Some maintenance required

Hello, everyone.

We were getting out Christmas decorations, unwrapping tissue paper blobs and tubes to see what was packed where, when we found these:

Who remembers the Michelob bottle wise men?

The taller set was made while we were gone on Pilgrimage 2014, by DD2. The shorter set was made many years ago by MIL. As you can see, the kinds of materials available more recently are different.

When DD2 left to go back to school, she asked me to put some gold braid around the necks of the wise men. And, not being Christmas season, similar braid was hard to find. I made right-angle-weave pearl collars for the wise men instead, glued their heads on, and put them aside for Christmas of last year.

Everything was cool then. They were cute and DD2 was happy at how her set of wise men was looking. But that was a year ago. Apparently things got a little too rambunctious in the storage box over the summer and one of the wise men lost his head.

Maybe I should stick something onto the bottom to fit inside the bottle neck when I glue it back together? Must consider.

Warm Spell in December

Hello, everyone.

The weather has turned a bit warmer lately, and it looks like one of those years when we want to wear shorts and tees on Christmas day.

The hibiscus is blooming.

The daffodils are waking up (paperwhites.)

The salvia that sowed itself around the garden is in bloom. The cage is to keep the animals from trampling the plant.

A refreshing bit of memories: Montes de Oca

Hello, everyone.

Yesterday was very busy, with a large party for many children, and the pleasure of working with wonderful ladies! Today I find myself needing to rest a little--rest mentally, that is, with memories of one of our 2014 Camino days.

We departed from the parish albergue in Villambistia at our usual crack-of-dawn time. We walked along seeing the dew on the flowers and watching the cloudless sky change colors. The trail wasn't a completely abandoned place, but we weren't in a huge clump of people, like you may have seen in various Camino movies (like The Way when characters depart from St. Jean.) By the time you get as far as the area of Tosantos and Villambistia everyone is thinned out and less crowded. We got to Villafranca (one of the many Villafrancas, but I can't remember which one just now) about 9:30 and had coffee.

Then we started walking over the range of hills called Montes de Oca. According to the wonderful guidebook The Pilgrimage Road to Santiago: The Complete Cultural Handbook (This book is highly recommended--get it on Kindle, read it before you go and refer to it as needed on the way.) the Montes de Oca had at one point been a nest of bandits. It's not at all flat, and there's loads of cover, and when there was only horse travel, feet travel, and slow clumsy wagon travel it was probably perfect for the robbers to hide in. These days there is a marked trail which connects to some dirt roads that were put in to service windmills. There are no services between the last village before this and San Juan de Orbigo.

A waymark on the side of the road

This looks remote, but in the distance there is another little group of pilgrims.

The bridge at the bottom of the ravine. This bit is steep, both going down and coming up. Note arrows painted on bridge.

Just for pretty!

Another pretty flower

At the end of this forested bit, you come to the old monastery of San Juan. San Juan is one of the Engineer Saints of the Camino. He had been a disciple of Santo Domingo de Calzada. After Santo Domingo (another Engineer Saint) died, he came to this place and made a monastery. Santo Domingo and San Juan were responsible for getting roads and bridges built that would never have been there at all back in the middle ages. The monastery is currently being restored. We saw the casket where the saint's remains rest and the church. The monastery was listed as an albergue in various guide books, but it was too early to stop so we ate bocadillo at the little cafe and took pictures of the church and headed on down the road.

The monastery of San Juan de Orbigo

Stringing materials

Hello, everyone.

It's been pretty busy around here, getting ready for the holidays and for the incoming houseguests, and so this will be a quick post about something kind of timeless: bead stringing materials.

Some of the stash on hand!

In the photo, there are Nymo D, Beadalon multistranded wire, Accuflex multistranded wire, Fireline braided cord, Seaguar braided cord, and elastic Powercord.

I like the way that the Nymo goes into the size 10 beading needle. I do have to pull the end together sometimes, even dampen it a little on occasion, but once the end is through the eye it moves very smoothly. It is if anything too smooth! Placing a stop bead is more of an act of faith than a way to keep the beads from rolling off the far end of the thread. Knots come undone--in fact, I've begun using Fray-check to glue them in place. (Don't use Fray-check in just any situation; it has a potential to dry with a little bit of yellowish tint. So not the thing with white beads!)

The Fireline, and the Seaguar both come in various sizes. The Seaguar, in fact, came home from Wal-Mart with me because I couldn't find any Fireline in the fishing department. This spool is 8 pound braided line, and it's not the foggy-white color of "crystal" Fireline, it's actually transparent. I used it for part of the crystal diamond tree ornament, after managing to break the strand of 10 pound Fireline I was using in the middle. (This did take effort, accidental though it was. I had frayed the living daylights out of the thread with the needle eye trying to pull too thick of needle and cord through the beads too many times. Eventually the frayed part was inside of a bead while it was being pulled on and it just broke.) I find the really transparent line hard to keep track of, but it works well so far with the beads, and I'll probably add it to the pile of threads to keep around. At least, I have a long spool to play with!

