CiM Testing: Beeswax Misty and Beeswax Milky

There are two versions of Beeswax, which is an opal yellow.

I found Beeswax Misty to be quite soft to work with. No shockiness. The beads in the photo at the top of this post are just plain Beeswax Misty with polka dots in Effetre Turquoise 232. As I expected it to, Beeswax Misty reacts with stringer; you can see the polka dots are slightly darker in the middle. The beads above were photographed outdoors in the morning sunshine.

CiM Beeswax Milky

The milky version of Beeswax reminds me of the lemon part of a lemon meringue pie. This glass isn’t as soft as its misty partner but it reacts with stringer way more.

These beads are plain Beeswax Milky with polka dots in Effetre White 204. I had to go really careful and slow melting the dots down flat otherwise they distorted quite badly. No shocking, no scumming.

The Beeswax Milky beads were photographed indoors in natural daylight.

A bit of a crochet post

I finished my sister's Aria blanket on Friday. It was a lovely day here on Saturday so I washed the blanket and spread it out on a duvet cover on the patio to dry in the sunshine.

Washing knitted and crocheted items always brings them to life. I didn't block either of my Aria blankets as such, by which I mean I didn't stretch and pin them. Just a wash, a spin and a gentle smoothing out did the trick in this case, and made the slight scrumples and scrunches disappear.

Big thanks to Lucy of Attic24 for such a lovely pattern - so lovely I made it twice.

I started another crochet blanket project on Saturday and this time its a big one. This thing is going to be about the size of a double bed sized duvet. The pattern is the Rainbow Sampler Blanket by Kirsten Ballering of Hakk Maar Raak.

The blanket is made up of stripes featuring various crochet stitches in a host of wonderful colours. I'm making it in the same colours and yarn as Kirsten used for her original blanket. The yarn is Scheepjes Colour Crafter and my word, it is the softest acrylic I have ever encountered. And yes, that is a 6mm hook for working DK yarn. In both knitting and crochet I always have to go up at least one needle or hook size to get the gauge required. My natural yarncraft tension is tight like a tiger!

In bead news, I will be adding a few beads to the shop tomorrow at 16:00 (UK time). I do have a mailing list that you can sign up to if you'd like to receive news of shop updates. The emails are very short and I don't pester you on a daily basis. This mailing list is not my old one (pre 2020) so if you were signed up to my previous mailing list and aren't getting emails from me, that'll be because you need to subscribe to the new one. You can do that here.

Big thanks to everyone commenting on my blog posts, and also to people who subscribe to the blog by email and who send me replies. It's really nice to know that people read my ramblings and it's always great to have a little conversation with you.

CiM Testing: Kniphofia

Kniphofia (Latin name for the red hot poker plant) is a deep, rich, translucent orange.

Kniphofia melts smoothly with no shocking and it’s got a nice working consistency. Like other transparent oranges, it does lose its colour as you work and it requires a level of striking to get it to return but fear not, it’s dead easy to strike; just use it and it’ll do the work for you. The photo below shows a bead with its polka dots added, before I melted them down flat, and you can see that the colour of the Kniphofia is uneven. I didn’t do anything to rectify that except for melting in my polka dots (quite slowly because that’s how I work) and by the time I’d done so the Kniphofia was a uniform orange all over.

These beads have a core of CiM Foam encased with a thin layer of Kniphofia. I stuck with the red hot poker theme and used Effetre Pastel Yellow 418 for the polka dots and spacers.

The first two photos were taken indoors in natural daylight and the one just above was taken outdoors in full sunshine.

CiM Testing: Burnt Sugar

Burnt Sugar is a transparent brown that has a beautiful warmth to it due to its subtle coppery and almost rosy tones. It has a great working consistency – not too stiff and not too gloopy – and it melts smoothly without any scumming or hazing. Not at all shocky either.

These beads have a core of CiM Foam encased with a heavy layer of the Burnt Sugar and they’re decorated with polka dots in Effetre Red Roof Tile 440. The spacers are plain Burnt Sugar and they are slightly paler than the main beads. I reckon that this is because the longer you work the glass, and the more you cool and reheat it, the warmer and more saturated the end result will be.

Burnt Sugar is a glorious colour and a really well-behaved glass. I love it.

CiM Testing: Avalon Misty and Avalon Milky

Avalon is a very pale green and there are two versions of it - misty and milky. The photo above shows the misty version.

CiM Avalon Misty

Like most of the other CiM opals Avalon Misty does that ‘batik’ effect thing with stringer. This bead is pure Avalon Misty with scrolls in Effetre Lavender Blue 247.

