Coca Cola and Beer

There is a jar on the coffee table in the living room that has been there forever. It occasionally gets full, gets emptied and goes right back where it was. This is the repository of the sacred can tabs. None shall pass out of my house, all must go in the jar. You can never have too many can tabs.

Why? Well, they are useful items, to be sure. And I have always wished that I could make them into chain maille, but that almost, almost eluded me. Then the AntiCraft had a contest. Make a hat for Vlad the Impaler. He was a soldier, he wore maille, didn't he? out came the trusty crochet hook and some generic black yarn and this was the result:

Sort of like maille, right? And I won 3rd place in the contest, btw. And I was off and running again.

I love to recycle objects, not only does it save the landfill, it saves my wallet and makes me feel like I'm teh genius for coming up with this stuff. So then I learned about plarn.

Plarn is yarn made from plastic bags. The cheap liquor store near my house uses solid black plastic bags which is unusual, and they coincidentally sell both coke and beer, so I was all set for designing more craft projects with the materials at hand. Here was the next project, made with black plastic bags and can tabs:

It's tiny, about the size of a folded in half dollar bill, but it sold in the etsy store!

This summer, I was longing for a purse, so I made this one:

and of course there is the bracelet, currently for sale in my Etsy store, go look!

I will keep saving those can tabs, there is someone who is inspiring me so much in the art of can tabistry, you can see her stuff here:

The Art of Can Tabistry.blogspot.com

A Labor of Love

Hey, remember when I mentioned that a friend had asked me to make a snake? And how it got ripped apart and re-made like three times? Oh, I didn't mention that part? Hm. Well, it did. Because it had to drape around her neck in a graceful fashion, and when I bent it, the inner curve pleated up and there was just no living with me until I fixed that problem. I got some more beads much smaller than the original beads but the same colors, and used them on the inner curve/belly. Nice. Then, how do you make a snake head? As it turned out, you make it separately and then sew it on and bead over it and pray. You pray a lot. So, today it arrived in the mail to its new home, so I think I can post some pictures now. Heh. You're gonna love it. Now I have to make another one for me---

This is how it grew, a plate of beads and some skullies to keep it company while I was otherwise occupied. Looks like a snake, doesn't it?

This is a finished shot. See the little wire around the inner curve? To make it lay flat.

At first, I didn't think it would squiggle, but it did! Yay!

And, this is hiss cute little face, complete with mouth deliniation. I don't know his name, but I'm hoping that Labrys will tell it to me soon.

Tinkering

This is a random beautiful picture.

My father's father was a tinker. In generations past, a tinker was a person who did not have a career and work the same job for 40 years and then retire with a gold watch. Grandpa Max was a radiologist during WWII and he was a groundskeeper for a public park when he died. In between, he did lots of different things to support and care for his large family, my father was one of 11 children. There was no shame in his profession of tinker. It was a profession that had a name.

I think that I am a tinker too. In my life, I've been a pharmacy technician, a bridal consultant, a stay at home mom, a sales rep, a professional shopper, a drugstore manager, see, the list goes on and on. I've never had one career that felt like my life's work, and I have worried about that from time to time. I never had an "aha!" moment when my life was changed forever by the discovery of a yet unexplored field.

I like to learn things, and I know at least a little bit about an enormous amount of things. I'm an armchair mechanic. I like to visit other places in my mind through other people's travel photos. I discovered once that I knew very little about how motorcycles work, so I watched American Chopper for months. That one paid of when #3 son decided to be a motorcycle mechanic. I like thinking about Egypt and King Tut's tomb. I learned all about Michelangelo one summer.  Lots of different topics, I know, but each one useful in its own way. Today I learned that you can make a working model of a Transformer out of paper. And it's only 8AM!

The thing that ties my life together is the creating of objects that have never existed before. Even if I make something from a pattern, that item has never existed before. I chose the yarn, the size, I made the inevitable mistakes, it is entirely my own by the time I'm done, and I am glad for that birth. Sometimes it takes literally years for something to be completed and used for its intended use. Sometimes it never gets used. Sometimes it's used differently than I had originally thought.

