Plier-ing on

(OK, so that title would work better if I could have reasonably written "soldering on" as my stupid pun of the day, but ... WHATEV. ;) )

Finally buckled down and got some Tool Magic, which basically coats the jaws of your pliers with a thin layer of grippy stuff so that working with wire is easier and you don't leave marks on said wire. Pliers on the left(ish) are newly coated, pliers on the right (minus the bottom one) are uncoated (but duh, right?).

I've been meaning to get some of this stuff for years, and now that I'm using normal (a.k.a. fairly wimpy) pliers to work with fat fat wire, I've finally given in and gotten some in hopes that it will save my poor hands. Plus, it was on sale on the Jo-Ann web site, and had free shipping for Black Friday, or Cyber Monday, or something. How could I resist any longer?

Anyway, back to prepping for this weekend. I'll be at the Atomic Holiday Bazaar for the first time ever, and I have about a thousand skeins of yarn to finish, plus whatever else I can manage off the "if I had a million years and endless energy I would do these things for this show" list. ;)

I did finish a bunch of Zen-esque wrap bracelets last night, though. Oooh, ahhh. Well, I like them. Hopefully other people do, too.

Preview of the new chain mail

Brian and I went to the beach for this week's weekly meeting, and while we were there, we busted out the camera and finally took decent photos of all his chain mail, which will eventually go up in the Etsy shop. Here's a preview:





Note to self: Do more photo shoots on the beach. ;)

Mini wishlist, away!

That is, mail out: Mini Wishlist 2, including some of these lovely little items ("lovely" used here solely in the sense of "Isn't it lovely I've finally got it sent?" ;)):

A good luck charm, hopefully to help my swap partner win a bit more at bingo ;):



A pair of earrings, so she can win in style:



And some wall art, potentially for her kitchen, because she likes roosters:



And there you have it. ;D My latest late-ish swap is out. I catch up.

Sparklies and such

Mail in for yesterday, May 07, 2007:

*Free paw pin from the Animal Rescue Site
*Awesome blue postcard from Siobhan

Moving on, I listed two pieces of jewelry on Etsy yesterday:





That covers me for Week Two of SpoC 2007, too. Woo!

I also finally dyed Anne's custom yarn order -- it's the first time I've ever hand-painted something, and the results were pretty decent, although not exactly what I was going for ... ;) (I used this tutorial for general guidelines.)






While I was at it, I used some of the leftover dye to paint an experimental batt; I used some of the "short" Corriedale. With both the yarn and the batt, I pre-soaked them in hot water for long enough that it got pretty cool (more out of convenience than intent), then put them on a piece of plastic wrap. Food dyes (Lemon-Lime Kool-Aid with a few drops of yellow food coloring for bright green; royal blue icing colors -- not Wilton's -- with a little Pink Lemonade Kool-Aid for blue; and Black Cherry Kool-Aid with a little of something redder, can't remember what off the top of my head, for the red) got mixed in plastic cups with hot water, then I used a syringe to squirt them onto the fiber. Note to self: squirt less dye or else the darkest color will take over. ;) Rolled up the plastic wrap as per directions, put the roll onto a bamboo steamer in a wok, and steamed with the wok top on for forty-five minutes, then rolled the fiber out into a bucket of hot water plus soap, soaked, rinse-soaked, and voila! Photos of batt forthcoming. It came out pretty well, although I seem to have lost most of the green in the yarn and pretty much all the red in the batt. Doh.

I did another experimental Corriedale "short" batt that I'd pre-soaked in case by putting it into hot water in my dye pot (a little more than just enough to cover), pouring the leftover dyes over different sections of the wool, then transferring the pot to the stove and turning it on medium heat for a while. I knew we were going to bed soon, I was being lazy, and didn't want to felt the wool. Then I turned off the heat when we went to bed, and more of the dye appears to have absorbed overnight. I'll probably end up turning the heat back on tonight when I get home, because someone said recently that dye needs a certain amount of time at temperature to actually set, and I might as well. It's only a little over an ounce of fiber, so I won't have a fit if I mess it up horribly.

In other news, wildfire smoke has blown in from the north and appears to be covering most of Pinellas County at the least. It's a bit cough-inducing, but more importantly, I can't go outside to take photos, hence the even crappier than usual photography. ;) I may be forced to improvise a lightbox today. (Ohhh, how terrrrrible. ;))

SpoC, Week 1: Success! (Well, mostly. ;))

Today is the "deadline" for the first week of my Springtime of Creation project, so I got off my butt and made a necklace. Sort of. I took a fat disc pendant bead that's been sitting on my computer desk since around Valentine's Day, knitted an I-cord for it, shaped and attached a clasp and loop, and then tried to put a bail on the bead. Oops! The seed beads that were embedded in the polymer clay decided they didn't like having copper wire rubbed on them, so the pendant plus finished bail is waiting for the repair glaze to dry, and then I'm going to put on a layer of fixing glaze over the entire. (By "glaze" I actually mean Aleene's Paper Glaze, which looked like it would work and was handy.) Note to self: don't skritch seed beads out of polymer clay thingies. ;)

Anyway, I'm counting that as a first-week success, since even if I technically get the listing up late, it's not because I was a slacker and didn't do it; it's just because of the normal unforeseen delay type stuff, and that's totally okay.

Whew. Week one (mostly) down, seven to go.

Accompanying illustrations

Here's that hairpin lace scarf I did the other day (not the latest one, of which I still need a good photo or two):



And here's that necklace I finished today as an extra goodie for a swap (and this one isn't even late ;)):



Woo!

Quick! Quick!

My stuff for the "Just Do It, Swap It Quick!" swap on Swapbot c'est la:







Hurray. ;D

On Baxil Standard Time

It's still the 22nd, so that's the day I mean when I say "today." (Meaning, I haven't gone to sleep yet so even though the calendar says it's the 23rd, it's the 22nd to me.)

Today: I...

Sorted some fleeces...



...and didn't sort others. (I'm washing the latest Columbia before I do anything with it. It's a bit too mucky for me not to ... and the Shetland didn't look like it needed much sorting, or if it does, I can't tell how to do it with the dirt on the fleece. The llama really needs to be shaken thoroughly on a screen or something before I wash it all because there's no use in washing it if all the VM is just going to get washed and stay in with the fiber ... but I did sort the Corriedale? ;)) In other fibery news, I even spun all the samples I said I would spin, and earlier in the day I tried steam blocking for the first time. I'm going to do some more steam blocking tomorrow on those samples.

Also tried to reconstruct a shirt...



...and got almost all the way done, but was ultimately too lazy to overlock the side seams yet again because I'm so dang small and the fabric is so dang stretchy. It's now a tube top. Exciting. I have a pile of other t-shirts to reconstruct that will hopefully be more original.

Then I worked on the jewelry for a trade on Etsy, so that now I have one funkychunkypinkandorange yarn necklace with loopies, a pair of pink and purple berrylike earrings that I actually think I would wear if they were mine and I had anything they matched even vaguely, and one of the few strung necklaces I've ever done in my life, and I wonder if this one will fit the bill of Fun and Funky and Wild. (I always have that problem with stringing. I'll get better at it ... someday?) All of it is currently stuffed in half of a largish Easter Egg tin I found at the thrift store:



I'm not sure i'm going to work on the KYOAMPi tonight, even though I'd like to. I have to sleep sometime, though it'd be easier convincing myself to sleep and do things tomorrow if I knew I'd actually bother waking up in the morning when I don't "have" to, thus enabling myself to actually do things tomorrow. ;)

Now, off to waffle over whether to work on it or stay up even more insanely late doing something else!