Favourite Flowers

My little sister Emily is visiting for a few days which is lovely. We don't get to see each other much and it's fab to have her about the place. When she arrived on Tuesday she brought me a gorgeous bunch of bright red tulips - my favourite flowers.

Today we popped into Oxford to look for a bridesmaid dress for her. We found a couple of potential frocks but no purchase was made so that job is still on the wedding to-do list, as are many many other things ....

In bead news I have another set of polka dotty beads, this time in purple and spearmint.

I reckon this'll be the last polka dot set for the time being - I'm all dotted out!

CiM Testing : Pumpkin

You know how I feel about yellow beads - I blogged about it a few weeks back. As I said in the comments for that post I am drawn to warmer, slightly orangey yellows and CiM Pumpkin is one of those.

Pumpkin is a rich, smooth mango colour. It also reminds me of tinned peaches! Below is a set of test beads that I made in order to show you how Pumpkin compares to other yellows and yellow-oranges :

Beads from left to right : Pumpkin, Pumpkin etched, Pumpkin thinly encased with Vetrofond clear, Pumpkin thickly encased with Vetrofond clear, CiM Creamsicle, Effetre 412 Dark Yellow and Effetre 416 Bright Yellow.

As you can see, the Pumpkin is lighter in colour and less streaky than the Effetre Dark Yellow. I found the Pumpkin very nice to work with - it's got a middle-of-the-road consistency. It encases really well too and looks absolutely beautiful when it's etched.

Pumpkin has an element of translucency about it and that is always a sign that the glass may not lend itself to the kind of fine, crisp stringerwork that I am do. My suspicions were confirmed. The photograph below shows Pumpkin as polka dots on a CiM Peace bead cased with CiM Simply Berry.

As you can see, the dots have lost a bit of their yellowness and as linework the stringer loses its crispness and definition. That's not just limited to Pumpkin - a lot of the 104 yellow-oranges do the same thing. As I say, I think this might be related to its slight translucent properties.

But as a base glass and for raised dots and relief work CiM Pumpkin is a stunner. The Pumpkin beads below are encased with a thin layer of Vetrofond clear and the stringerwork and spacers are CiM Lapis.

If you're looking for a smooth and fruity yellow-orange then I suggest you give the lovely CiM Pumkpin a whirl. I can imagine that it would look ace with bright pink, rich purples and darker oranges and reds.

New Video : How to strike CiM 'Sangre'

I've just uploaded a new video to my YouTube Channel.

After my CiM Sangre post I had lots of emails from people asking about how you actually strike this glass. It's one of those things that is easier to show you rather than to put into words so I've made a video.

Apologies for the aeroplane noise near the end of the movie. We live quite near an airfield so it's a pretty regular occurrence. You can still hear me, though.

I hope you find the video helpful.

Wendy does it again!

I was totally converted to toe-up sock knitting when I purchased a copy of Wendy D. Johnson's 'Socks From The Toe Up' book last year. If you're new to sock knitting I cannot recommend that book highly enough.

A few months back I was pootling about on Amazon and I saw that Wendy had a new sock book called 'Toe-Up Socks For Every Body' in the works. Oh, imagine my sock joy! I immediately pre-ordered it on Amazon and it finally arrived a few days ago. The book is wonderful. It contains twenty one patterns for some of the most lovely socks I've ever seen, all of them knitted from the toe up. I was all in a quandary about which pair to attempt first so I let logic take over and I'm currently working on the first pattern in the book - the 'Rosebud' socks.

As the book title suggests 'Toe-Up Socks For Every Body' contains patterns for women, men and children and it also contains lots of helpful information on designing your own socks.

If you're a fellow sock knitter I am sure you'll love this book. Or if you're a new sock knitter why not head on over to Wendy's fabulous website and try out some of her free patterns and who knows, maybe you'll become a toe-up convert too!

Lots of Lonelies

I've been sorting through my Lonelies jar and the beads I'll have for sale tonight will be strands comprising of this little lot.

My Lonelies are experiments, one-offs and leftovers from sets. All of these beads are first quality and I’ve sorted them into colour groups so the strands are all from the same colour family but they’re all a bit mix-and-match as opposed to my normal homogenous sets. So these would be great if you like making phone charms, charm bracelets and using the odd lampwork bead here and there.

These will be for sale on my website at 8.00pm (UK time) tonight but be quick, though because whenever I normally list Lonelies they fly off the virtual shelf!