Looking Back

Over the last week or two I've been digging around. This summer has me in an experimental mood, and I wanted to do something I haven't done in a while. After picking up Jacqui Carey's Japanese Braiding: The Art of Kumihimo at the library I remembered all those hemp necklaces I used to make. So I decided to go for it, working a three strand split weave with these painted porcelain beads.



While digging for the beads, I found these carnelian rounds and oblongs. I honestly don't remember where I got these, but they don't seem to have been graded. There are some great quality pieces in here with perfect color/opacity contrasts, yet they were strung together with some lower quality ones. I isolated the rounds to make these two necklaces, using the oblongs for the backs. I didn't string the rest of the oblongs though, prefering the fruit-like brightness of these irregular rounds. They remind me of pomegranate seeds and giant orange cells.

These make me glad that I save things. These are materials and techniques I was using over fifteen years ago.

First Bloom

So I'm geeking out about this the past few days. This is the first bloom on a cutting I took about a year ago. It's called Autumn Splendor. I ganked it from the San Jose Heritage Rose Garden thinking it'll probably die like the last time I tried propagating a cutting. But no. This one sat under a mayo jar and rooted in about a month. No problem. Once I got it outside I thought it would start blooming, but all it did was get leafy. For the past year I've been watering it and keeping it in a nice, sunny morning spot waiting patiently for the magic to happen.

Autumn Splendor blooms into a bright orange with red tipped petals. The flowers tend to cluster which is what drew me to this particular rose in the first place. I like orange, and clustering minis like this one have a dense look to them that I like. One interesting thing I've noticed is that aphids don't attack it. I guess that's a good thing.

It was about a week ago that I noticed this bud pop out. Yay! So now I've transplanted it into a larger pot for the summer, so this ought to be the first of many orange explosions to come.

Skew Foxtrot

For number six in the Skew series I wanted to try some consecutive transitions. Nothing major, really. I worked the transitions in the same direction as usual, with shifted 6x2 ribbing creased by a thin transition of stockinette to accentuate that characteristic parallelogram shape.

The yarn I used was recycled from an H&M sweater consisting of lamb's wool (50%), Nylon (38%) and angora(12%). At twelve percent, the angora content adds a very sparse furriness to this piece, and the nylon anchors the fibers quite securely.

It kinda looks like I hugged a rabbit with it.

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