Thinking of making a needle book and maschma

I feel like I tend to blog about things I'm thinking of doing rather than showing the results of what I have done. Partially it's because I procrastinate, partially it's a matter of not having the time to do it so I'm stuck just thinking about it and partially it's because I write to try and sort out things I hesitate about. Writing about it sorts out the thoughts -- at it gives you motivation to produce a result once you declare to the world what you are about to to do as well as it's an opportunity to ask others for input.

If you follow this blog you must have noticed that the idea of a needle book and thread storage have come up. Last time I mentioned making a maschma, for example. This post is about those thoughts once again.

I've been thinking of making a needle book for some time now, but never come up with a good design. Because I have both beading needles and hand embroidery needles it's also a matter of whether to make one book for all the needles or make two separate ones. Right now I'm thinking of doing one just for my beading needles as they make up 80 % of all my needles (and most of my embroidery needles are collected in one place anyway as I bought them in a silk ribbon embroidery collection -- the big yellow package).

Being a tool junkie extends to needles too: I have at least half a dozen of needle packages, not including a zip-lock bag of collapsible-eye needles, DIY wire needles and a big-eye needle. There's the regular long beading needles in size ranging from 10 to 15 (!), sharp bead embroidery needles, ballpoint bead emboidery needles and curved needles. Have I forgotten any now? Regardless, right now I just put all the needle packages in the organza bag, having tied them together with a string through the holes at the top (most packages have a hole, if not I punch one).

But what about the threads? The main reason I stick with this organza bag solution is that it all fits in it, all my needles and all my beading threads, and it's easy to carry from one spot to another. It's just that they're all jumbled, I'd like a bit more order. Just as with my seed bead storage dilemma, it's a question of finding a good, cheap -- and easy to carry -- solution that can accomodate different shapes and sizes as I use more than one type of beading thread. There's the K.O. spools, but also carded thicker K.O. thread and smaller bobbins (One-G etc). Plus a couple of big spools of YLI jean thread and medium-sized spools of a Gütermann thread I use for bead crochet.

It's still easyier to find the right thread so I'll make the needle book project a priority over this: removing the needles, the organza bag might be as good a solution as any with the amount of beading threads I have.

But my ideas doesn't end there...

Apparently, one thing that's become popular among embroiderers in Sweden recently is making a marsma or maschma; a small embellished roll or tote for emboidery paraphernalia (needles, scissors, threads), probably of sami origin, one might call it. And I think it might be very useful for me as a seedbeader too as I like to bead in couches, beds and everywhere else where I can't take my whole bead stash with me. So one of my newest ideas is to sketch a maschma with room for a couple of tubes or flip-top boxes of beads, one or two bead thread bobbins and a pair of scissors. (Did I forget something?) So far I haven't figured out the design or even what material I want to use. And partially I procrastinate because I love to embroider, but don't really enjoy sewing.

To illustrate what a maschma looks like, here's a screenshot of a picture googling I did in order to find some inspiration for my beader's maschma. Click on it for the full size.

Looking at the pics I'm thinking that with the right material it could double as a small bead mat too. I rarely use bead mats (hence why everything here has a few stray seed beads embedded in them), but they can be useful so why not? I like things with double -- or more -- purposes. A bit like the Helen Gibb kit for a needle case with bead pad [which not longer is available on her website so no pic to show].

These are some of the things I'm thinking about while working -- it might not be a fun or wellpaid job, but at least I'm free to think, sketch ideas in my head etc while I'm doing it. Not that I always think of beads and stitching, of cause, but it's a recurring theme most days. I might not be showing many finished items as I'm focusing on other things right now, but I have so many ideas buzzing in my head. If only I could cure my bad habit of procrastinating...

Moon swallow

I had a little fun with a pressed-glass bead. The picasso effect wasn't very strong on this bead so the bird silhouette wasn't very visible so I thought "why not fill it with Pebeo Fantasy paints?" So I did. Using blue Fantasy Moon paint to be precise. At first I wanted to mix colours, but it didn't take much paint to fill up the depressed motif so I stuck with just one colour.

An old bead mix

I was taking some bead photos today so I thought I might as well also snap a few pics of a bead mix from my stash. Bought it ages ago and unlike some mixes I haven't used it not because it isn't good, but because it was, at least at the time, too good. I.e. I wanted to save it for something special as it was both pretty and not very cheap. Also, at the time I was a seedbeading newbie who couldn't combine these various shapes and sizes into a piece the way I an today -- though I'm also considering using them for stringing.

Unlike many mixes, the base of this mix is matte beads. Very matte metallics in bronze and chocolate brown. Then there's matte metallic iris, copper-lined, and shiny colours adding  touches of black, bronze, purple, russet etc. The drops feel a tad malplaced, but other than that it's a good mix of shapes and sizes with a focus on the slightly chunkier (what with cubes and big seeds) -- and best of all, no bugle beads. There are mixes where bugles fit in, yes, but most of the time they're not adding anything to the mix.

