School slate

Progress on the house - of sorts!

I've had this old Wilton school house slate blackboard forever. The only place to put it was in the hall. As the ice-box goes on that yellow wall I'm thinking grocery lists. My Granddaughter loves to draw on it and has finally learned to make lines around my lists and only draw in the empty spaces.

Just the trim left to paint in kitchen and hall.











Sink in the dining room? Well it's somewhat of a step in the right direction. I've had this sink for over 20 years and it's been outside of a shed in the woods most of that time. All summer it's been outside on the stand, upside down in the sun to take the bow and twist out of it.

Hey, it cleaned up better than I thought with just a couple of chips.

That dining room wall paper is the next thing to go away. I've been procrastinating as it's going to take a lot of work to get the walls paintable. It's vinal and was put directly on the wallboard. When it comes off it pulls the backing paper with it in splotches. I'm going to have to plaster skim coat most of the wall.

Still working on House

Kitchen is coming together, but I'm getting tired of the 3 coats of white semi-gloss it takes to cover the old dark faux wood paneling. With the days getting shorter I can see the colors are working they way I wanted them to. The lower cabinets that my friend built are going to be great. The best thing is that they are designed for the way we live and cook. After all, who else has over 100 tin pie plates and a collection of cast iron bake ware?

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Replacement windows have a much larger frame than the old wood ones. I was going to do the trim in white, but decided that was just way to big a square block of white. Besides, the total depth in this house is very shallow and it just wouldn't work. So I went and bought a light gray trim paint.

However, now when the sun goes down I'm finding that I can't tell the difference between the light gray trim color and the white primer. I come in the next day and find all sorts of holidays in what I thought was perfectly painted gray trim!

Yea! ...we may have a working shower by the weekend.

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So, the house is moving along, but very slowly. I've come to the realization that it isn't going to get done before snow flies & time to go to AZ.

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Now it's triage and plan the minimum to get done so we can move stuff in, shut it up and hit the road West. This year we're going to treat ourselves and take a southern route. New Orleans is looking very good as a stop over point.

Bead Buying Binge!

I can relate to Sig Wynne-Evans blog post, What Have I Done? I think every beader goes on a bead buying binge from time to time. It seems to be as catching as the flu right now. I've heard that more than one bead maven has done the same thing recently.

Caravan Beads in Portland Maine is one of my favorite resources and I went there to get a few size 10/0 Delicas to try out for an experiment. I really needed only about 5 opaque colors .... and then I discovered that they had added 1/2 packs to their wholesale quantities. Hmmmm, thinks I ... Instead of 100 grams, I can order 50 grams of a color and my money will go farther. When the box came in yesterday I realized that 20 colors was a whole lot more than double the original 5 needed colors. Matte gunmetal, matte red AB, 4 gold lusters, and a couple of metallic bronzes seemed to have crept into my order. Instead of a few trial tubes, I now have to get another Plano box for what is the start of another bead size collection!


What started all of this is a new series of patterns I'm developing for bead crochet. These samples were done in a combination of Delicas, 15's and 11/0's. I want to go up in bead sizes and use 8's instead of 11's for the base. To do that I need a bead that is the same smaller size difference to the 8's as the 15's & Delicas are to the 11/0's.
Make sense?
Wait and let's see if it works.
No Easy Beads has said she'll give it a try it for me too.

I usually don't use Delicas for bead crochet as they don't move as well as the Czech beads. However, in this instance they are the right size difference and make a very crisp pattern on one side. Sometimes you just need to use a specific bead to get a special effect.

That's the reason I bought too many beads, but it's really just a convenient excuse as you can never have too many beads.

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P.S.

if you haven't read Sig's blog, it's quite funny and her

unique perspective on things often gives me a big chuckle.

Guess where I've been?

With these cars in the parking lot, it just has to be the Fall New Hampshire Bead Society Retreat...... The Barbara C Harris Center in Greenfield is a beautiful place to hold a bead retreat. As it's only 7 miles from my house, I didn't stay over, but day tripped.

We gathered, beaded, ate, yakked, ate, and beaded some more.

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For me it's a much needed step outside of the normal routine, a chance to recharge creative juices and keep in touch with a delightful (& sometimes zany) group of women.

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Why is it that I can sit at my work table in the quiet studio and string in mistakes - not once, but three times? This raised double "V" pattern looks like it will be as awesome as I imagined, but I've still got something off kilter. After trying to fix it twice, it's still not right. As a matter of fact, it's so off at this point that I'm not sure I can fix it short of starting all over.

Then I can sit in the midst of a group of beaders, all of whom are talking non-stop, and string 2 very complicated, experimental patterns with nary a hitch. Is it saying that I work better in chaos?

This is a flat caterpillar variation that I'm going to be teaching next weekend. It gives the bead crocheter much more design space on one side and isn't any larger than a standard 6-around, 11/0 flat caterpillar. Some time after the workshop, I'll post at least one of these at Bead Patterns.


We had great bead vendors at the Retreat. This bead strand found it's way into my stash. It's recycled old vinyl records made into what I would call sequins or heshi. The colors are great and as a strand it feels quite nice.

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Like my Granddaughter would say, "they're way cool!"

Life is good when you can spend two days at a bead retreat in a beautiful setting and do nothing more strenuous than bead, eat and not have to clean up.