Challenge WIPs

So... I tried keep up with Heather Powers' Jewelry Making Mojo Challenge, but because of the schedule it ended up being in the middle of a busy period so this far, this last week of the twelve, I've only finished a few pieces and have a few WIPs that's somewhere between finished and barely started on.

One piece that's finished or not depending on how you look at it is this circular thing.

Inspired by Heather Kingsley-Heath's books on albion stitch (which I reviewed here), I wanted to make something with inspiration from etruscan jewellery for the week 9 assignment "ancient history". If you google etruscan jewellery, you'll soon find a lot of circular pendants and earrings and it's those designs I had in made when making this piece.

The design is very simple, partially because I didn't follow any pattern so this was just a first test. At first, the design ended with a row of picots, but while it looked very pretty it didn't feel etruscan. All etruscan designs I saw had a clean cut edge. So I added a final row of beads, which I really screwed up, getting the bead count wrong so it doesn't lay flat as well as having to back engineer the thread path, making the thread too visible.

I'm hoping the next version will look better.


The second assignment I'm working on is the week 8 colour palette inspiration challenge. For it, I picked out a random palette that caught my eye. It happened to be this one from Pattern Pod (from this pin).

Not my usual type of colour scheme, but still not too out there. After looking through the bead stash and deciding I would have to start focus on my favourite techniques even if they're slow (I often stick to stringing and simple wire wrapping in short challenges in order to be sure I can finish it in time, but many times it just ends up with me being unhappy as it isn't my forte). In this case it meant hand embroidery and I have just the perfect colours of cotton floss of the palette. Finding a silk sample, I even found some grey to use.

Now... That's as far as I've come... I have a design -- flower with light yellow details for a small round brooch or pendant -- but haven't started embroidering it yet.

The metal component you can see in the first pic was just something I took out as the colour combos in this old WIP is roughly the same as in the palette and the floss -- which made it a good fit for the extra challenge of the week, which was to make two pieces using the same palette, but with different proportions between the colours.

Apart from that I'm also working on a few jewelry redos as per the week 5 assignment, but they haven't come very far either. I'm just creating WIPs at the moment -- and dreaming of starting a new big project, but feeling it'd better be left until after the harvest season is over. There's also other ideas like making a maschma/marsma that'll have to wait a bit -- though that's mostly a matter of procrastinating because I'm not that fond of sewing. Embroidering -- yes! Sewing -- meh...

Organic wrap bracelet (Jewelry Making Mojo Challenge)

Beacause of the time of year, I've not been good at keeping up with the Jewelry Making Mojo Challenge every week. I still have a WIP from the colour palette week, never got far with the redo assignment and the ancient inspiration week never got beyond a few sketches and a favourite civilization. But this week, I felt it was about time to actually start doing something, regardless of potato work. I ended up with a very simple piece, but on the other hand I like simple jewellery -- and it felt like the right style for the brand I chose.

The assignment of the week was to "Create a piece of jewelry inspired by your favorite clothing catalog or online store". Well, I'm not sure I have a favourite. What little money I have, I spend on beads and not clothes. The clothes I shop are mostly affordable basics like tops and cardies. But even if my interest in fashion is lukewarm to say the least, I do have taste preferences and ever since encounting mori kei, I've got a bit of interest in clothes back. Fashion is boring, personal style is fun. So it's finding interesting styles and gets me interested in clothes. Something that's easy to see if looking at my Hair & clothes pinboard (yeah... hair's another thing I'm not much into, mostly because I suck at making nice updos and don't like to spend time curling, straightening, drying etc).

Anyway, for this assignment, I went to my pinboard and started looking through it. What to choose? One of the lagenlook/romantic country inspired brands (Östebro, Aurea Vita, Ewa i Walla, Rundholz, Ivey Abitz etc) as they're so earthy and poetic? Artka for colourful, "ethnic" (yeah, don't like that word but as it's useful...) inspiration? No, in the end I went with a brand that makes nice, simple clothes for every day: Braintree, a brand of organic, ethical clothing.

I wanted to do something that matches summer outfits like this -- and of cause something that'd follow the same ethics as the brand. It had to be organic. Now, I'm embarrassed to say I don't have that much organic stringing materials (not to mention organic floss: do you know how hard it is to find organic or fairtrade cotton embroidery thread??), but I did find a ball of cotton yarn from Marks & Kattens (M&K Eco) which I felt was a good fit for the clothes.

It would've been pretty to finish the simple wrap bracelet off with a shiny metal charm, but I wanted to stick with the theme and go for something more green. Much metal is recycled today, but it wasn't enough for this design. So I went with an old wooden lentil bead. Wood is of cause only green if the forestry is responsible. Still, green enough for this design.