(Yes, you may ask where I got it, but it was years ago and the shop no longer sell bead mixes so...)

Lost and found

Some times you put things in storage and forget about them. It wasn't until today I was made aware of some such things that I had forgotten about. The reason for those bags my sis found was forgotten was one many probably are familiar with: moving. When I first moved out at age 18 to go to uni, I took loads of unnecessary things with me to fill my small student flat. Other things stayed behind, such as a bunch of repurposed knitting yarns I never used after becoming old enough for find finger knitting to be too childish. One thing I took with me was a bag of fabrics and yarns.

Some of the fabrics are leftovers from stuff we made in school (the blue, floral bag with my name on it was the one we used in syslöjden to store our WIPs, pincushions etc in) or scraps I bought way back in the early 90's with my pocket money. I can even remember exactly when and where I got some of them! There's one cat fabric I found after digging through a huge pile of scraps in a fabric shop. There are even a few pieces from the fabric I sewed my ball gown in when we were having the end of school ball in 9th grade (=last mandatory year in the swedish school system and last year in högstadiet). The crochet yarns are remants from a time when I was fond of crochet as a kid. Some are yarn I bought, but most of the stash are yarns I got from mom and a few are old yarns that's been lying on a shelf in the house since my grandma and aunt died in the 70's.

When moving back after uni to attend another uni closer to home, a lot of stuff just stayed in the moving boxes and bags as it wasn't my plan to stay for long. I wanted to have another flat of my own, as any young adult would want, but with the housing situation around Lund being what it was and what with being able to save a lot of money by living at home and commute to uni I stayed. Then I found it hard to get a job and was forced to stay as there was no choice. Still, most of the stuff stayed in the boxes and bags as I either didn't need them (no need for an additional set of drinking glasses and cutlery) or still nurtured a hope to move out soon, making unpacking a waste of time. The bags and boxes where stuffed away here and there. In fact, it wasn't until my sis found the bag of fabric and yarn today that I knew some of the bags were put away in that particular storage space where she eventually found it as part of the big clean out.

It's a big nostalgic, finding many scraps of fabric that I bought 20 years ago. After finding some of my old stash in my personal storage, I sort of thought that was all I had left. Despite still missing the blue bag (see above), which I sort of knew still was filled with fabric or yarn, it seems like I accepted that what I'd found was everything. That the rest was somehow just dreamt up or that I forgot using it for sometimes years ago.

But now it's all here, out in the open and accounted for. It's really high time to use them now. Surely they can't just go back in storage another 10 or 20 years! Ok, some fabrics are no longer to my taste, but others are still as good as when first bought. Can't wait to come up with an idea for them...

I've been wanting to do a rag rug for some time now and because of that lamented not having enough rags. Well, it looks like I can find some more rags now. Not the cat fabric, of cause, and there are other nice, large pieces of fabric that are too good to be torn into rags, but there seems to be scraps I could sacrifice for a rug.

My main reason for doing a rag rug isn't my green background, actually -- nor that I've found some inspiring rag rugs online. It's simply that I want to make a rug or two for my bedroom, but with all the cats that treat rugs like the perfect place to barf -- or, worse, pee or poo in protest of the sub-par litter box cleaning -- I don't want to spend much money on it. None, really. And making my own rag rugs could both a fun and economical option.

Just need to find enough useful rags -- and pick a techniques as there are many fun ones to choose between: crochet, knotting, weaving, locker hooking, tambour, braiding etc.

Bicoloured loom knit sampler -- part 2

I've made a new sampler while figuring out if it'll be possible to get yarn to finish my cushion (see last post) or if I need to add another colourway (that doesn't match). Did the same mistake as last time by working late at night and thinking I'll remember exactly how I did the different stitches... Some tests didn't work out so I'm just going to show the parts that were successful, not the whole sampler.

 First of all, I learned the figure 8 stitch. Above you can see it done in orange yarn to the left and mixed orange and purple yarn to the right.

 I also made a variation making a row of figure 8 stitch (orange) followed by a row of basic knit stitch (e wrap, purple).

 I then made yet another variation of basic knit stitch (e wrapped). Let's see if I remember... I made a row of orange and then added purple to every other peg (odd numbers) followed by a row of purple with orange on half the pegs (even numbers). At its best, it gives you a fun pattern as the one you can see on the left side.

 The last thing I tried was making some sort of lacy pattern. I'd seen a YT video about eyelet stitch, but couldn't remember how it was made. So I just made up something, inspired by something faintly remembered from another loom knit video, trying to create a pattern making alternately big and small gaps. You can see the pattern a bit better when stretching out the knitting a bit, like below.

 Personally, I prefer the wrong side of it.

