October means acorns

September came and went in the blink of an eye, and I never blogged once.

At the start of September I went down to Southampton to celebrate my niece Robyn's 21st birthday (21!) and I was I picked up from the railway station by my nephew Dylan who is now driving and about four inches taller than me. Honestly, every time I see them I feel more and more like an aged old aunt.

We had a lovely weekend with pub shenanigans, a barbecue, cake and lots of laughter.

Obligatory sisters photo of me, Sal and Em

Robyn lifting Em

Smudgy lens photo of Dylan and me

Enca, Sally's beautiful pussycat

It was also my birthday in September which passed without fanfare or much ado. I struggle a bit with birthdays as I get closer to the age my mum was when she died. I woke up on my 48th birthday thinking "When Mum was 48 she didn't know she had just five years left" which I realise is a very morose and morbid thought but I am an eternal pessimist so it's pretty standard thinking material for me. I keep telling myself that when I make it to 53 years and ten days I'll have conquered this ridiculous mental barrier I've erected for myself which I know is no way to think about life but I just can't seem to help it. From what I can gather this is a pretty common thing in people who have lost parents or older siblings so if anyone else out there can relate – solidarity.

In glassy news...

I've been making acorns and oak leaves. I've made these on and off over the years, iterating and tweaking the design as I go and I think I reached peak faff with them this time. They are a true labour of love.

The glass components are shaped by hand, by which I mean I don't use a press or mould for them. Each oak leaf shape is painstakingly sculpted by building up the leaf one blob of molten glass at a time and shifting everything into place with a graphite paddle, a brass shaping knife, a razor blade and gravity.

In the past I've made my acorns and oak leaf headpins straight onto copper wire. For ages I've wanted to be able to make sterling silver ones but the amount of heat and reheating required to make the glass components means that sterling silver wire would melt in the flame, so for these ones I made the acorns and leaves on the end of a very thin mandrel which results in a glass channel in each piece. This is thoroughly cleaned and dried and then I use a very high-quality epoxy glue to firmly fix the sterling silver wires in place. Once everything is cured, cleaned up and polished, I assemble the necklaces.

Each necklace has a brown acorn and a transparent oak leaf the colour of caramelised sugar. These glass components are affixed to a soldered ring which is threaded onto an 18 inch (45cm) sterling silver belcher chain. All metal is sterling silver apart from the acorn cup bead cap which is high-quality .999 fine silver plated lead-free brass.

The acorn and oak leaf necklaces can be purchased in my shop.

And there's good news for my American customers - I can post things to you again. Hurrah! All you have to do is place your order as usual and the checkout will add the 10% import tax to your order. There is also a £1.20 handling fee per US order which is also added at checkout. In effect, you are paying the tax to me, which I then forward to the Royal Mail when I pay them for the postage for your order, and then Royal Mail will pass that on to Donny Trump's Postage Tax People further down the line. In effect, that should be it and you should have nothing else to pay and your parcel will hopefully reach you in a timely and smooth fashion. I have asked the two US customers I've posted to since the taxes came in to report back to me to let me know how the process went but alas, I've heard nothing back from them, so I'm hoping no news is good news.

In knitting news...

Fat chunky big knitting! Robyn asked me if I could knit her a blanket (aged old aunt skills) in really big chenille yarn. 

It's like knitting with broom handles

The needles are 25mm (ten times the size of sock knitting needles) and the yarn is like dressing gown cord and knitting with them makes me feel like a Borrower. It's coming on very quickly, though. I don't quite know how I'm going to deliver it to Robyn when it's done. I might have to pack it in one of those sucky-out-the-air vacuum bags? I'll worry about that later.

I think that's it for now. I'm flying to Belfast tomorrow to visit Emily for the weekend. I'm saying that like I'm really cool and blasé with travel but inside I'm nervous as heck. I'm getting the train to Gatwick (never been there before) and then I'm flying on my own (not done that for nineteen years) so I keep getting a flurry of butterflies every time I think about it but it'll be fine, won't it? I don't actually hate flying - it's all the getting there and the security and the waiting and all that guff that I stress about. It'll be fine. It will.

Have a good weekend and I shall see you soon.

Turning beads into things

Eighteen years I’ve been making beads. That’s ages. I was twenty-six when I started lampworking! At the beginning of this I was already making jewellery and the idea was to make my own beads to use in my own designs, and I did and I do, but the whole way along I’ve been thoroughly sidetracked by making and selling mostly just beads.

