Non-bead gubbins

Where the heck is time draining away to? I cannot believe how fast the last year and a bit has whooshed by. How can doing nothing, going nowhere and seeing nobody eat time at such an alarming rate? It feels like about three days since my last non-bead post but that one was at the end of March. Crazy.

Anyway, again, not much to report. I had a trip into the city centre for an eye test a couple of weeks ago. I'd not been there since the beginning of March last year when I did the Cambridge half marathon. That event started and finished on Midsummer Common which is home to the Camcattle cows at this time of year so I stopped by to say hello to the beautiful creatures before my eye appointment.

They are Red Poll cows and they are so calm and happy munching away as people go about their business on and by the common. Here's an article about the cows from a couple of years ago.

There follows a random photo of one of my favourite Cambridge post boxes which I walked past on the way to the optician.

We have quite a few Victorian post boxes in the city and I love that they're still in use after all these years. I think I was just excited to be not in the shed and out and about and I was like "Oooh, cows! Post boxes! The Hot Sausage vendor! Greggs!" and had to take some photos to mark the moment.

My eye test was meh. I've had glasses for short sightedness for a couple of years now and I only had to wear them when I needed to; for televison watching, the cinema (remember the cinema?) and basically whenever I wanted to properly see anything further than four feet away. The optician said I've got the same problem that watchmakers have in that with the beadmaking I've spent so many years looking at stuff a few inches from my face, my distance vision has suffered. My right eye is particularly bad and I was quite alarmed when I couldn't read the top row of the eye chart with it. It's got much worse since my last eye test so I have new glasses that I have to wear all the time now, so that's taking a bit of getting used to. My up-close vision is crazy good and the new prescription enables me to wear my glasses without them interfering with detailed work, reading and the like. This means I now have to wear prescription specs for making beads so it was goodbye to my didymium glasses and hello to some polycarbonate purple clip-on and flip-up jobs that make me feel like I have the eyes of Johnny 5.

I'm sure I'll get used to the new flameworking face furniture shortly but in the meantime don't be expecting any kind of complex beads because my eyes are still in the process of reprogramming my brain as to where the flame actually is.

In crochet news...

I finished my Rainbow Sampler Blanket on Saturday! 

I got the blanket all washed and dried the same day and let me tell you it's a flipping delight to cosy under in the evenings.

I enjoyed crocheting every single row of this blanket, even the ones I had to frog and redo whenever I muffed up.

So many stitches...

...so many rows

The blanket is H U G E. It's just under two metres square so it's about the same size as a double duvet.

Thanks to Kirsten of Haak Maar Raak for such a brilliantly-written, clear and highly enjoyable pattern.

So what's next on the crochet front? Well, I'm working my way through a marvellous book called Granny Square Flair by Shelley Husband of Spincushions. I also have Shelley's Siren's Atlas book and I have learnt so much from both of these books - false stitches, standing stitches and other ingenious ways to create seamless-looking crochet. So yep, I'm making every square from Granny Square Flair at the moment and no doubt they'll become yet another blanket. I have fifteen squares done. The latest five are currently wet blocking but here are the first ten I made.

I'm using Rico Creative Cotton DK in the shade Natural. These squares are 150mm and I'm loving all the different patterns and textures. I'm also really enjoying the single colour thing, mainly because the crochet becomes all about the stitches and the pattern instead of colour, but also because there are way fewer ends to weave in!

I started a concurrent crochet project last night (I always like to have two yarn things on the go at once so I can switch between them) and this one is a way to use up some of the massive amount of spare yarn I have left over from the Rainbow Sampler blanket. The pattern I've gone for is the Flowers in the Snow blanket from the Solstrikke blog. Yes, it's another blanket but I adore the challenge of a blanket. There's just something about them. My family had better prepare themselves for blanket gifts because I already have enough of the things here. I'm very much a process crocheter; I like the finished item but I love the process of making of it.

But yes, I started making a bunch of motifs from my leftover Scheepjes Colour Crafter last night. I've put all the yarn in a box and I do a lucky dip of three colours and then make a motif with whichever trio I've picked. This way I'm not overthinking it and I've been pleasantly surprised with a couple of the resulting combinations. They give me bead colour ideas.

Alas, each one of these motifs has six ends to weave in and then there will be two more ends per motif when it comes to the joining part of the process so what I'm lacking in ends weavery on the Granny Square Flair squares I'm more than making up for here.

Right, I think that's way more than enough chatter from me. I need to get my arse down the shed, don my Johnny 5s and make some beads. Have a good day!

CiM Testing: Almandine

Almandine is another cloudy transparent. It’s the same as Lake Baikal but with way more red pigment which has resulted in this burgundy kind of colour. Unusual and very nice.

Again, no working issues.

Almandine will only be available at L’Age du Verre.

The beads were photographed indoors in natural daylight.

CiM Testing: Lake Baikal

This is one of CiM’s cloudy transparents – transparent glass with cloudy transparent pigments added to it – and it’s a beauty.

Lake Baikal is a transparent blue with red and pink pigments that give the blue a soft purple glow when the light hits it just right. It’s flipping lovely.

More hollows because I was in hollow bead mode, or to be more precise, refining hollow bead mode, and figuring out how to get consistent results with them. I get like this with certain beadmaking techniques.

Hollow beads made with various CiM colours

I’ve always been quite hit-and-miss with non-blown hollows and occasionally I like to buckle down and spend a while trying to figure out why the misses occur. It’s always a good exercise in learning how glass works and calculating what you have to do with it (or not) to get the results you’re after.