And, yes, I'm doing this without a basic knowledge of knitting vocabulary -- something I realised could be a problem when finding a beginner-intermediate knit loom pattern using knitting abbreviations and when learning that stockinette stitch means slätstickning, which I've of cause heard of but just barely knew what it was. So far, however, my knitting analphabetism isn't a problem, I'm just playing around and don't worry too much about advanced patterns or learning about yarn weights or anything. It's fun, it's easy -- and I'm not that interested in learning to knit as I'm content knowing how to crochet and french knit, so that's enough for me.

Accidental soundtracks

Do you ever do something while listening to the radio and it keeps repeating one song so much it sort of becomes your personal soundtrack for a specific thing. I associate the online/computer game Peggle with Fullmetal Alchemist and more precisely with the third intro (featuring the song Undo by Cool Joke) as I was watching the anime -- fell so in love with it! -- while being hooked on Peggle. Send someone away by José Gonzales feat. Embee is a song that makes me thing of another little online game I got addicted to (but can no longer find). Many of the current top hits are something I associate with a theme or activity online. And right now, somehow, the song Counting Stars (by One Republic) is repeated so often on P3 Star that it's become the soundtrack for my research/wanderings into mori kei. There's no objective reason to link the two, really, but in my mind the two are for ever intertwined now.

Sometimes the only stars you can count are the ones you put up yourself indoors. Though my string lights doesn't feel that romantic or mori (in my mind, I'm no mori kei expert). I'd like something like below in the window -- cute, simple and poetic. But then I remember the cats...

More dreamy lights from my Candlelight and light ideas pinboard:

What can I say? I love string lights...

Beautiful wool rovings

Have you seen those braids of combed, often hand painted, (wool) rovings that are sold in e.g. Etsy's handmade supplies section? They look so soft and the colour schemes are often gorgeous, but despite all that I've just looked at them, sighed and moved on. Why? Because in my mind they're only good for one thing: spinning yarn -- and I have no interest in spinning yarn. Besides, sometimes the finished yarn isn't as pretty as the unspun rovings. Oh, and they can be used for felting. Forgot about that as the one type of felting that interest me, nuno, require a tumble dryer according to most tutorials, which I don't have and so I've never pursued it any further.

But now I look more closely at rovings as I earlier in November/December stumbled over some pins of weaves which included bits of wool roving. After that I started search on Pinterest and googled for more pics of weaving, embroidery and other crafts made with rovings and now I know better: roving can be a really good material even for those that don't spin yarn or felt. It can be woven, knitted, crocheted, couched (an embroidery technique), locker hooked, braided (and stitched together) and much more. If you scroll down a bit on my Embroidery and fibre inspiration board you'll some examples of it. Except for examples of weaving with rovings which you find in the Woven pinboard.

Now I just hope combed wool rovings (like the ones in JaimeMarie's photo above and the ones I've pinned here) aren't too expensive. As I've not had an interest in them before I've never checked the prices -- and now I'm afraid of doing it!


Photo: JaimeMarie C [via Flickr.com], Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0

Dark mori

Mori kei and dark mori has found their way onto my clothes pinboard.

I'm not mad about clothes. To me they're not something to spend a lot of time and money on. While there are clothes I absolutely love and drool over, lamenting the fact I can't afford them, I'm not like many other girls/women who seems so very dedicated to clothes or at least to shopping for clothes. It's even worse with shoes, though that's partially because I can't find the type of shoes I really like and the one type of shoes I do love, the clogs, aren't suitable outside the farm. Of cause it's partially a money and body issue: if you don't bother to look at clothes because you can't afford them anyway or the designer clothes doesn't go up to your size, you don't develop an interest in them.

It doesn't however mean that I've got absolutely no interest in how I dress or in finding a good style. If I had the money, I would go hunting. Not for a lot of clothes, just enough to have a wardrobe for various occasions in a style I feel comfortable in. And that's the thing: without money to buy that style and relying mostly on a handful of plain, cheap clothes (some of which I've had since the 90's) for any occasion when I interact with other people and a bunch of boring mainly hand-me-downs of some sort or other for wearing around the farm. I have no clothes that really express, nothing that says something about who I really am. Well, of cause they do to some extent, especially my long skirts that family members and relatives "complain" about (I wear long skirts in winter if I want to, thank you very much!). But it's just skirts similar to what I like as I make due with the cheapest skirts, not the skirts that are the most my style. What I wear is plain and I don't really want to be seen as plain when that's not really who I am. Shy, yes, but not boringly plain as my clothes seem to signal to others.

Of cause, it would be easier to wear something my style if I could find my style and find the clothes that express something I want to express. With just a small interest in clothes, you don't always pinpoint a style as it's more about finding something simple and cheap that will do, something that can be used for a long time and is acceptable e.g. in school or at work. I have of cause found pieces of clothing I like and that's a start and I do drool over certain styles like goth and steampunk, but while I love the drama they haven't felt like an all around look for me. Those clothes are good for dressing out, but not dressing up so to speak. Love them, but couldn't see myself in them every day or even every weekend.

