More beads and a hat...

This past weekend I did two craft related things I'd like to share with you.  On Saturday I attended the Fall Bead Renaissance Show in Overland Park, KS, with my mom and sister.  We had a really lovely day and as usual I spent way more than I should have on beads I just couldn't live without.  But really, there is no better inspiration than seeing all those beautiful sparkling beads and coming home with some of them.  They are just waiting for me to create some fantastic new jewelry...and I'm really hoping to have a bit of free time soon to get to sit and play with them all! 
The other thing I did was crochet a new hat for winter.  As soon as the cold weather starts creeping in I always have the strongest desire to sit with a crochet hook in hand and a lap full of warm and fuzzy yarn.  I really love to crochet- I find it so comforting and peaceful.  If you are like me and you enjoy either crochet or knitting I hope you have found the Ravelry website.  You can check it out here:  http://www.ravelry.com  It is a free website that is a real treasure trove for the fiber artist.  You can find all sorts of patterns on the site and many of them are even free.  I just did a search for hat patterns for crochet and looked through the many options that came up until I saw one that was just what I was looking for.  The one I found on Ravelry was actually a free pattern that was offered on Julie's Gleeful Things blog as her Christmas present to her readers last year.  Here is the link to the pattern I used on her delightful blog:  http://www.gleefulthings.com/blog/?p=640  It is called the Gumdrop Slouchy Hat.  She has great pictures of it in different colors, some are solid one color and others she did in two colors.  I liked the way it looked so I decided to give her pattern a try. 
I used a size J crochet hook per her instructions and the yarn I used was Lion Brand Yarn, Tweed Stripes in Marble.  After checking the gauge I was about a half an inch bigger than what Julie recommended but I decided to just keep going and tried to make my stitches a bit tighter from that point on.  Since it is a slouchy hat, I didn't think having it a little bit big would make too much difference.  Here's the hat and the yarn I used to create it:

I love the way it turns out striped without the work of changing yarn!  The less ends you have to work in when you are finished the better off you are, I think!  It took me probably around 4 hours to make the whole hat, that's an estimate because I didn't sit and make the whole thing straight through.  Plus, I hadn't crocheted anything for over a year so I may have been a bit slow starting off.  I did alter the pattern just a bit at the end.  I had some yarn left in my skein so I did an extra row of single crochet at the very end, and I also did the last rows of single crochet in both loops instead of just the back loop as the rest of the pattern was made.  I did this so the brim around my head would fit a bit more snug and just to be a bit of a rebel...Here's my new winter hat!

Modeling my new Gumdrop Slouchy Hat!

I love it!  Of course, I love the color too, and it will look just so perfect with my grey coat this winter.  I may even get more ambitious and make a scarf to match.  So here's a big thank you to the wonderful people who run the Ravelry website and a thank you to Julie at Gleeful Things too!  Here's a link to the cool patterns you can buy from Julie on Ravelry's site:  http://www.ravelry.com/stores/gleeful-things-2  She has some adorable crocheted critters on there as well as other hats and Ipod cozies.  I'm really loving the "feathered family" which is a little family of bluebirds along with a nest to tuck them into.  I hope you'll stop by her Ravelry store and see what she offers there! 

Storms A Comin'

I thought I'd write a little about my creative process.  Sometimes I begin a design with nothing more than a basic color scheme.  I will pick a color I haven't made anything with for a while and just start there.  I organize my beads by color families mainly and I can just look through the beads in that family and find a bead that catches my eye and start there. 
Sometimes I have a particular unusual stone and when I look at it, I know that is the one that is speaking to me on that day and I will start there.  Some of my stones are so outstanding I can hardly wait to design a necklace featuring them.  Just looking at them and feeling them seems to spark the creativity in my mind.

Today I'm going to tell you about starting a different way though.  There are times when I am inspired by something around me.  The other night a storm was heading our way.  The air was heavy and I felt energy in the atmosphere.  My animals were all super hyper and I know the coming storm was affecting all of us.  I kept thinking, storms a' comin', and it hit me that I had to create something with that name, and try to use the natural energy around me to channel into this new creation.  I began thinking of what beads and stones I had that would convey my storm story.  I wanted this new design to be dark and mysterious, a bit smoky or cloudy feeling, with sparks of energy throughout.  So, I dug out any beads I thought may convey this and began.  I found the perfect focal point, a dark black agate round with a tiny streak of white running through it like a bolt of lightning.  I decided to make this hang down from some shining silver chain and began to pull together other beads to complement it.  This is what my bead design board looked like as I began...

I decided this necklace would be asymmetrical, unpredictable and a little wild like thunderstorms can be.  So I continued to play around with different designs until I had something I liked the looks of.  Using smoky quartz and dark sable pearls like storm clouds full of rain, flashes of sterling silver like lightning, and black onyx, jet and blackstone I assembled my perfect storm.  After I had a basic design laid out, I started to string it on my wire to see how the stones lay and to make sure it all worked together as a whole.  Here is the beginning of my stringing  it all together:

As I string the beads on, I have to pay attention to how they fit together.  For instance, the sterling silver tubes I used are very tiny and you can't use them right next to beads with large holes or they can fall inside of the larger beads and ruin the design.  Little details like this are very important to the overall outcome of the finished jewelry design.  I have to make sure the weight of various beads is distributed just right throughout so it will hang correctly.  Lots of things to keep in mind, not just the creative process but the technical side of things too.  Once I have the main body of my necklace completed I have to decide how long it will be, what size and style of clasp to use and how to end the whole design.   I was very happy with the outcome of my necklace.  I think it conveys the story I was trying to tell, like an artist's painting or an author's book.  I really feel like each piece of jewelry I create is a work of art.  I hope other people see it that way too and enjoy wearing it as much as I enjoyed making it.
Here is my finished Storms A Comin' necklace...

The funny thing is, it is now storming again as I write this.  A perfect evening to write about a coming storm!