Today

I'll be working some more on the 4th Basho piece...when it's done I'll be 1/11 of the way there..LOL! Well, I've got till summer of 2008, so I guess I'll make it...

and that went faster than I thought it would...it's done for the moment.

Station 4 of the Basho piece

"I went to see the shrine of Muronoyashima. According to Sora, my companion, this shrine is dedicated to the goddess called the Lady of the Flower-Bearing Trees, who has another shrine at the foot of Mt.Fuji. This goddess is said to have locked herself up in a burning cell to prove the divine nature of her newly-conceived son when her husband doubted it. As a result, her son was named the Lord Born Out of the Fire, and her shrine, Muro-no-yashima, which means a burning cell."

RAW and Nailheads

Two of my favorite things combined into this bracelet....the nailheads are all vintage, most likely from the 20's, but they could be as old as turn of the century...the beads are contemporary Czech true cuts...
My....I am on a green binge....must be the thoughts of spring and the new leaves just beginning to bud...

Toward the ultimate bead

I'm working some more on the laura mccabe ultimate bead pattern I bought last week....I've had to fiddle a bit with it and it's not as nice as hers, but it's still pretty...

Breast Cancer Square

My second square for the breast cancer quilt...

New Class Samples

The person setting up the classes decided the herringbone interrupted class didn't show off the stitch well enough, so I made a herringbone bracelet with toho triangles that really angles the beads....she also decided the RAW sample had too many crystals in it, so I made one with larger crystals and just a single row of RAW...what do you think?

Movin' Along

I got a couple more hours into the basho piece yesterday, so thought I'd work a bit on the laura mccabe pattern today...or rather on my twist on the mccabe pattern...
As I said earlier, I only had 10mm rhinestones, so thought I could adapt the pattern (which called for 8mm stones) anyway....well, someone probably could, but I wasn't quite up to it, so decided to use the stones I'd already bead bezeled in another way...this is how they look now...I'll be playing with them this afternoon and will post the results tonight...

Basho Three

Slowly beading....and I've been making Apple a little richer today downloading some old favorites from their i-tunes store...it's been fun beading to old friends...

Sorry

I've had to add word verification since I've gotten some weird anonymous comments in some older posts. I know it's a bit of a hassle...it's always a shame when some folks make it so much tougher for the rest of us.
Hope you'll still comment...

Breast Cancer Butterfly

I hope this is square enough....I do have enough time to make another one, if it's not...

Happy Valentine's Day

A gift for a friend....

Basho- Part 3

Soka...this is the village he reaches at the end of his first day of walking...he comments on the possibility of his not returning and of the white hairs he will have by the end of the journey...he's carrying a heavier load than he'd like (something that often happens at the beginning of a trip, I think) but remarks that his friends have given him gifts he can't just toss...I've pictured it as a rainy day...but this is just the beginning of this piece.

Herringbone, interrupted

Yes, I like this one much better....it will be an easy piece to teach new beaders and it looks good and it can be done in 3 hours by a new beader...I can do it in half that time now and less when I'm at the top of my form....the beads are a bronze finish toho size 8 and the centers are 3mm garnet AB firepolished crystals...the button is czech glass, I think.

Station 3

Today I'm working on another bracelet sample as I didn't care for the first one in the green teal...also have some of the beads together for the third part of the Basho piece that I hope to start this afternoon...

Possibly Finished

This may be done....I think it needs to sit for a while before I know for sure...this afternoon I'll be starting the third piece...

Yesterday

Yesterday was a good day....I got the second Basho piece started and started work on a bracelet I'll be teaching a short class on....the Basho piece still needs lots of work and I don't like the bracelet, so I'll be taking it apart and starting over....but I feel as though I'm really back again....yippee!
Oh, and I took 7 baskets to the gallery to be photographed and two bead embroidered pieces to another gallery to be shown...and hopefully sold!
Yep...a good day.

Fiberarts Studio Tours

Beadweaver has a link to the Fiberarts website which has a tour of 43 fiber artist's studios...fascinating to me, as I'm always interested in how other artists organize their studios and work in them...let's see if I can make this link...nope...oh well, you can either cut and paste it into your window or go to beadweaver's site (see my links on the right) and find it from there...

http://www.fiberarts.com/contests/studio/artists.asp

Two More

And then there were two

I like this small format, plus, the herringbone takes so much tension that I can't do it for very long at a sitting....These little ones take about 90 minutes with a 10 minute break about in the middle...perfect for now.
I'm already thinking about spring I'd guess from my color choices!

This Week

This week I worked on some baskets, pulled out some older needlecases I'm wondering about turning into "baskets", started on the laura mccabe piece (and realized that it did matter that I had 10mm squares instead of the 8mm ones she uses) which I now have to figure out how to adjust to fit my beads and got the nasty cold/flu that's been going around all winter.
I'm very thankful that I work at home and can bead inbetween coughing bouts and nose blowings...I feel bad about the folks who have to drag themselves to work feeling as lousy as I do!
Anyway...I've gotten stuck about half way through the red/white/black basket...don't like it and I'm not sure that's it's salvageable...plus, I'm wanting to get started on the second Basho piece. I've got the fabric but can't find the focal piece for it....I've made some notes on the major themes of this part and I like the haiku as well...

The passing spring,
Birds mourn,
Fishes weep
With tearful eyes.

Birds and Fish are major parts of my life here on the coast as well...I walk along the bay and see herons and egrets as well as the more common seagulls and cormorants....then there are all the birds that come to our backyard bird feeders....hummingbirds, finches, sparrows, blue jays.

Maybe I can put in a few stitches today...