But recently something happened. Enlightenment.

Just before the new year, I happened to stumble over a new word, mori, and a search later, I found something that really struck a chord with me: dark mori. This japanese street fashion style is also called strega or black forest mori. It's a darker version of mori kei ("woodland style", often just called mori or, when referring to someone wearing the style, mori girl), which is a very romantic and rustic countryside look in white and light pastels, vintagesque and boho, layered and loose-fitting -- many times crinkled or slightly tattered -- clothes in natural fibres. Frills and laces can often be seen, though some seem more prone to love the sweet look with lace and subtle prints while others seem to prefer cleaner lines and solid coloured fabrics. Mori can be dreamy, victorian-inspired or modern minimalist with nature, countryside and green living as the common denominator. Some would probably see it, and especially dark mori, as a boho style and others would spot american hipster styles in the japanese street fashion style. It also share a characteristic with lagenlook what with the focus on loose, layered clothes. It's similar but not the same as the fashion style natural kei. The lifestyle associated with mori is one of closeness to nature, a love of reading and writing, bike rides, forest walks and tea drinking. Perfect for daydreamers and introverts with its focus on the little things in life and activities in solitude as well as meeting friends.

Cutesy mori kei and white-is-the-only-colour rural romanticism can be too sweet for me (and is far from the countryside as I, a farm girl, know it!) and that's where dark mori comes in. Sure, mori kei can include earthy purples, montana blues, burgundy, brown, deep green and other colours than white and beige but it's still a lot about those bleached neutrals. Dark mori adds a bit of darker colours (goth black as well as other colours, e.g. purple, brown and red), depth and a raw, worn look -- and it has an extra dimension that's really my style: it draws inspiration from the dark, shadowy forest rather than the light, sunny forest of the mori girl's daydreams. Fairytales, magic, mysticism  and european folklore/folktales are some of the sources the style finds inspiration in. All of mori is inspired by fairytales, but dark mori brings out the darker and more dramtic sides of them. If the ethereal mori girl is the sweet princess waiting in a sunny glade for her prince, the dark mori girl is the nyctophiliac or witch who doesn't shy away from the shadowy parts of the forest. It's more goth, to compare with another subculture.

But don't take my word for it, I'm a newbie in the mori world and hardly the one to describe or define it! You can read more about this relatively new style for example in this Goth (Stereo)type infographic, at Carnevale Salt and Strega's Forest. Notice that there is a certain width in the style and the three examples offer slightly varying definitions. The last one being more goth than the first two, for example, and focusing more on the dark or sometimes even grim strega, i.e. witch, while the other two focus more on romantic dark fairytales and nature.Of cause, you can see styles that would fit in the dark mori style, but which aren't called that and created by people that have never heard about mori or dark mori.There's also no definite line between mori and dark mori, it's more of a sliding scale where some are more drawn to lace and romance and others to the darker sides of things.

To some extent, I've always dressed a bit mori-esque at home with layered clothes and a love for long skirts, natural materials and at least a partial love of muted colours such as linen/sand and puce. (And an attitude against ironing as unnecessary, resulting in crinkled skirts.) And it's always been mixed with my love of nature, the countryside, poetry, fairytales and the calmer joys in life (reading, picnics, hot cocoa, sitting with a cat in the lap). Though my look has been rather plain with more jersey and other cotton knits that anything else at it's cheap and widely available in the mainstream mail-order catalogues and mall stores -- and that's all I can afford.

On the other hand, I've had the goth side of me since my teens, which has always loved the total opposite or the mori kei colours: black, dark purple, burgundy etc. And while I still drool over dramatic goth clothing, the dark mori style is so much more me. It even ties in with my penchant for (or rather, on-and-off relationship to) the steampunk style with it's more earthy layered and tattered victorian-inspired styles in shades of brown and brass. It might seem a bit boring to some, but I really love it.

For me, this was an epiphany of sorts. Not only did someone just put together so many of the things I love and find interesting into one concept for me to define with, but it also helped me find a focus on my style and a new keyword to explore. Not just my style of clothes, which was great, but my style of everything from interior design to jewellery. Not that all my jewellery is dark mori style -- far from it! -- but it's the kind of stuff many of my WIPs are about and defining a focus on a style has really been inspiring for me. It brought back some things I haven't thought about in a while such as runes, magic and the old witchcraft traditions which then mixed with the love of dark fairytales, which is always in the back of my head. And with a word or label to put on something, you can suddenly search for more things in the same vein and you can use it to find others who like the same things you do.

So really, I'm starting this year by taking up some of the thoughts, ideas and styles that have floated in and out of my life the last 15-20 years or so, tying them together and -- hopefully -- being able to more firmly express myself and shape my own style. Some start their year by finding a word to live by, I'm starting my year with a concept to explore!

