Gimme a V!

Here are some pics as I've been progressing....

It's been going very well. The part I was really dreading was shifting the piece when I ran out of room in the front. I'm supposed to loosen the loom a little bit, then pull what I've done so far to the back. I was so scared I was going to loosen it too much, and/or twist the strings, forcing me to start over. I swear I gave myself an ulcer doing this part. But it went very smoothly (sigh of relief).

Over 10,000 beads & counting.

Some More Knitting

I made a baby sweater & toy monkey for my friends' new baby, Luca. The sweater was pretty easy, although I had the darndest time seaming the sleeves since it was a vertical garter stitch. I couldn't find anything online, so I winged it with decent results.

My 1st buttonholes & sleeves!

Here's the pattern from a whole page of cool baby stuff to do.



I originally wanted to knit the ITV monkey, but another site swore that their pattern was easier with the same results. Mmm, not exactly, but the bugger still turned out kinda cute. Maybe some day I'll try the real deal & keep'im all to my self. He he.

You wanna try to knit the ITV monkey? Go for it.


& here's something I made for myself. Got the pattern from knitty.com. WARNING! If you want to make this for yourself, make it a size smaller than what you think is appropriate. Believe me. Several other people & I found the 1st time we tried to knit this, we ended up swimming in it. What I'm wearing is the SMALL size.

Pushing Off.....

Finally, after a few false starts, we're on our way!

Because it's so large & I had to use a continuos warp all the way around, stringing this loom was a bit difficult. I went to my 1st Pasadena knitting meeting hoping to work on a hat & instead was trying to work out the tangles of my first stringing attempt like a kitten on crack. I ended up snipping the damn thing & started over.

I meant for the girl's cheeks to look more flushed than drag-queenish, but, eh, it'll do.

This is about 3,500 beads so far.

At the Starting Gate

Okay, here we go. I think I've got everything I need to get started....beads, loom, thread, needles & design....These are the basic necessities. I've also got a few other things to help the process go as smoothly as possible.


Here's the completed design. It's going to be 380 rows in length and have a width of 50 columns.

My First Sock

This piece is called "Trophy" which I did for an art show last February. The theme was the Blue Stockings. As you can see, I take things pretty literally. I knitted the sock, then embroidered the words & used beads for the tongue. The words around the sock puppet are taken from a quote by Mary Wortley Montagu (cousin to Elizabeth Robinson Montagu, aka "Queen of the Blues").

The quote reads: Be plain in dress, and sober in your diet; In short, my dear, kiss me and be quiet.

Hey~.....I'm Blogging!

As if I didn't have enough to procrastinate over.

Seriously, I'm really excited about doing this. But this blog is not just for ranting and raving. I actually have created this with the intention to document a piece I'm doing for an art show. I'm a bead weaver, & the Pasadena Historical Museum has invited me to do a belt for their fundraiser. And since this will be, by far, the biggest piece of work I will have ever produced, I'd like to capture all the tears of joy & frustration that I'm anticipating for posterity. Okay, so I will probably still be ranting & raving...but for a good reason.

A little more about the show: the Pasadena Historical Museum is doing a special exhibit about the history of the citrus fruit in Southern California. They've invited 20 artists to create a belt with the citrus-theme in mind. In late October, there will be a fashion show where our pieces will be modeled and then auctioned off. Here's the site: http://www.pasadenahistory.org.

My contribution will be mostly a tapestry of woven beads which will be sewn onto a piece of leather. I've basically finished drawing out the design onto graph paper & it's a big'un! Once completed, the beadwork will be comprised of over 19,000 beads! I'm excited & nauseous at the same time. I bought a new loom to handle such a large piece, and it works a little differently than my old one, so I'm a little nervous about setting it up correctly. But after practicing on it a few times, I think I've got the hang of it.

If you'd like to see my beadwork, check out www.boomboomloom.com. It's a little dated because I have no idea how to do web design, but I'm hoping to figure out how to update it in the next couple of months.....

I also picked up knitting last year, so I'll be posting some pics of what I've made & am currently working on.

Thanks for reading!

Signe