After making the first bracelet, I also made a second using a laser cut birch wood pendant I've had lying around for ages. Thought the motif suited the ideas behind the design.

The design can perhaps be a tad dull, but I'm seeing them as stackable bracelets to be combines with others -- and I had to make due with what I had at home. You take what you have.

Because the bracelets wrap three times around the wrist, they're also a suitable size for a necklace if one wishes to use it that way instead. Perhaps adding charms or pendants according to whatever fits the outfit of the day. One could of cause do that when wearing them like bracelets too if it feels too plain like this.

Playing with a monochrome and neutral palette (jewelry making mojo challenge)

I'm really getting into making long headlines... Anyway, this is some of what I've done this weekend inspired by the Jewelry Making Mojo Challenge assignment of the week, which was working in monochrome.

Now, if someone tells you to work in monochrome would you end up with something as boring as beige as your chosen colour? Surely, neutrals are best when used to enhance a colour, like when combining light grey beads with a turquoise blue focal? It wasn't my plan -- I thought about using blue to challenge myself, then I wanted saturated purples to really temt the eye and then I ended up with beige-brown just because I had to go through my flower-and-leaf-beads box and happened to pick up the zip-lock bag with button flowers... The button flowers just happened to sit so nice between the maple leaf beads in the same colour (as you can see below) and as it fitted the challenge...

Originally I wanted to make a daintier bracelet, just using one flower and a leaf on each side, but then I thought "why not see what it'd look like if I used all the five flowers in the bag?" and that's the point where I got the camera out -- in between baking; if the photos look sloppy it's because I took them while I had cookies in the oven.

This is a WIP. I haven't finished it because I'm trying to find a slightly darker cord (and hopefully a matching clasp, might be a button -- or one of the flower beads if I just had more of them). Then I'll probably knot between the trios of beads instead of using seeds like I've done here.

Just to give you a better idea of what the bead combination would look like with more colour, here are two other variations of it:

(If I'd had purple/lilac maple leaf beads this challenge would of cause have featured the flower below instead of the beige-brown beads. Believe it or not, despite my love of purple, I only own two purple leaf beads -- and they're not the right shape for this.)

I think I'll play around some more with this bead combo, see what I can make from it and perhaps see if it works with other leaf beads too, though of the ones I have I do believe maple leaves are the best option. I'll also do a few dangles with just one leaf below the flower.

We're All Ears march challenge

So... when I saw the pic Erin chose as the inspiration for this month's challenge, I felt like joining in even though I rarely make earrings. Very rarely. The deadline was yesterday and I had nothing to show. Why? "Det bidde en tummetott", as we say here (at least if you remember the old classics). Of grand ideas came a meager result. I wasn't happy with my embroidery designs, that's way. First time trying to make embroidered earrings and all and I'm simply more used to adapting stitches and motifs to bracelets, not tiny earrings.

But I didn't really give up. No, instead I decided to let the ideas mature a bit and instead make just a fun little design. Or "design", it's more of just putting a piece of tape on an earring. As you can see below.

But let me explain some more. That's a piece of printed textile tape that I pierced with a headpin on the middle and then folded together. After that it was just a matter of creating a wrapped loop and slide it onto the clip-on earrings. Unfortunately, I only had bright silver plated and gold plated ones and this earring dangle is crying out for something a tad more antiqued (tricky to oxidize plate).

Those rectangular tape pieces reminds me of the "wind catchers" on a fūrin. Guess they'll blow in the find just like them too considering how light they are.

As for making the loop you have two options: either make a small loop big enough to fit the ring, but not slide over the balled ends, or make a slightly larger loop that slides over the ball ends so you can make the earrings interchangeable. Personally I prefer the latter, though you have to be aware that it's easier to loose either the dangle or the ring when they aren't permanently attached to each other. (This is what happened with these earrings yesterday...)

That's the back of the earrings in case you wondered why I needed four photos of a simple pair of earrings.

So to conclude, not the earrings I wanted to show you today/yesterday, but still a fun little experiment I'm not too embarrassed to show people.


To see everybody else's challenge entries, please visit the Earrings Everyday reveal post!

Green wire chains (Jewelry Making Mojo Challenge)

Having worked in the potato fields this week too, I started this week's assignment later than ideal, but I did spend time thinking about it during work. I knew right away, when reading that the assignment of the week was to make your own findings, that I wanted to make a chain. I also knew early on that I wanted it to have an organic feel with wrapped links. Perhaps adding a few beads or mixing metals. As you can see, I didn't get very far this time, though.