Ok, just one more

I should be getting ready for bed soon as I have to get up early tomorrow, but after writing about the differences between the men's and women's Pantone palette and turning off the computer, I couldn't stop thinking about comparing not only the palettes on a whole, but some of the colour combos I made. Side by side, just to show what a difference a small or big change in hue can do.

And here's the result. Guess I should've broken it down into seperate images and kind of regret using the flower brush instead of just a simple round one, but this will have to do for now. You might find it easier to focus on each pair if you block out the rest with your hand or a piece of paper.

 Did I miss any combo you wanted to compare? Hope not. Felt it was too much to do them all, especially if only, say, the light violets changed as they're so similar. Because of that a couple of the mutual colours from the palettes (Sand, Freesia aren't represented.

As some sort of conclusion, I could perhaps say that seeing the colour combos from the men's palette post and the women's palette post paired up like this makes me compare the combos and pick favourites. Sometimes I prefer the "feminine" version and other times I prefer the "masculine" version. Paired up like this, they compete with each other and sometimes a stronger colour makes the first version I made look boring, even though I still prefer it. The Cayenne - Celosia Orange - Radiant Orchid combo in the bottom right corner is a good example of that. Cover the "masculine" version and the "feminine" version looks much better (in my opinion at least). And in the Radiant Orchid - Cayenne - Hemlock combo, you can really see how the Cayenne looks darker in the "feminine" version and pales against the stronger colours in the "masculine" version.

And that's it. I promise it'll be the last post on colour combos from the Pantone Spring/Summer 2014 palettes. Not the last mention of it, especially as I like to challenge myself with the Color of the Year every year, but I won't -- probably -- keep making posts on the same colour combos over and over and go on about the palettes themselves.

Playing with the men's palette for spring

Ok, so I had to play a little with the men's palette too now that it have such a yummy purple. And, again, not the best graphics -- if nothing else I should make more space around each colour mix -- but I hope it isn't too messy.

While I've found it fun and inspiring to keep up with Pantone's trend colour reports, it's really just the last couple of years that I discovered the men's palette. It's in many ways an appendix to the main palette, which is applied to women's fashion, make-up and interior decorating. No wonder perhaps, considering how conservative men's fashion can seem compared to women's. But since at least a few of the colours in the palettes are different, it's interesting to look at both. To compare and to get even more colour inspiration.

And this is the result of my playing with the men's palettes. I've tried to avoid combos just using the colours that are the same as in the women's palette as you can find those combos in yesterday's post, but I did include a couple -- including the yellow and blue you might have thought as swede would pick instantly (but that would be forgetting I'm a skåning and we have our own red and yellow flag -- also, I find the combo too bright for my personal taste).

As you can see above, I really like Magenta Purple this time. It was also nice to work with Comfrey, a deeper (or as Pantone calls, it "masculine") version of the women's Hemlock. The only other diffrenece between the two palettes is that this on has a hue called Purple Haze, "a deeper, stronger version of Violet Tulip", which you get in the women's palette. Your really need to put them side by side -- or preferably overlapping -- to see the difference:

Well, why not compare all three differences between the palettes side by side while I'm on Pixlr Editor anyway?

Ok, yesterday I said Magenta Purple was more of a totally different purple than just "a more robust version of Radiant Orchid" as Pantone called it, but now that I see them like this I do see the "kinship".

But do you know what the image above also illuststrates? Pantone's view on feminine and masculine colours. I'm sure there'll be many women, however, that prefer the less pastel-y "masculine" palette. As a kid, I would've been drawn to the top row, no doubt, but today I really like the more vivid, deeper colours of the second row. It's just recently I started to like pastels -- to an extent -- again so I don't hate the calm colours of the upper row, it's just that I like some more character in my colours sometimes.

The best thing is perhaps what happens when you mix the two:

Yin Yang à la Pantone?

You know, in a way that last pic might be one of the most inspiring palettes I made from the two Pantone palettes. It shows how colour combinations is just as much about different hues/shades as about different colours.

So, your turn: what do you think about the women's versus the men's palette for spring?

Playing with Pantone's spring palette

Ok, before anything else, I must point out that the mess above wasn't made with the intent of ever publishing it online. It looks chaotic and it's hard to separate one colour mix from the other, but I hope you will show forgiveness considering it wasn't made to be seen by anyone but myself. So that was that out of the way, now we can continue, starting from the beginning

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I was just reading Brandi Hussey's blog post Pantone's Spring 2014 Colors, which prompted me to also play around with the trend colour palette and see what colour combos I could find and be inspired to use.