'Blue Confetti' bracelet

'Elephant' earrings

Oftentimes I'll have been making beads and thinking about how I would put them into jewellery and what other beads and components I'd put with them, always telling myself that I can make more of those beads and make that jewellery another time, but I never did. Turns out I don't even like doing bead remakes for myself!

'Lustre Dapple' earrings

'Pink Spotties' earrings

So I’m trying to steer it back to my original plan. I’ve been increasingly disillusioned with lampwork – not the actual act of it – but the constant trying to make something new and the feeling of pressure (from myself) to always be making what I think people will buy.Those are two really great ways to stress yourself out!

The other week I decided to make beads that I would like to turn into jewellery. The photo above of a little dish of beads from a few weeks back was the result and I turned pretty much all of them into wearable things, and I really enjoyed it, so that’s what I’m going to focus on doing for the time being. That’s not to say I won’t have any loose beads for sale – I’m sure I will – but there is going to be more jewellery than loose beads. For now. Until I have another beadmaking paradigm shift. Or retire. Who knows? I’m not a planner, I just do stuff.

'Wood Sprite' necklace

'Spotties' earrings

I've got a few pieces of jewellery in my shop now, including all of the pieces pictured throughout this post. I need to make some more bracelets and necklaces as I currently have only one of each for sale, so do stay tuned.

Beady stuff and unbeady stuff

I've not got a lot to report on the bead front. It's not so much that I haven't been making beads, but more that I've been making lots of the same beads over and over.

I made lots of the 'Shoreline' hearts pictured above and I turned some of those into necklaces.

Now I'm on the Bumblebeads. I don't know how many of these I'll make. To be honest, sitting in the shed in these temperatures, making the same bead over and over again is already starting to do my head in and I've only spent two beadmaking sessions on the bees, so I'm not holding out much hope for vast amounts of them.

That's why I'm not taking orders for the bees. I've found that I can bear the shed heat until it hits about 36°C and then my brain gives up which makes my hands give up so that's why I'm only making as many as I can make. I appreciate that people are disappointed that they can't order as many of the bees as they like, when they'd like to, but hey, you should have realised that I'm an awkward pain-in-the-arse beadmaker (and person in general) by now. You can tut at me and call me ridiculous – it's fine.

I did make a one-off red heart bead that I love. The glass here is CiM Heartthrob and it's such a glorious shade of red.

In other news, running in the heat is HARD. I ran seven and a bit miles in it yesterday morning and sweet flipping Jesus, it was difficult. The heat has got me to the point where I'm walking back from runs in my sports bra like some kind of runstrumpet and I don't even care. We're due to have this weather for another fortnight so I'm not discounting the idea of actually running in my bra at some point.

I finished reading J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy and oh my word, that is some moving stuff. The book is like a cross between a gentle Sunday night BBC1 drama and Trainspotting. After that I read Cara Hunter's Close to Home, which is gripping, compulsive reading and quite short, and it's good but I'd only give it four stars due to its ending.

I also listened to the audiobook of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. I'd seen so much talk about it that I had to see what all the hype was about. I was expecting it to be typical chick-lit, but it's not really. Well, the general feel of the book is quite chick-lit I suppose, but the main character is an unusual one which made for a refreshing change. Well worth a read or a listen, I'd say.

Last night I started the first of the Harry Potter books. I know I'm even more behind in this than I was with the House-watching thing but I was missing J.K. Rowling's writing so much I just had to Potter up. I'm about a third of the way through The Philosopher's Stone and I'm really enjoying it.

Right, enough tippy-tappy-typing as my dad-in-law calls it – I must go and make Bumblebeads. Enjoy the weather, if you like that sort of thing, and if you don't, stay cool.

Implosions

Yo! I've not blogged for a few days as I've got a bad cold and I've generally felt like not doing much but lying under a blanket on the sofa making "Nuuuurrrggh" sounds whilst coughing my spleen up and swearing at Chris for passing on his germs to me.

As such, I've not made many beads but the ones I have made have all been my 'Anemone' implosion ones.

My personal favourite from my most recent batch of Anemone pendants is this 'Sky' one. It matches my beloved Cambridge Satchel Company satchel perfectly.

I'm a bit obsessed with things matching my satchel. My Doc Martens do, my summer shoes do, sometimes my nail varnish does and the next pair of Cons I buy will too. I will be known as 'The Woman Who Matches Stuff To Her Satchel Woman", which is fine by me.

There are a few Anemone necklaces left in the shop. Each pendant is strung on a twenty inch sterling silver ball chain. Anemone necklaces are £18.00 each.