First I made the brass link.. It has a loop on one end to connect it to the next link with so that the rings lie flat. Unfortunately the wire was very hard and I couldn't, at the moment, anneal it so instead I abandoned the chain after just one link. (Though I realise that for the sake of the challenge I could've just made a bar and pretended it was a toggle clasp, but it was chains I wanted to make.) Rummaging through the wire box, I picked up a spool of fine gauge green wire which had been lying there for ages. Time to use some of it!

At first the idea was to make links similar to the brass link, but after wrapping the wire seven times around a marker pen and wrapping it, the link felt too big and flimsy. Maybe I should twist it in the middle? Did that. But instead of just keeping it like that, it made me think of foxtail chains so of cause I had to try making one of those out of the wire links. I kind of like the result, but the chain turned out very rigid, no flexibility at all.

Instead of tweaking it to make the fit better, it made me want to try another variation where I didn't wrap the links. While I liked it, it also made we want to try a variation with bigger links.

For the last variation, I didn't fold the links and just wrapped them together in one stop before adding the next link. Again, this produced a link that feels a bit flimsy, but with thicker wire (or perhaps mixing the fine gauge wire with a heavier one) I'd probably be ok. Maybe I'll wrap a flower bead or leaves around each link to keep the fine wires together and prevent them from snagging on something.

Star stitch bracelet (Jewelry Making Mojo Challenge)

The potato season began this week (meaning I'm pretty tired today after three days of work as the first days are the toughest what with getting up early and doing a lot of lifting and carrying). Knowing that it was coming up I knew it'd be impossible to tag along with e.g. the daily FusionBeads challenges, but I do want to have some creative challenges right now so I was hoping to be able to do the 12 weeks of Heather Powers' Jewelry Making Mojo Challenge. And today I planned to sit down with this week's challenge, Back to school. Not only planned, but managed to both start and learn a new technique -- even as both bed and books beckoned me and the other blog called for attention I made it my first priority today.

This week's challenge was, as the name Back to school implies, to sit down, find a project and make something inspired by it. Soon, I knew what I wanted to do. It was the perfect "excuse" or push to try a crochet stitch called star stich. I love those kind of decorative stitches or patterns, both crocheted and knitted. As I don't knit and don't really feel like learning it (no, I only learned how to crochet in school for some reason) the knitting stitches are more eye candy. Many crochet patterns are too, but this one was so interesting I wanted to give it a try even though it's many years since I did anything other than chain stitches.


Now, it should be noted that I haven't tried anything beyond chain stitches and slip stitches in over fifteen years. Nor have I even tried making a stitch like this. I used to stick to the basic stitches. A treble crochet stitch (US) or double treble crochet stitch (UK) was probably the most complicated one even tried. I also remembered that I used to have a very tight tension, something that would'nt work with this stitch. All in all, you can see why the result is far from brilliant. It's wonky and uneven, but I don't really care. Just need to practice more -- because I'm so going to learn more crochet stitches now.

As you can see in my pinboard, I've been looking at inspiring pieces, patterns and how-tos for star stitches lately, since before deciding to make it my challenge this week. (If you read my other blog, you just got the reason for why I posted this earlier in the week.) I used the video from Drops to learn the stitch by watching it several times and then printing the written instructions (available in several languages) to have by my side when picking up yarn and crochet needle. My projects to be inspired by was from B.Hooked and Made With Love, but as I wanted a light spring bracelet rather than a warm winter cuff, I decided to only make it two rows wide (= one row of "full stars").

First I did a test pieces in acrylic knitting yarn. Not the best yarn, but I wanted a full yarn, similar to the one used in the Drops video (also, it's one of few yarns I feel ok with "wasting"). Then it was time to choose a yarn for the bracelet. That turned out to be trickier as most of my yarns aren't designed for crocheting, seeing how I haven't really done it since I was a kid. Some novely yarns would also obscure the star pattern, making the stitch a bit unnecessary compared to a plain double crochet (US)/treble (UK).

After going through the stash, I settled for an expensive linen/viscose/cotton yarn in linen, green and purple.
It wasn't until after about four stars that I suddenly realised why it was the wrong yarn... The way the yarn was printed (yes, that's what the label says, not dyed but printed) and the way the stitch is made, the stars wouldn't be in one colour as they're completed first in the second row of crochet. A green star would be mostly green, but with the top in purple and taupe. It's not variegated as the yarn in the bracelet at the Made With Love blog, which makes a charming star stitch bracelet, it's a much bigger space between the different colours -- and it just doesn't work as well. Also, after making the whole length, I realised a star looks better in solid colour or just discreetly variegated colours, not in mottled colours as this yarn has in some sections.