As I mentioned in a comment to her post, I agree that the palette for the coming spring season doesn't really have a huge wow factor. Some complain there's too many pastels, but with my love of nature, antiques and romantic styles, it's ok I think. The light blue is boring, but on the other hand it can be useful mixing with other, more interesting, colours. And at first, I wasn't over the moon about Radiant Orchid being the colour of the year 2014, but I think it looks very nice is smaller portions -- such as beads! -- than when first seeing the big blocks of colours Pantone put up on their website and on Pinterest.

All in all, I like that there's two purples -- warm, pinkish Radiant Orchid and cool, bluish Violet Tulip -- even if I wish we got the Magenta Purple from the men's palette too (think Swarovski's Blackberry pearl and you can picture magenta purple). Cayenne was the colour that surprised me the most as I fell for it instantly. Love it, really. Judging from the image above, Cayenne and Violet Tulip seems to be my two favourites. And an icy green is never wrong, either on it's own or to enhance a cool purple or add a pinch of foggy colour to a light grey.

There's two blues too. It was just when starting to write this I realised my total neglect of Dazzling Blue when playing with the palette. No wonder, really, seeing how blue isn't my favorite colour. Even if I'm attracted to some blues (e.g. dark indigo, foggy grey-blues) and find that many blues are great for enhancing my beloved purples, roses and greens, this particular blue felt uninspiring. But let's see. Let's actually use that too:

That's better, it needed to be included. And while I might not like to use all of these above, it does show off the colour as a useful one despite my scepticism. As you can see, I'm reluctant to mix blue and orange. That's a very strong mix of colour (and one both my almae matres -- Lunda university and Mälardalen university collage -- used). Too much for me.

Still, the two most bright colours in the palette, Dazzling Blue and Freesia, are the ones that inspire me the least. At least the bland Sand and Paloma (light grey) are useful neutrals and the low key pastels like Placid Blue and Hemlock have a nice, soft calmness that can be a nice addition in some designs.

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By the way, I mentioned the men's palette. Below is a comparison between the women's (the palette you'll see most of online) and the men's palette. The women's palette is the top one.

 -

See what I mean about Magenta Purple and Blackberry? They guys' violet is called Violet Haze and called "a deeper, stronger version of Violet Tulip" -- and Magenta Purple is called "a more robust version of Radiant Orchid". Well, hopefully we gals will get a deeper, darker purple too in autumn if Swarovski is any indication.

Anyway, my favourite colour combo from the trend report would actually be Radiant Orchid and Magenta Purple.

Told you I love purple the most...

Weaving beats wheels in my book

You know how a lot of people will tell you the wheel was the greatest invention (though some will agree it was not much use without the invention of the axis)? Well, I think one of the greatest inventions of mankind was weaving. With weaving (and braiding/knotting, which is related), we could suddenly make all sorts of things: baskets, chair seats, fabrics, nets, sails, latticework for fences and walls, sieves, ribbons, rugs, bags etc etc. Even birch bark shoes. First perhaps things of function, of great importance in daily life, but humans being humans we also started to create things of beauty -- not just beauty in function or functional design but in pure aesthetics. With the technology and art of weaving, people could make everything from woven jewellery and hair braids for personal adornment to essential everyday items to cool artwork.

In a way, I'm in love with weaving, adore it and am fascinated with how it can be so, so simple and so, so complex -- despite once having to solva, string the warp threads into the heddles on a large  loom, in school (it's perhaps the most boring part of weaving) as a kid and then never getting to test it. In the syslöjd (approx. needlecraft class) room at school, the loom mostly, well, loomed in a dark corner, rarely being used by the pupils. Perhaps partially because it's time-consuming to set up and usually you let kids weave a bit, creating e.g. a placemat, one after the other so kids couldn't take their piece home until all the pupils have done their bit and the warps could be cut off. Or maybe the grown ups were tired of the, at that time, subsiding weaving fad.

I'm too young to remember the weaving craze of the 60's and 70's when weaving suddenly became cool again with the new "hippie" ideologies of counter urbanisation, anti-corporate ideals, eco-friendliness and an a renewed interest in traditional handicrafts. At that time, many so called vävstugor, weaving cottages, were created were people who couldn't afford or didn't have the room for large heddle looms could come and weave. Today there are more than 600 such vävstugor in Sweden with more than 6000 looms.

But despite that impressing figure, the interest in looms have declined or at least it did in the 80's and 90's when I grew up. Just a few years ago, it would be easy to find looms for free as people who inherited them just wanted to get rid of them -- for lack of interest in weaving or lack of space. "Take it or it's off to the tip with it", they'd say. We got a (professional) loom from an old woman that used to work for the Märta Måås-Fjetterström studio that my dad reclaimed for the top-quality wood. Ok, it wasn't in pristine condition, but even if it had been, she or her family would've found it hard to find anyone willing to take it and keep it as a loom.

