started thinking of what I could do to make it more consistent.  In playing with the necklace, it seemed that if the white beads were "forced" to sit together nicely, the spiral would be tighter.  So I took another length of Fireline and started stitching just the rows of white beads together - kinda how they tape your little toe to the next toe when you break it.

Well, that worked like a charm.  I had to keep doing this every so often so I could test the length.  In the following picture you can see the fixed part at the top and the loosy-goosy part at the bottom:

Now, the loosy-goosy wouldn't be too bad if the white beads didn't look all cattywampus.  Here's a close-up shot:

In the top half you can see how I threaded the rows together.  I went around rows 1 and 2 a few times, then rows 2 and 3 a few times, etc...  That made everyone sit nicely, and due to the shape of the beads, the spiral tightened up.  I did not try to sew them together as I was stitching new rows - I used a separate thread to make sure that the main structure wasn't compromised.  Yeah - that's why I did that.  It wasn't at all because I couldn't think through how to do it while I was adding new beads.  Nope.  Not that at all.

When I was talking to Steve about this adaptation and asked if he thought it would work, he said, "All I understood was 'thread' and 'twisty-twisty'."  He was no help but was very encouraging.

Let me tell you... working on twisty pieces is very difficult.  The thread gets caught in the spiral, I had 2 or 3 dangly threads at a time, so they got all tangled, and measuring was near impossible.  So I kept stitching until I ran out of usable white beads and hoped that it would be long enough.

Voila!  It's a perfect length, it's very comfortable, and I think it goes quite nicely with the sweater.  That look in my eyes is the dazed-stitcher look that everyone gets at the end of a long project (and it's well after midnight).

I sure hope you really didn't want those coral beads back, Susan!  I damn near used them all!  If this necklace wasn't twisty-twisty, it'd probably be 3 times its length.

Polymer clay and stamping

My friend Cindy from the Loose Bead Society works a lot with polymer clay.  I loved the pieces she's shown me so far, and I've been itching to get my fingers wrapped around some clay again.  It had been quite some time - possibly before I met Steve in 2007 - since I last worked with clay.

So, duly motivated, I grabbed a package of old, old clay and started conditioning it.  For you non-clay enthusiasts, that means kneading it and rolling it in a pasta roller until it gets soft and pliable.  The clay is so old that this took the better part of an hour and made my poor hands very, very sore.

Finally, though, I was able to do what I like to do best - roll it out flat and stamp on it!  I use Staz-On ink on clay to make sure there's no smearing.  I got some very good impressions and rolled the rest of the conditioned clay into beads.  I mixed the ink (purple, unsurprisingly) into the clay to tint some of it and left some of it white with just a hint of purple marbling.  On some of the beads I stamped small flowers - some dark, and some lighter.  By this time I think the stamp pad was getting coated with a bit of clay, and when I stamped a final circle with a flower, it was slightly blurry.  I'm calling it "artistic" and "on purpose".

After baking, here's what I have to work with:

This is half a package of clay, by the way.  My hands were too tired to condition the other half!  You can see the blurry one at the top of the circles, right under the beads.

Here's a close up of the biggest circle:

And here's a close up of the "patterned" beads:

After baking, I coated everything with liquid polymer clay in hopes that I'd get a nice glossy finish.  I hadn't done that before and wanted to try it.  Well, they didn't turn out glossy, but they look nice anyway.

What am I going to do with all of these pieces?
How am I going to affix the circles to anything when there aren't any holes?
Why is everything purple?
Will I be able to get the beads off of the little skewers?

These questions and more will be answered in a future blog post - stay tuned!

More on crocheting...

Contrary to popular belief - and by "popular" I mean my Mother (heretofore known as "Mom") and my Mother-In-Law (referenced here as "Mama"), based on their comments on yesterday's post - crocheting a sweater is not difficult.  Crocheting in general is not difficult.

Mama sews beautiful aprons, including one she made for me with a lovely iris patterned fabric and lots of pretty trim and pockets.  With sewing you need to:  pin flimsy, easily-rippable patterns onto fabric; cut these pieces out, hoping that you got all the patterns right; figure out what gets attached to what; and, most importantly, thread the sewing machine before you can even sew those pieces together!  The last thing I sewed was curtains - straight curtains with a pocket for the rod - and according to my grandmother they ended up crooked.

In comparison (and in reality), crocheting is just tying knots and counting.  That's really all it is.  Anyone who can hold a pencil can crochet.  Mama - I'm bringing down a hook and a ball of yarn when we come to visit, and I'll teach you.

Mom commented that she could never crochet a sweater, even though she's made many hats as well as afghans with complicated patterns.  She can knit, which I am just starting to comprehend.  As Mom mentioned, her biggest problem is being able to finish a project.  That would be something to overcome in order to have a finished sweater, but she definitely could crochet the individual parts.

What is a sweater, really?  Four pieces - a front, a back, and two sleeves.  The front and the back are crocheted bottom up in a solid block until the arm holes.  Then there's some decreasing to give your arms some room, and some shaping for the neck.  The sleeves are the same, only smaller, and without the neck.  Yes, there's a little complexity in sewing everything together, but it's not too bad if you know where your arms are supposed to go.

So, what's the moral of this story?  It ain't hard!  So pick up your hooks, find some fun yarn, and make a sweater!  For a little more inspiration, here's a picture of my other crocheted sweater:

I made this sweater and took this picture a number of years ago.  This is a lightweight sweater in a shell pattern that is very comfortable.

Once you finish your sweater - send me a picture, and I'll post it!