Anyway, Lake Baikal is a really well-behaved glass and a gorgeous colour. Nice one, Creation is Messy!

All beads were photographed indoors in natural daylight.

CiM Testing: Streamers

The new Creation is Messy Streamer glasses are all transparent with stripes of various opaque colours running the length of the rod. When used they result in ribbons and wisps of colour suspended in the glass.

I’ve put these together in one post because usage wise the Streamers are all pretty much the same. They melt smoothly with no shocking, hazing or bubbling. Great to work with.

This glass needs to be used carefully to get the best out of it. You can’t just slap it on the mandrel all cattywampus (I recently discovered that word and I’m so pleased I was able to just use it) and expect it to look great. You need to wrap it or layer it on with care so that the streamers can stream.

I feel that this glass lends itself perfectly to discs and hollows due to the way these types of beads are constructed. I opted for hollow beads and all of the ones pictured were made with the two disc method, not blown.

Sea Anemone

Transparent pale purple with orange, yellow, green and white streamers

Prometheus

Clear with red-orange, orange and blue streamers

Solar Storm

Clear with red-orange, orange and purple streamers

Bird’s Nest

Clear with orange, yellow, green and black streamers

Bewitched

Clear with indigo and purple streamers

Carefree

Clear with green, purple and blue streamers

All beads were photographed indoors in natural daylight.

CiM Testing: Jacaranda

Obviously I was going to love this glass because it’s purple.

Jacaranda is like a less translucent/more transparent version of Crocus.

Jacaranda is transparent in rod form but it developed a soft mistiness as I used it and it has retained this after annealing. The effect is really pretty.

The rod was ever so slightly shocky in that it fractured several times but not enough to send fragments flying. Apart from that it’s fuss-free.

These beads are CiM Foam encased with Jacaranda – three with a thin layer and three with a heavy one – and the polka dots and spacers are CiM Lapis.

The beads were photographed indoors in natural daylight.

CiM Testing: Lingonberry

Lingonberry is a transparent, utterly gorgeous cranberry pink.

When I test CiM glass I tend to avoid reading other testers’ posts (don’t hate me for this, other testers – it’s nothing personal) until I’ve used that colour myself, so I’m not influenced by what others have done or discovered. After I’ve used a new Creation is Messy colour and I’m writing up my findings on my blog, I go and fetch the link for the colour on the CiM website and I have a read of how other testers found the glass. Pretty much every tester mentions that Lingonberry has a ‘butterscotch cast’ or that it yellows in certain lights. I didn’t find this at all. I notice that Alexis Berger used Lingonberry to make a glass flower on her Hot Head torch and she didn’t get the butterscotch/yellowing either which makes me think it could be a working temperature thing? I work slow and cool (not the Fonzie kind of cool) so maybe that’s a reason for no yellowing?

Now, on to the unfun part of my findings… . I made six beads with Lingonberry. All of them were CiM Foam encased with a thin layer of Lingonberry. (The polka dots are Reichenbach 104 Deep Black if you’re interested.) As I was cleaning the beads three of them cracked. The other three are okay at the moment but that doesn’t mean they won’t develop fractures further down the line. We shall see.

The cracks are compatibility ones as opposed to thermal ones. The photo below shows the fractures.

Obviously this only means that I found that Lingonberry has compatibility issues with Foam. It doesn’t even mean that others couldn’t combine those two glasses and create stable beads. As I always say, there are so many factors and variables involved in beadmaking – torch, working style, technique, what phase the moon is in etc – and two beadmakers can use the same two glasses but get entirely different results. So yeah, I got cracked beads but that doesn’t mean you will; I’m just telling you what I found.

The beads were photographed indoors in natural daylight.

CiM Testing: Scotch Broom

CiM describe Scotch Broom as a transparent yellow but I’d say it’s more translucent. It’s my favourite kind of yellow; a warm, rich mango one.

The glass is very well-behaved. It does require a little bit of striking to get an even colour but a waft through the cool part of the flame as a final step is all that is required to do this.

These beads are CiM Foam (white) encased with a thin layer of Scotch Broom. The polka dots are Reichenbach 104 Deep Black and the spacers are Effetre Black 064.

Scotch Broom is a delicious-looking glass and I do hope I’ll be able to get my hands on some.

All beads were photographed indoors in natural daylight.

CiM Testing: Marmalade

Marmalade is a transparent rich deep orange. It's pretty much the same hue as Kniphofia. It has a lovely working consistency and it’s not at all shocky or bubbly. It does require striking but it’s an easy one to strike. Like the Kniphofia, I just used it as I would any other transparent and by the time I was done making a bead the colour was even and rich all over. Do note that I work quite slowly, though, and I swear that’s the key to a good strike. Cooler, slower working conditions where you repeatedly remove the bead from the flame and then reintroduce it (which is what naturally occurs when you make an encased bead with surface decoration) allow the colour of a striking glass to develop without much effort.

These beads are CiM Foam (white) encased with a thin layer of Marmalade. The polka dots and spacers are Effetre Dark Periwinkle 222.

Marmalade is a glorious orange and I like it a lot!

The beads were photographed indoors in natural daylight.

CiM Testing: Robert E.

Robert E. is a transparent medium blue. It’s lighter and brighter than CiM Sapphire. The glass is slightly stiffer to work with than the Effetre transparent blues but it doesn’t haze or fizz like they often do. No shockiness. Robert E. is a very nice colour and a well-behaved glass.

These beads are thin and thick layers of Robert E. over CiM Foam. The spots and spacers are Effetre Dark Grey 252.

The beads were photographed outdoors in natural light.

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.