But, then again, this was more of an exercise to boost my creativity and learn something new than about making a brilliant piece of jewellery so I'm not disheartened by the result. In fact, it just makes me want to make more of them! Better ones, both in yarn choice and in quality of technique. And it was sucessful enough for me to want to try other crochet stitches and patterns in the same style (especially puffy flowers/stars).

The bracelet doesn't have a clasp, i.e. button, yet. Not sure if I'm going to keep it, rip it up -- or perhaps make a second row of stars as I'm starting to think it might be a better choice (and it'd be interesting to see the difference). Right now it's just about a finger wide (doesn't have rule or tape measure here to measure it) so even twice as wide it wouldn't be too wide.


So all in all, while the result may be mediocre, it was a great and inspiring exercise that got me a bit hooked on crochet again!

Challenge of Music 2014

A belated welcome to my stop on the Challenge of Music blog hop! After what seemed like an eternity of knotting (126 knots to be precise), I finally have a challenge piece to show. It's green, but not so much in anticipation of spring. The colour is in many ways the central component of this story and challenge creation and it all begins in the year 2000.

My studentmössa, "student cap", from the graduation in June 2000.

The year 2000 started, in a way, rather anticlimactic for many after the much ado about nothing 1999 new year's eve. No world ending, no civilization crushing Y2K computer bug, no epic end-of-a-millenium party. But for me and everyone else my age in this country it was the beginning of a very important time. It was our last semester at gymnasiet, the three years following the mandatory nine years of schools, and it was time to choose our path in life. As the year transcended into the Year of the Dragon, many of us were really to send in our university applications. I was one of them, the first one (and so far the only one) in the family to aim for higher education.

This is the first meaning of the green colour as I, during the last year studying at the social science - business administration programme (samhälle ekonomisk), had gotten fed up with what I thought was my path in life, marketing. The more we studied, the less it felt creative and challenging and the more it felt like just learning about how to manipulate people. Business administration felt hollow, without real meaning and importance even though I still sort of loved the dynamic world of business. And having become more and more interested in environmental issues as well as human rights, contrasting marketing with the important issues in the world, money making felt soulless. The solution came one day when our class teacher handed us a list of business admin and economics programmes at the universities and högskolor in Sweden. After looking through the list, one line stood out. It said the Ecological Economics Programme. Not knowing much about all the existing disciplines, this felt like striking gold: I could combine my interest in economics/business admin with my passion for environmental issues! I knew straight away what I wanted to study after the summer. Now it was just a matter of finishing the last courses, get my grades and my student cap and then pursue my new passion in life.

In the summer I got the papers saying I got in and in late August I moved to a student flat in Västerås, a place I couldn't even pinpoint on a map of Sweden I'm embarrassed to say...

This is where the music part of this challenge comes in. Choosing a year was easy, the year 2000 was so extremely important in my life, but choosing a song wasn't much harder. We only had the basic channels on telly (plus the danish as we're on the verge of the area where you can get their broadcasts), but in my flat I got cable, which meant getting two (then) music channnels, MTV and ZTV. I still remember two songs from that year, one mainly from the telly (Overload with the Sugabages) and one from the telly and the clubs I visited with my new class mates that autumn. This is the second song I remember from that year:

The one thing I remember from the actual music video I saw on my telly was -- yes, you guessed it, the colour green.

But there's even more green associated with the year 2000 for me. Not just the green from the song I remember so well from the dance floors and videos on telly, not just the symbolic green of my choice of studies (apart from Ecological Economics, it included all sorts of green disciplines, from environmental sciences and green technology to eco sociology and environmental history). The one thing I remember best from my first -- and so far, only -- flat was not the inside, but what was outside. A country girl moving to the big city, I still felt close to nature: on the back of the student apartment building there was a lawn and a small exposed cliff with bushes and trees. You could at times see many rabbits and on occasions even a roe or two. At the centre of it all was a big linden tree. Every time I looked out my windows, I saw that beautiful tree, it filled up the window frame.

So that my challenge piece was to be green was the one thing I knew right from the start when signing up. Now it was "just" a matter of design and finding the right components. In the end, I settled for a simple (but somewhat time consuming design) that focused mainly on colour. The colour of the music video and the colour of my memories of the year of the dragon 2000.

In a way it's also a reference to home: the paired dagger beads reminds me of bamboo leaves, like from the bamboo bushes dad planted in the gardens. I spotted that while making the necklaces so it wasn't a symbol I intended originally.

As for more references to the music, it's a song that make you want to move -- dance or just jump up and down -- and I can just imagine the necklace and the beads bouncing and moving with the person wearing it.