In the top photo and also in the one above you can see the yellowish flash that the CiM misty opals have when the sunlight shines through them. Avalon Misty is a very pretty glass that was fuss-free to work with. Guaranteed to get you humming Roxy Music too!

The milky version of Avalon is denser opacity-wise than its misty counterpart, but still a bit see-through.

CiM Avalon Milky

Avalon Milky is such a lovely pale mint green and I always want to pair this kind of colour with lavender.

The beads here are plain Avalon Milky with polka dots and spacers in Effetre Lavender Blue 247 and you can see that the polka dots have done that darker-in-the-middle, slightly feathery batik thing.

Avalon Milky was a tiny bit bubbly but that’s pretty standard with a lot of these translucent glasses. No shocking or scumminess, though.

The picture below shows an Avalon Milky bead next to an Avalon Misty bead so you can see their differing opacities and that ethereal opal-like flash of the misty version.

CiM Avalon Milky (left) and Misty (right)

All beads in this post were photographed indoors in natural daylight.

Blog like no one is reading

Chris asked me yesterday how my blog revival was going. I told him that next-to-nobody is reading it or interacting with it but that I don't care and I'm carrying on regardless because I find it comforting. It's nice to put a few thoughts and pictures out there, I think. Little snippets of life recorded until the servers are no more. I'm enjoying reading other people's blogs too. Bring blogging back, I say!

Crochet in the morning sunshine

I've not got much to report because nothing much is happening. I've been getting up early to crochet before work because the mornings are lighter earlier and once the sunshine has woken me up I'm awake for good. There's no point lying there in bed effing-and-jeffing at Twitter and the news on my phone, so I get up, make myself a cup of tea, feed Nigel, then get a couple of hours of crochet done.

I'm enjoying the new CiM colours and there are some really lovely ones in this batch. I'm in a polka dot mood this week so every passing bead is getting polka dotted to within an inch of its life.

This bobbly one is polka dotty too, just with added raised bumps. In case you're interested this bead is CiM Heather with polka dots in CiM Quetzal, topped with CiM Aegean.

I'm very much liking the springtime. Last week the flowering cherry tree I walk past on my way to the shop had burst into full bloom.

I love this particular tree because we used to have one like it at home. My Great Uncle Bernard gave it to me when I was really small. I got a flowering cherry and my mum got an apple tree. Here's a photo of me watering one of them just after we'd planted it.

Socks and sandals

Both trees grew to be quite large over the years and sadly we had to have them taken down not long before we moved as the roots were doing damage to the lawn. Still, whenever I see flowering cherries I always think of the one at the bottom of our garden.

Anyway, I'm off to clean some beads and take some pictures of them and then I should be back later with another testing post.

CiM Testing: Coming Up Roses

Coming Up Roses is a transparent pink glass that has a slight purplish hue to it. It has a nice smooth, not-too-stiff working consistency and it wasn’t shocky but the rod I had did have a fair few microbubbles in it. They’re not a major issue, though. Remember that you’re looking at a photo of beads that shows them way bigger than they are in real life. The beads here are only 12mm diameter. What I’m trying to balance here is telling you to not let the tiny bubble thing deter you from using this very lovely colour, with simultaneously letting you know that the tiny bubbles are there.

These beads are CiM Heffalump encased with Coming Up Roses, with polka dots and spacers in Effetre Lavender Blue 247.

The beads were photographed indoors in natural daylight.

CiM Testing: Dollhouse Misty and Dollhouse Milky

Dollhouse is a very pretty rose quartzy pink glass and there are two versions of it - misty and milky.

Dollhouse Misty has the translucent opalescent thing going on that CiM does so well.

Dollhouse Misty
Photographed indoors in natural daylight

These ones have a core of CiM Heffalump encased with Dollhouse Misty, decorated with spots of Effetre Violet 272. The spacers are plain Dollhouse Misty. 

Dollhouse Misty photographed outdoors

I had no troubles at all with this one. It melted nicely with no shocking or scumming.

Dollhouse Milky is milkier than its misty counterpart, and more opaque yet still translucent. A really lovely colour and glass. Again, no trouble with it at all.

CiM Dollhouse Milky

I just made solid beads with it, decorated with polka dots in Effetre White 204.

CiM Dollhouse Milky

Both photos of Dollhouse Milky were taken indoors in natural daylight.

The photo at the very top of this post shows the misty and milky versions of Dollhouse next to each other.

Nothing in particular

In bead news, my bundle of Creation is Messy testing glass arrived this week and it's going to keep me busy for quite a while. I made a start with the testing and the first colour I tried was a misty opal pink called Dollhouse. I'll give it, and its milky opal counterpart, a proper write-up in a separate post next week.