But growing up in an age where weaving was kind of outdated as a craft, I still do have a few connections to the art and craft of loomwork that might've subconsciously affected my views of weaving. First of all, we've probably all played with little cardboard weaves in preschool, weaving with  Secondly, anyone involved in hemslöjd (traditional [domestic] handicrafts) will tell you Sweden has a long and strong weaving tradition, it's part of our cultural heritage, but most of all I live in an area where women in the old days often worked as weavers at one point or another in their lives. We still have two very different types of weavers left: the linen weaving mill in Boarp and the older and more famous studio of Märta Måås-Fjetterström. One of our neighbours, who passed away many years ago, used to be a weaver as was the weaver of another later neighour of ours. My mom used to help an elderly woman, the one mentioned above, who was a weaver and even had her own loom, a gift from the former employer upon retiring if I remember correctly. And, even closer to me, my aunt was once a weaver at the famous Märta Måås-Fjetterström studio. She still has a big (expensive) carpet from that time in her home -- and we have a small tapestry, probably meant to be a cushion, of the same make.

I don't know if it's directly affected me, but seeing not only woven objects but also the traces of the weavers and tools more or less everyday must have made me aware of the beauty and necessity of weaving, consciously or unconsciously.

The Märta Måås-Fjätterström studio in Båstad

Now, while "large scale" weaving on a proper loom (i.e. big heddle loom) is something I can admire others' work with, I'm not even tempted to try it myself. Personally, I'm more interested in working on the smaller scale, weaving ribbons (without a loom), working with small DIY looms using all sorts of mixed fibres, novelty yarn and unconventional materials (see the pinboard above for examples of that), having fun with these looms, giving the bead loom a new chance -- the latter is something that I've been especially interested in after seeing work using other beads than the traditional seed bead, spotting the Mirrix bracelets mixing fibre and beads and finding Erin Simonetti's blog.


I've got a soft spot for yarns, threads and fibres in general but try not to becomes as obsessed with that as with beads as it could end up being very expensive... Weaving, embroidery and jewellery-making are all great crafts that give me excuses for buying new fibres and lend themselves to a lot of experiments with said fibres.

While my book stash is vast, I've never really bough any books about weaving -- with one exception: a tiny  60's or 70's book on weaving on small DIY looms that I got at the library sale  (the annual "buy it before we throw it in the incinerator" drive). It was a few years ago when my interest in weaving hadn't bloomed yet and I just happened to stumble upon this thin book and thought it might be useful for future beading experiments. At the same library I once borrowed a jewellery-making book which included some less than conventional woven projects using e.g. leather cord, shards of bricks (!) and copper wire. It was called Smycka dig, out of print since ages. On of the co-authors also wrote this book with even more unconventional materials called Väv som aldrig förr.

As for books to buy, there aren't really many on my wishlist at the moment. Mostly find inspiration online and techniques either online, in my library book or through trial and error. I've thought about Time to Weave as works like this one (page 7 of the preview, sorry found no diret link) really catches my eye and is about the modern, non-traditional but still simple weaving I could see myself doing. As for beading on a loom, I've looked at Alexandra Kidd's book a few times because it includes weaving with not just seeds (love the texture in the bag on the cover), but never figured out if I'd find it worth the money or not.

But for me, experimenting with weaving is not about either doing a woven piece or do bead looming, it's also about adding it to the things I want to try in order to create fun and original surfaces for my bead (and thread) embroidery. Having a limited fabric stash, I've though about painting, dyeing (scratched that out and went back to painting), adding texture like this or this, making tissue paper fabrics or napkin decoupage on fabric, doing something cool like this -- or weave ribbon/fabric strips like this.

But, all urges to weave aside, I'll probably first and foremost always be an admirer of the work made by others. And I hope to always be able to see beauty and admire the invention of weaving even in the most mundane of everyday objects. Weaving as the magic that turns threads, birch bark strips, straws, rags, ribbons and everything else into everything from useful and essential objects to pure eye-candy artwork.

Sequintastic September 2013

It's finally here, my sequintastic post. Many things have come in the way. First I was ill and unable to dedicate much time to creating, then I almost forgot about the hop because I was ill for so long and then yesterday I got the dates mixed up so while I had taken all the photos, I never got as far as culling, editing and writing a post about it. But now it's finally here!

Because I was unable to make a finished piece, but really didn't want to withdraw from two blog hops in a row (had to bow out of the cabochon challenge), I figured I'd instead write a bit about what I'm doing right now. At the moment I'm at the planning stage, sketching on a bead embroidery piece using some of my newest sequin flowers. Not yet having decided on a design, it's all been about trying to combine the different components in various ways to find something I like. Below you will see glimpses from this creative process.

(By the way, I don't know how the photos look on your monitors, but for some reason the white backgrounds change colour on my monitor when I upload them to Blogger. Really annoying and I only hope it doesn't look as bad on your computer as it does on mine...)

