I am the Kat that Walks By Itself

I made a few pieces of chainmaille over the last couple of weeks, so here they are:

The first three were done on the long weekend, while I was at Continuum, which is why they are all rubber and silver rings of one size: that was all I had with me at the con. The last one was made last weekend, for Eldest Nephew for his birthday, since I'd been invited, on Saturday, to his birthday dinner on Sunday.
( crafty crafty )

I have finished it!



I intended this to be a necklace, but it ended up so long that I made it into a belt. Could still be worn as a necklace, though.

How: Chainmaille and beads.
( cutting technical details )

There are eleven sections of yellow beads, and each section has eleven beads.

Symbolism:
Yes, this has symbolism! Else it would not be titled as it is.
Idris is Idris "Sexy" TARDIS (as named in the DW episode "The Doctor's Wife"). The blue beads represent her; varying shapes as she is variable, blue with stars and chatoyancy as she is a space-time ship, and Very Blue.
Her Thief is, of course, the Doctor. The yellow beads represent all his regenerations so far, eleven sections of eleven beads. Also, eleven represents duality and thresholds; there is no Threshold like stepping into the TARDIS with the Doctor.
The spiral is the time vortex that they travel in.

I am quite pleased with it. 8-)

This is the second gift I made for the 2012 sshg_exchange. This was made as a gift-to-the-community, off my own bat, because the idea for this necklace took hold of me ever since I'd seen "The potions ingredients garden" as a prompt in the sign-ups. When I didn't get that person as a recipient, I still wanted to pursue the idea, so when I'd finished my assigned gift, I started on this one.

And a Certain Person was given the necklace for Christmas. 8-)
( Seasons )

( Design Notes )

Beading - stringing beads together in various ways - is a fun craft. Like many crafts, you can end up spending lots of money on it, but you don't have to. Unfortunately, I've seen the case where newbie beaders ask more experienced beaders what equipment they need, and the response included, in their list of "essential" equipment, tools that I have never used myself. Hardly "essential". So I've written this article to assure people that they can take up beading with hardly any equipment at all; that they can start small, to see if they like it, without having to spend tons of money first.

( beeeeeeeeeds! )

I hope y'all weren't bored by this fairly comprehensive overview.

I have done it! I have made my first piece of chainmaille jewellery.



This one is semi-symbolic, in that it could be worn as just a pretty thing, but I did design it with meaning in mind. The title is "Tying the Knot", and it represents Severus and Hermione. Severus is black-and-silver, and Hermione is gold-and-brown. Different as they are, they entwine, they "tie the knot" together.

Certain persons who saw the green-and-silver chain while I was working on the piece, I dismantled it, because I disliked the way the silver links weren't quite the same size as the green ones; it made the chain lopsided. I also noticed how you were disappointed in the gold-and-copper chain as compared to the green-and-silver one. But the gold-and-copper chain was actually the one I preferred, because the links were the same size and thus sat much better. So I went with silver-and-black as something which didn't make the gold-and-copper look dull by contrast, and also because the black links were the same size as the silver ones. (All four sets of links came from the same source, thus much more likely to match.)

Since the copper isn't red, and the black isn't green, I therefore declare that they represent hair-colours, and thus still represent Severus and Hermione. (grin)

I finally finished The Replacement Purple Tote!
Work on it slowed down when it grew too large to take on the bus with me, and then stalled when I got to the handle, because I would have to count and measure stuff before I could start on it.
But it is now done! Whew!

I'm not sure how interested folks will be, but I thought I'd give a bit of an overview of some of my favourite online craft shops. Maybe only vilakins will be interested, because she likes craft and at least lives near Australia, unlike other folks on my flist who like craft and live in the USA or UK.

There's no one perfect shop; they all have their pros and cons, things that they have or do that others don't, or at better prices, or with quicker turnaround, and so on.
( the envelope, please! )

For the last day of the NAtional ARt MAking MOnth, as I usually do, I made a banner for naarmamo.
( Read more... )

I've been playing with my new toy, a deluxe spool-knitting gizmo, which I bought on Friday. I don't think it will be quite as portable as my crochet stuff, because it doesn't appear to be quite as amenable to shoving into a bag when one's bus stop arrives; it's designed to be put down on a table when one needs to pause in working. That's okay; it being the weekend, I did get quite a bit of working in.
( there be jewellery and pictures )

More craft, that is. Today I managed to do the finishing touches on the corkscrew-spiral crochet necklace I've been working on for a while. There was a point when it felt like it would never get finished, because there were a LOT of stitches to do, and the yarn was really thin and the crochet hook was really small (1.25mm), and I would sometimes get cramps in my hands because of that. But it is now DONE.
( more stuff, and a picture )