The Beadalon and the Accuflex are reasonably similar in uses and characteristics. I have had some bad luck in choosing sizes of crimps to use, but with the correct size of crimp it holds well. It doesn't get eaten by the sharp edges of beads and it's thin. I don't think I'd want to try and thread it through a needle, though.

The Powercord is useful for making bracelets. I don't have the system quite worked out yet, though--wore a bracelet (one strand of elastic and maybe 10mm round beads) to an exercise class once and the knot came undone during the bouncing. Oops. That was before I'd heard of using glue, though, and possibly a second strand of elastic would have helped.

Lately I've been doing more bead weaving than just stringing, so the Fireline and Seaguar have been used much more than the others. The Nymo did get used in making dangling snowflakes for a Christmas tree. Fraycheck was used liberally on those knots!

Dangling ornament for a Christmas tree

More Christmas Stash-busting

Hello, everyone.

Like many people who have gone on a walking pilgrimage, we returned and found in ourselves an urge to simplify our life--to include getting rid of excess possessions.

We've taken numerous trips over to the Salvation Army drop-off, and we've taken books to the local Friends of the Library for their little bookshop.

And I've been using up craft supplies in preference to buying great loads of stuff. (Still have to buy staples like Black Kona cotton for quilting, though!) Every time I see something that looks Really Neat, I remember that I'm swimming in stash already and promise myself to come back for this Neat Thing when the decks are a little more clear.

This morning I pulled out some more marinating craft supplies and decided to use them up to make more Christmas ornaments--this time, for the Altar Society tree at church. (To replace old ones that had broken over time.)

My Dremel was involved--I drilled a small hole at the top and bottom of each snowflake.

Then I took them upstairs and strung them with beads, also from stash, using Nymo, also from stash. That Nymo D is really, really slick--and not exactly in a good way. Stop beads just slide right on off, and it's hard to get a knot to hold. I did repeat tie them a lot, and I also pulled out my handy-dandy Fray-Check to dab onto the knots. I didn't use up all the little wooden snowflakes in one day's work, but I did get 4 dangly things made for the tree. And used up a bunch of beads--seeds, crackle rounds, pearls, etc. etc.

Probably, since time is short, I'll just hang the rest of the little snowflakes on our house tree, the one the visiting baby will be able to reach, without adding lots of beads for decoration. Beads are not a good food item for babies!

Beaded ornament completed

Hello, everyone.

There's not much to say today, but I wanted to post a picture of the diamond shaped beaded Christmas ornament discussed in the last post.

Right in the middle, where it will reflect sparkle from the lights!

Also visible in the picture, some of the eggshell ornaments that have been done over the years. This was a pleasant activity to do with children when we had a larger flock of laying hens. Or ducks! Duck eggs were great to decorate--larger than hen eggs and with a tough shell.

If you should do the egg decorating thing, a word of advice: use sealer spray over acrylic paint before using gloss lacquer spray to make it shiny. (Otherwise the paint will run.) You can use model paint instead of acrylic paints. That is glossy to start with. But it's messier to clean up--uses mineral spirits. And you have to get all those tiny little jars of paint. You could use unwanted nail polish, too, if you have some that's thin enough. Last observation about eggs: if you paint the hollow eggshell with gesso it will have a smooth surface to accept spray paint, which will provide a base for the other decorating you might do.

Elementary-school aged children love to paint eggs with little bitty paintbrushes. It will keep them busy for an entire afternoon during summer vacation.

Thinking Christmas often means thinking decorations

Hello, everyone.

We got the tree boxes out yesterday. (Sorry, gang, we went with fake trees a few years back. Even if they don't smell wonderful.) And all the boxes of decorations and lights.

Somewhere in the midst of all this Thanksgiving, Christmas, decorating mood I trolled around on Pinterest and found a really cute instruction that was supposed to be for earrings. Well, if you have a long neck, and/or if you're wearing your hair up to show them off! The smaller bead size recommended is already 2" (5 cm) long, which is pretty showy. If you go the next bead size up, the lady says, you're looking at 3". The link is to a Youtube video by the amazingly relaxed sounding Miss Gina. Who gives very clear instructions.

Ornament in progress

I am using Fire Mountain Gems 4mm bicones, from the stash.

I'm only about half of the way through with this cute little dangle--intended for the Christmas tree--and I've already learned some things.

Miss Gina doesn't follow the standard Right Angle Weave thread path, as I had expected at the start of her video. When I broke a bead on the fourth or fifth pass through it, I learned why. If you follow her thread path there is one less strand going through the middle of various connecting beads, and thus less use of the pliers to pull the needle through, and less risk of breaking a bead in the previous row. With all the unthreading that creates! So I adopted her thread path.

I also dug out my handy-dandy little container of Thread Heaven. I am using 10 pound Fireline thread, and it seems like the thread itself is creating friction inside the bead and causing some of the binding, even before the thickness comes into play. So a quick run across the surface of the Thread Heaven is being tried. It will make the thread a little slicker and less likely to hang on the previous strands.

One of the things I like best about doing crafts projects is that, as long as you are trying to to a well-crafted piece and try new techniques, you are constantly learning new things about the materials, the patterns, the techniques, and sometimes even yourself.

Thank you, Miss Gina, for putting up your lovely video on making sparkly diamonds.