The necklaces is made using medium braided silk thread and small dagger beads in a very simple pattern, knotting them two and two with spaces in between. Thought about varying it a bit, knotting some daggers in groups of three or one, but in the end I kept it like this --probably because of them reminding me of our beloved bamboo. At first it was intended as a lariat without clasp, but as it tangles easily I felt it was probably better to add a clasp -- none can be seen in the pics as I want a green one to match the beads -- wear it like a multi-strand rather than wrapping it around the neck.

It's very simple, but I like it. It'd be easy add a removable pendant or little beads on headpins if I ever felt like varying it a bit.

And that's it, my challenge creation and my story of an important year in my life. It's my life -- a fragment of it captured in glass beads and silk cord. For many more stories and creations, please visit our challenge creator and blog hop host Erin's challenge reveal post for her creations and for links to the rest of the participants. Enjoy!

Challenge earrings -- or, seeing an old bead in a new light

I'm still editing my reveal post for the Challenge of Music so I thought I'd take a break from that and show these earrings instead, which is sort of a fusion between yesterday's challenge in FusionBeads' 30 Day Challenge and this week's bead soup challenge in Heather Powers' Jewelry Making Mojo Challenge. It's not much of a bead soup, just four beads, but I'll try to explain why it still sort of is in my mind. But let's start from the beginning.

These four beads come from a bag of mixed leaf beads I've amassed over the years. It contains leftover beads as well as beads I just bought one or two of (often just to see the shape or colour IRL with no project in mind). As there's so few of them, I rarely find a project for them. Especially since I don't actually do earrings (as explain in an earlier post, I don't wear earrings and don't have pierced ears), but lately I was inspired by the blog Earrings Everyday to get my little stash of clip-ons and screwbacks out.

The focal point of this design is the milky red beads. Originally, I bought them for an autumn design with matching flower beads. They're autumnal maple leaves and I never saw them as anything but. Until... Thinking about the bead soup and earring challenges, I picked out the leaf bead bag and started to think. Turning the red leaves around, they do look like some sort of exotic flower or a floral motif from old indian, persian or other asian designs. Suddenly, I had budding flower beads instead of leaf beads in the bead soup ziplock bag!

After that it was only a matter of deciding on the design.

In the end, I when with my first choice as I liked the inverted drop shape.

And that's it, the first pair of earrings I've made in over a year.

4th annual Challenge of Color

I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do something for this challenge when signing up, but the idea Erin presented for this the 4th annual Challenge of Color was so fun that I finally did sign up.  Keeping my fingers crossed that there'll be something to blog about today.

You can read about the colour challenge game here. In short it's a combination of a colour game and a word game where you start off with one word and search for a colour using it and then use the last word of that colour to search for the next colour. I'll be showing two colour palettes I made using this game/challenge here. First up is my very first try at it. (Note that you can click on the palette thumbnails to see a bigger picture of it at Colourlovers.)

Color by COLOURlovers

dragon prince  
prince charming  
charming orange  
orange dusk  
dusk of blue

Not surprisingly it started out with the word dragon and ended with something less predictable for me: blue. Read as a text it looks like notes for a fantasy story about a dragon prince watching the sunset or something.

While I didn't have any plan for the colour combinations other than to pick colours that looked pretty (and with a name that made it possible to continue the game), I did end up with a palette that turned out to be pretty easy to work with considering I decided on making this a stash busting challenge. I do have components in these colours, even the blue, but even more so I realised I've got some space-dyed viscose gimp in pretty much exactly this palette. No cheating, I swear it wasn't until rummaging through the stash that I realised it.

Ok, it's got a somewhat green tint on one side and it would've been better if combined with the light copper and montana blue cord I also have, but it's still pretty close (not sure how well the colours show up in my photos though).

So it does perhaps look like an easy challenge, but I still procrastinated and got very little done as I felt stuck. In the last minute I made this simple necklace using the whole skein of gimp. It's pretty much just folded on the middle with strands held together with rubber o-rings (quicker than whipping the ends, but wish I had some other colour than black) and copper jump rings attaching the clasp to the cord.

But that does not feel like a finished piece and I really, really wanted a pendant or some other form of focalpiece. Or maybe even just some beads randomly placed on the cords. It's just... I haven't found a focal that feels right yet. One idea was to make a clasp using a big flower or something, but there wasn't one in the right size and colour for me to use -- and I want the dark colours in front.

The closest I've found is this:

But I don't know... Just before going to bed my brain asked me why I didn't just make a pendant using my ginormous stash of seed beads and cabs. A bit too late, brain! Well, if nothing else I could just keep it as is, without any kind of focal, or wrap it a couple of times around my wrist and wear it as a bracelet instead (= no need for focals)...

