Weekend fun

Oh, the crazyness that is polymer clay...

This is a technique called "Cutting Edge" by Dan Cormier. He doesn't have a web site that I could find, but he gives a lot of classes, and has published some instructions in the Polymer Cafe magazine. The beads are made with a silver (or alternatively gold) clay mixed with a color clay. Those tiny little silver mica particles reflect light differently from different angles, which is what makes the beads interesting. (Carissa Nichols gives a pretty good explanation on mica shift here.) Also the lines are sort of under the surface, and all the beads are polished to a fine silky smooth finish.

This is a crazy curly-swirly bead that I made with the left over clay from the cutting-edge-beads:

Black sheep -no, black alpaca!

I'm trying to post a little more often than once a month, so tonight I had to practically force myself to post something. The issue isn't that there would be a lack of crafts or knitting, not at all. I've just been way too lazy to take pictures and edit them to have something to show. But since my goal is to get back to posting once a week, I thought I really should do something about it tonight!

I have the pieces to the sweater from the last post just about finished, but I still have to put them all together and knit quite a bit of border to finish it. Not a very good mindless project, so I had to start something new. I wound the black alpaca I bought in Seattle into balls, and oh, my goodness, it is sooo soft! I just can't get over how this yarn feels! So even though most of the yarns in my stash have been waiting for much longer to be turned into something wearable, I started a sweater with this yarn. Modeled after my current favorite cardigan, it is going to be very plain, with a slightly shaped waist and a V-neck, button-down front and possibly small pockets (I haven't quite made up my mind about those, yet). It is a very true black, and therefore quite impossible to photograph, as you can see:


It has a bit of a sheen, and looks wonderful in a moss stitch, so I decided to do an inch of moss stitch in the cuffs and the hem:

If you can only see a black square, don't worry. That's pretty much what it is...

I also started a pair of socks to have a small portable project. I let the boys pick their own sock yarn from the stash, and this is what Mr S. picked:

And I thought I'd never get rid of that yarn... ;) I'm not sure how it ended up in my stash, but it certainly isn't something I'd pick now, so it must have been there for a while.