The first thing I did was to gather the beads and sequins I wanted to use for my design. I started with the flowers and then the beads pretty much added themselves. They were bought on a separate occasion and never really intended to be used with the sequins. The baroque seed beads from Miyuki were bought because they were new and I was dying to see them IRL. Chose the three colours I liked the best and two of them just happened to match the flowers. Similar thing with the twisted bugle beads. I never used that kind of beads, but I was curious about the gold antiqued matte finish and I could only find that in this bead type. Again, just a coincidence that they happened to go with the flowers and pearlescent big seeds. Lastly, I added the dark leaf sequins (purchased the same time as the flowers).

The beads picked themselves you might say. But now the question was what to do with this mix of components. First I just began by combining them in simple designs that would work just as well as strung or linked jewellery as embroidery borders. After all, just because I want to embroider doesn't mean the components want something else.

My first ideas for Sequintastic September when I signed up had been about using the flowers for a simple but cute necklace. While it was now set aside for this new idea about an embroidery (of some sort), I still wanted to test a few design ideas. And as said above, they could also work in an embroidery.

Sidestepping the chronology I'm trying to follow in this post, I also ended up testing what the flowers would look like doubled. Something I didn't think about before doing the experiments below where the sequins ended up nestled in one another.

I also had to test what the baroques would look like as flower centres. An idea that popped up pretty much for the same reason as above. The beads tried it themselves first. They are a tad too big, though. Unless flower is transformed into a ring of sepals and the baroque bead becomes a berry. Like, say, herb paris (Paris quadrifolia, ormbär). The first version would be great for something like that, though perhaps with another, more round, bead.

After the first little tests of combining components in different ways, it was onto thinking about the over all design. I had no idea what I wanted to actually do beyond using the flowers and then add matching beads to support them. So what do you do after you've poured out all the sequins and beads for a "group shot" (see initial photo)? Well, why not just mix them up and play with them?

I scooped them up, poured them out and took photos from different angles. Then I mixed them and spread them out in a new way, took more photos and repeated.

 I had taken a brown beading foundation and "antique gold" tulle with me and I tried the beads on that as well as on the white photo background. Unfortunately, the tulle didn't really feel as golden and metallic as I wanted against the sequins and beads. This photo session wasn't just about finding inspiration for my design, it also taught me I have to find another foundation to bead on. One that will truly complement the components as this looks like a bead embroidery where the surface isn't encrusted with beads/sequins but one where the surface will be an important and visible part of the design.

Maybe it's the autumnal colours, maybe it's the season -- or maybe it's because I often want things ordered and tend to lean towards that even in my creative work whether I like it or not -- but I fell for the "forest debris" look. Beads in layers, flowers and bugles tumbling around freely. It does however pose a big challenge for me: how to I keep this look once I start beading, knowing my subconscious urge to order and sort everything in neat groups and lines? This is a mild chaos without any deliberate pattern. Easy to do when mixing and pouring out the beads/sequins on the table, but harder to keep when stitching each piece onto a foundation. One by one they might want to line up neatly instead of lying on top of each other and fight for the same space. Those initial simple designs would be oh so easy to make, but this feels really hard to recreate. 

While the photo/design session didn't result in a fully formed plan or even a sketch, it did give me many ideas about how to use the flower sequins and also some general ideas for other, future embroideries. And of cause it was also fun and relaxing to just play around with the sequins and beads like this. With a camera by the side it's easy to capture different stages of the "play session" for future reference -- and the photos in themselves can become the result, the artwork (especially if they're better quality than mine; bad light sources and quick editing makes for poor photos). Even if I end up doing something way different, I also have these ideas captured in images for me to enjoy.

~*~

That was all from me. Thank you so much for stopping by (perhaps for a second time even as I didn't have my reveal up in time)! I hope you have enjoyed it. Now be sure to visit the other Sequintastic September participants too!

List of Sequintastic September participants

Sarah (our hostess) http://www.saturdaysequins.com/

 

Dawn, http://designsbydawnmarie.blogspot.com

Mandi, http://www.beadcircle.com

Skylar, http://brisingbeads.blogspot.com

Cyndi, http://beading-arts.com

Karen, http://baublicious.blogspot.com

Lily, http://thecreativeklutz.blogspot.co.uk

Eleanor, http://eleanorpigman.blogspot.com

Kepi, http://kepirasmussen.blogspot.com

Maneki (that's me),  http://wildrosesandblackberries.blogspot.se

Tammy, http://innermusejewelry.blogspot.com

Therese, http://theresestreasures59.blogspot.com

Liz, http://beadcontagion.blogspot.com

Jasvanti, http://jewelrybyjasvanti.blogspot.com

Mischelle, http://micheladasmusings.blogspot.com

Dee, http://agapecreationsjewelry.blogspot.com

Labweorc, http://labweorc.wordpress.com

Blog hop participants without blog share they creations here.