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For my second palette, I picked one of my own colours to start with. Partially because I couldn't think of a good word to start with, but partially also to challenge myself to use something other than just the favourite words that kept popping up in my head that day. So that way my first colour and starting point became powdered thyme.

Color by COLOURlovers

powdered thyme  

thyme & again  
again home  
home is Argentina  
Argentina sky

Again, the challenge ended up somewhere quite unexpected. Starting with thyme and ending with the argentinian sky. And creating a lovely, soft palette along the road.
 
While I really like the colours and should be able to find quite a few matching beads or fibres in the stash right away, I didn't end up with enough time to make something. At least not something tangible, but I did do something creative with it: a pattern (using the pattern template Peonies by yoksel) that I later used in my twitter background (not that I use my twitter account, but I do have one and wanted a prettier background than the one I had). There's a special "Twitter Profile Designer" on Colourlovers called Themeleon that allows you to use your own or others' patterns on your Twitter.


Vector Patterns by COLOURlovers

That's the pattern above (click on it to go to Colourlovers and see it full scale) and here's the Twitter page:

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So that's what I ended up doing, but as I see it this will be an ongoing challenge. I'll keep doing these word/colour games on Colourlovers (here's my profile if interested) and find inspiration for my creative process in it. It's a lot of fun almost a bit addictive once you start. If you haven't tried it, you should! Therefore I want to end this post with a big thank you, Erin, for coming up with this fun, inspirational challenge for us to play with!


PS! To see all participants in this challenge blog hop, please click here.

Challenge of travel: Welcome to Bjäre!

Well, I didn't think I'd be able to make it in time with everything that's happened. However, Uggi (that's our youngest cat, who got very ill last weekend for those of you that don't follow my blog) is recovering fast and it's given me a big burst of energy. Or perhaps rather of happiness and relief, which could be turned into creative energy. So here it, my Challenge of Travel reveal!

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First of all, before I forget, I must thank our hostess, Erin, for this fab challenge! Even when so much else took all my time and energy, I never wanted to give up on this challenge as it was so fun to work on. The 2nd Annual Challenge of Travel, which is themed Staycation, is a blog hop. To find links to all participants' reveals, please check out our hostess reveal post HERE.


This stop on the hop is an hommage to my hembygd (a word that has no direct english equivalent I can think of, but it's the area where you grew up and/or live and feel a connection to, the place where your roots are). I grew up -- and now live -- in a small hamlet located in the middle of Bjäre. A place you can see every time you visit my blog as the blog header features a view from home. Bjäre is a peninsula in the northwestern corner of the southern-most province in Sweden, Skåne (also known by it's latin name Scania) -- a province once called "a piece of the Continent attached to Sweden".

Making a long story short, the province became swedish in 1658 after long having been part of eastern Denmark. Half of Skåne sits on limestone bedrock, which makes it more like the countries of the Continent than of Sweden, which partially explains the quote above. We also have a distinct dialect and our own red-and-yellow flag. I guess we are also known for affluent farmland and the food. There are many regional specialities such as luad ål (smoked eel), äggakaga (a thick panecake-y thing served with lingonberry jam and bacon), skånsk äblakaga (apple pie), spickeskinka (dry-salted and cold smoked ham), kavring (sweet rye bread), mårtensgås (goose dinner on St Martin's day), spiddekaga (can't translate, please see Wikipedia for explanation), rabbemos (mashed rutabaga/swede and potato) etc. An old scanian saying goes "goen mad, möen mad og mad i rättan ti" ("good food, a lot of food and food at the right time").

Bjäre is part of what one scholar dubbed risbygden, a region "between the plough and the forest" ("mellan plogen och skogen") with a variegated nature and a landscape characterized by smallholdings. To the south of Bjäre is a second peninsula, Kullen, which you can see as a blue mountain ridge in the above photo, separated from Bjäre by the Skälderviken bay. Just off the the western Bjäre coast, by Torekov, is the island of Hallands Väderö placed in the sea called Kattegatt (which catlovers might be interested in learning that it is thought to mean "cat hole" or "cat gate" in dutch because it was so narrow it was difficult to navigate through). Like most of the Bjäre coastline, Väderön is a nature reserve.

In the north, you can see the ever present Hallandsåsen ridge and the northern half of Bjäre is characterized by the hilly terrain created by the ridge as it stretches from the inland out towards Hovs Hallar (the place where the knight plays chess with Death in Ingemar Bergman's film The Seventh Seal). The other half is more of a flat terrain spreading towards the sea. The two most famous towns here are the market town of Båstad and the former fishing village of Torekov (known locally as Torke).