In a recent post I mentioned my Akihiro Okama 'Sakura' bead and I said I'd take a photo of it to show you. Here it is:

I bought this bead in about 2006. It's quite big and it's very beautiful. It has a 4mm hole and as you can see I just used a couple of sterling silver round beads and wired it very simply as a pendant and it's strung on a long chain.

In crochet news, I finished my Attic24 Aria blanket a couple of weeks ago. It's such a joyful thing!

I'm pretty sure that no two squares are the same.

When I first posted photos of the blanket in progress on my Instagram stories, my sister fell in love with it so I said I'd make her one too. I started hers about ten days ago and this time I made all the inner circles first...

...and then I added the second colour to each one, stringing them in order on a circular knitting needle as I finished them. I got this tip from one of Amanda Perkins' books. There are a hundred squares in the picture below but I managed to fit the remaining forty-four onto the metre long needle. 

I'm currently on the adding-the-third-colour-to-each-square-and-joining-them-as-I-go stage and I have thirty-six squares left to do.

In other news, I've not been running for a few weeks because the last couple of times I went out I came back all stressed out about people who'd given me grief for not wearing a mask. One woman got pretty flipping shirty about it. I wasn't huffing and puffing and I'm super conscious of keeping my distance from people, but still you can't please all the people all the time and all that. After this I tried running in a mask and I got two miles in and couldn't catch my breath. The mask gets absolutely soaked with wet breath condensation and it is zero fun trying to breathe through that. I decided that running with a mask was a no-go so for a few runs after that I stuck to quieter routes at quieter times but people were still tutting and giving me filthy looks so I thought I'd give the running a break until lockdown restrictions are eased and people will be less freaked out by a ploddy-jogging middle-aged woman.

I don't know when lockdown restrictions are easing and frankly I've lost interest in any kind of dates, numbers and what's what with this stupid bloody virus. Sick of it. I went back to the foodbank on Friday for my first shift since my arms malfunctioned and one of the other volunteers who also runs asked me if I was still running. I told him what I've just told you about the angry woman and his advice was to "Just ignore anyone who shouts at you. Get back out there!" and I think that was the boot up the arse I needed to get my trainers on and go for a jog. I did just that today.

Spring is officially here and my run this morning was so springtime with its sunshine, birds singing and this carpet of cheerful narcissi. I ran my standard route and nobody shouted at me and none of the other runners I saw had masks on either. Good times.

I'm off to complete the census now and then tonight is Line of Duty night and I am mighty excited!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

And the winner is…

I’ve just drawn the winner of the heart necklace and that person is…

…Uyen! I’ll drop you a message on Instagram to get your delivery address.

Thanks to everyone who entered the draw. I shall do another one soon.

 

More dottiness and some new tools

Remember the green and lavender bead from the last post? well, it turned out like this. I really love that mossy, slightly yellow green against the lavender colour. Definite springtime vibes.

I'm still making big hole dotty beads.

I think some of them are a bit too large for bracelet charms but they will work nicely just strung on a chain, and of course jewellery makers can turn them into pendants. One of my favourite pendants is one that I made with an Akihiro Okama big hole tombodama bead. I must photograph it and show you.

But yes, dotty big hole beads. Some of them have so many dots. The one on the left in the photo below has 288 dots in total. That's a lot, right?

Those raised dots are made up of an opaque dot which I flatten with a tool before I add another dot of transparent glass. I've always flattened my dots with the paddle of one of those pairs of tiny tweezer mashers that I've had in my tool arsenal forever. Thing is, even though the mashing paddle area is only about 7mm x 10mm, this is a tad too big when you're working as small as I do and sometimes I can't flatten one dot without the paddle accidentally touching another dot. For as long as I've been lampworking I've always intended to buy a set of stainless steel sculpting tools and this week I finally got round to it.

They look a bit scary and surgical, don't they? Some of them have pretty sharp blade parts which will be very useful for making indentations.

There's a good selection of poker-prodders and some lovely ones that end in a tiny paddle shape about 3mm to 4mm wide which is just what I needed to flatten my dots.

That one that's second from the left in the photo below will also double up as a tiny spoon for eating tiny puddings, so that's handy. 

I bought the set of tools from Amazon for £15.99. Happy with that. The tools are really high quality and they come in a lovely little case.

In crochet news I've completed all 144 squares of my Aria Blanket and I'm now working on the border.

I was feeling quite sad about nearing completion of the blanket as it has been an utter joy to work on but my sister fell in love with it when I posted it on my Instagram stories, so I offered to make her one. I'm really pleased that I get to crochet all that colour and cosiness all over again. Hurrah!

Don't forget the necklace prize draw if you've not entered it already. I'll be drawing a winner tomorrow night so head on over to throw your name into the hat.