I never, ever lack for ideas. I feel a little dry, well, I jump on the computer and look at a blog or a community or a website that has nothing whatsoever to do with what I'm trying to work out. I have an enormous collection of pictures that I add to constantly, randompictures over at Live Journal is a constant source of amusement to me, you never know what you're going to see there.

This is a market in Nepal, boy don't I want to go there, just lookit the beads!!!!!!!!

So this is my tinkering life. Next time somebody asks me what I do, that's what I'm going to tell them.

Letting go of my babies

How did this happen? I made a beautiful bracelet to sell. I always knew it would leave the nest.

but look at it!

Isn't it the most beautiful thing you've ever seen? Well?

And ingenious, don't forget ingenious. A simple beaded bracelet with different components that slide on and off, an infinite number of things you can do with it. See, those are the slides at the bottom, and my favorite of them isn't even in this picture. How can I bear to let it go? And it's not the only piece that I feel like this about. I'm so lame sometimes. I'm in love with photography too, and I am so reluctant to give up my sandbox. What do I made to photograph shit in for fall and winter? Maybe I could keep the sand and change from shells to rocks and stones and crystals.

what did you say, you're in love with the bracelet too? think I should list it so you can buy it? well, okay. maybe tomorrow.

What You Can Do With an Etsy Store

What can you do with an etsy store? Well, the sky is the limit, my friends, and I'm slowly, slowly scaling the mountain. I have to sell stuff to make room for the stuff I keep on making. Oh, you can say "well, you make jewelry, that doesn't take up much room" and you would be WRONG! Jewelry making requires huge amounts of room, what with all the boxes of beads, findings, threads, broken jewelry to make other jewelry out of, and the fact that I never throw anything away, no matter how useless, because soon as I do, I will desperately need it. My crafting does not stop at jewelry.

There is THE YARN. Anybody with a yarn stash knows exactly what I am talking about. It's ubiquitous. It's everywhere. It takes up huge Rubbermaid totes that keep ending up in the leaky, rusting shed. That is not my fault, nor does it hurt the yarn, but still. and there I am at midnight with a flashlight, yet again. Then there is the storage of half made projects, or things that did not work out quite right. Then there are the finished objects, or fo as we call them, that just need one little thing to make them finished, but somehow there is never time. Yarn is a committment.

I like broken furniture. Or it would seem that I like broken furniture for the amount of it that I have, inside and out , is simply staggering. Well, you could sit on that chair I guess, but don't rock, don't tilt it back on 2 legs (I know it won't hold you. I built that cheap-ass chair and I'm no mechanic) but keep it there at the table to hold knitting magazines on the seat and photographs, the pens that seem to leap into existence every time I look away, a pack of gum and the pretty turquoise foil that just needs to be made into something---.

I'm lucky. My family loves me. They pat me on the head and they say "This is Mom/Rowan and she's nuts. But we love her". Thanks, guyz. really.

Too many projects, running out of plates

This may not sound like a real problem, but it is. And solving it requires me to place unwavering faith in my cat.

This is Dinah, and in her world, the floor is made of lava. She moves around the house from chair to table to ledge, the dryer and so forth, only coming to earth near her food bowl. Then she settles down in the kitchen on a step stool to listen to the cupboards. Really.

I made things with beads, tiny little seed beads, and I dump them into plates. Oh, you're seeing where this is going now, right? Yep. Too many plates of beads. And a cat that doesn't walk on the floor. I tell myself that if I find them on the floor in the morning it's my own damn fault. Dinah, bless her, has the delicate feet of a dancer and exquisite balance to boot.

My ongoing project lately has been a fascination with tubular peyote stitch. I started beading around pens. A friend inquired "Since you can bead around a pen, can you make me a snake?"

Oh, maybe, says I, send me a picture. And at that point, I lost it. I got all carried away with myself and her story about the snake and the next thing you know, I've got a lifesize bull snake with pink crystal eyes. It was hard. It was all kinds of things I never thought of before. I didn't charge anywhere NEAR enough, but I learned a huge amount in the process.

I will post pictures after it has got where it's going, I took a bunch before coaxing it into a box for shipping.

Meantime, here's one of the bracelet that was inspired by the snake inspired by the pen.

anything else you want to see, go to www.ampersand3665@etsy.com and look in the store.