I will however not dwell there, both as the places are already wellknown and packed with tourists and as they're too posh for a country girl like me. Well, at least they can be very posh during summer. No, despite interesting things I could tell (the attempted russian invasion of Båstad 1788, the tennis and Mr G, ridiculous upper-class party activities like vaskning, the Torekov compromise that created our current constitution, the first seaside resorts etc etc), I want to focus on the little hamlets and villages around where I live. The real countryside with hamlets, small-scale fields, grazing cows, bronze age burial mounds, small forests, strandängar, trails for ramblers, farm shops, miles of 19th century stone walls, local football fields, potato fields, art exhibits -- and a clog factory (yes, I did forget the golf courses on purpose). And trolls, you can't forget the trolls.

But first, let's place Bjäre and my hamlet of Svenstad on the map.

Click for a close up. Photo taken during spring, which explains this common sight.

 
If you want to check out Bjäre on Google Maps, here's a link to get you started.

The place marked on the first two maps is our hamlet. Svenstad is a very small hamlet, has been since it was depopulated during the danish-swedish wars (over provinces like Skåne) in the 17th century. There is however one name that has made this hamlet a bit better known than most others of its size: world famous opera singer and hovsångerska -- and cat lover -- Birgit Nilsson. Birgit and her husband Bertil were occasionally our neighbours as it was her she grew up on a farm she later inherited.  After her death, the work to turn her family home into a museum started and our road was renamed after her. So one of our nearest neighbours are now the Birgit Nilsson Museum.

For a virtual view of the museum (and Svenstad), you can go to the street view at Google Maps here. A map of and info on the ancient monuments and historical relics -- mounds, stone carvings, culturally important buildings -- can be found on the Fornsök map at The Swedish National Heritage Board (Riksantikvarieämbetet) website. It's in swedish only, though.

Of cause, while this post is turning into a very long one, I still can't tell you all about Bjäre. If you're more interested, there are are few tourist websites for Båstad/Bjäre and Skåne. The official tourist website for Bjäre is Bastad.com and the official one for Skåne is Visit Skåne. Hallands väderö has its own website here while Torekov has a site in swedish here. If you're interested in hiking/rambling, there is a trail throughout the province called Skåneleden, which you can read about here. Apart from it there are several shorter, local trails. On Bjäre, it follows the coastline and there are two paths leading over the Hallandsåsen ridge towards the southern coasst. Upplev Bjäre is another tourist website, but it's in swedish only, but offer translations via Google Translate (in other words: do check it out, but don't expect great translations). The Birgit Nilsson website also have a few tips on this page, including the linen weaving mill in Boarp and Märta Måås-Fjetterström's studio in Båstad.

If you're interested in guided tours or hikes, there are many to be offered (though I'm not sure how many have english-speaking guides). Interested in local produce? So called "farm tourism" is booming at the moment and you can experience everything from farmer's markets and annual events (Day of the potato most notable here on Bjäre) to kosläpp (popular family event when the cows are let out on the pastures after a winter indoors) and culinary food hikes though the landscape. Completed with farm shops, farm cafés and countryside B&Bs. You can even pay for the opportunity to plant/set or harvest potatoes! Love of gardening? For example  Din Trädgård offer no less than four tours of private gardens and nurseries in Northwestern Skåne: Höstrundan ("the autumn tour"), Rosrundan ("the rose tour"), Månskensrundan ("the moonshine tour" visiting lit up gardens on an october evening) and Trädgårdsrundan ("the garden tour"). History and archaeology buff? Local societies like Föreningen Gamla Båstad and Bjäre arkeologivänner sometimes do guided tours in or around Båstad, talking about history and ancient monuments respectively. Naturskyddsföreningen do nature hikes, but I'm not sure if they're for members only or not. The tourist centres can also provide guide books and maps for your own explorations.

Oh, and by the way: Don't forget the artisan fair in Båstad, Hantverksmässan! An annual show during the last weekend of July where you sometimes even find a lampwork bead artist or two, but most of all handmade jewellery and kinds of other art and craft products from artists all over the country.

The most important question, then: are there any bead shops? Well, not exactly on Bjäre, but there are a few craft and bead shops nearby. On Bjäre you can find a craft/embroidery/yarn shop in Båstad and two fabric shops in Förslöv unless I'm mistaken. As for bead shops and craft shops with a bead range, I refer you to my website Svenska Pärlbutiker where you'll find a map of such shops in Sweden. 

For loads of photos of Bjäre -- Svenstad in particular -- please see the landscape photos label on this blog (you might have to scroll through a few pages to find the really good photos...). And for many more photos of the province of Skåne in general -- from the Turning Torso in Malmö to the iconic beech forests and yellow rapefields, from reconstructed viking cottages to the castles of the old nobility, from apple orchards to university buildings  -- please see my Skåne - Scania pinboard:

So from all this, where did I draw inspiration for my creation? For me, most of the things I love about Bjäre and Svenstad revolve around the nature, coastline, agriculture (cows, fields, farms, farmer families) and cultural history. Places like the burial mounds, which are ever present on the peninsula, often with troll legends attached to them , and Drottninghall with its prehistoric stone carvings shrouded in local folklore and overlooking Bjäre, Skälderviken bay and beyond that Kullen. I've written a few posts on local lore, from trolls to princess saints, which you can find here.

For the tourists, Bjäre and places like Torekov, Kattvik, Stora Hult and Båstad are places of summer and sunshine. Picturesque places of vacations. They only see one aspect of the peninsula. I see it and love it around the year. Love the changes in the landscape as summer turns into autumn, autumn turns into winter and winter turns into spring. For me, images like these are just as much my idea of Bjäre as a summer beach. Perhaps even more as that tourist summer thing is so ephemeral. The real Bjäre is easier to see once the tourists have returned home.

Now, this necklace didn't turn out at all like I wanted it to, but still showing it as it was the first idea I got. I wanted to use this hand-dyed silk thread for an autumnal design inspired by the apple orchards in Kattvik (which means "cat bay", by the way) and Båstad. Don't know if more than the one in Kattvik produce apples commercially, the rest are sadly abandoned -- on turned into a golf course. It also echoes of our own apple trees, many of which my dad has grown from seeds.

The bamboo charm is also a nod to our own garden -- I love bamboo and grew up with a couple of plants around the farm.

The second piece is also all about the flora. I chose the teal flower as it reminds me of the gardens, parks and farmland wrapped in mist in the late autumn when not much colour remains as the flowers wilt, but there's still a somewhat melancholic, serene beauty. Dew and mist drifting inland from the cold sea.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention the connection to the seaside park/public gardens of Norrvikens trädgårdar what with the sea-colour flower and beads. Norrviken have had some tough years, but in 2006 it won the award of most beautiful park in Sweden and went on to compete over the title of most beautiful in Europe, ending up in second place.

A small pic of its full length.

Then I struggled to create something with bronze. I have to include bronze as the bronze age is always just above or below the ground level here. But what to do? Not much bronze in my stash right now (had forgotten about a couple of bronze clay components I won ages ago), nothing but some round tags. But then this morning I got an idea and layered them with coloured copper tags on a flexible rubber bangle. Three charms on one bracelet, which might become three bangles with one charm each if I get more of those rubber bracelets.

As everything else is filled with symbolism, this got one too, apart from the bronze age heritage: the modern, sleek style and the colours stand for all our local artists (catlover? Check out the couple Ulla & Gustav Kraitz!). There's an annual konstrunda in Northwestern Skåne, an event where local artists open up their studios for the public, who will go around a route visiting as few or as many artists as they want. All artists are also represented in a collective exhibition in addition to the open studios. Arts represented include painting, graphics, fiber arts, sculpture, silversmithing, glass, photography etc. In 2013 148 artists were represented, at least 20 being in Bjäre as you can see in this map.

This piece isn't actually a challenge piece, it's just a test of my new Pébéo Fantasy paint, but I thought the result looked like one of our beaches on a sunny summer's day so it was a good fit here now that the test coincided with the challenge. The base is a 2x2 cm glass mosaic tile. I'll soon do a post on my first Pébéo experiments, which will include a close-up of this one.

Last but not least, the pièce de résistance. It took me a long while to come up with making this. I wanted to do something related to the stories I told earlier, the local legends and tales about Saint Tora, the stones in Hov, the trolls and Drottninghall. After a lot of thought, it struck me that a gold crown would be a possible common denominator: Tora is often depicted wearing a crown since the legends often portrait her as a princess, some of the stories about Drottninghall involve a queen and the trolls were well known for their treasures, which must've included crowns. Add to that my penchant for bridal crowns and I just had to give it a go.
 
It was a long time since I last made a crown and I'm afraid it shows, just as well as it shows that I just whipped this thing together yesterday, but I hope you still like it a little.

It wasn't my intention, but I discovered that it ended up being the same colours as our provincial flag, red (garnet) and yellow (brass)! Which perhaps was very fitting.

And so we come to the end. I hope you enjoyed my introduction to Bjäre, the place where I grew up and the place where I now once again live. Thank you for stopping by, taking the time to read and/or check out at my challenge creations!

I'm going to wrap up this long, long post the same way I started it:  

Welcome to Bjäre!