Ovals and Pearls

I am supply obsessed these days!! Always searching for jewelry findings that catch my eye... believe me, I have found a lot lately... out of control shopping. Oh what fun it is!!

I made these little pretties yesterday with some new copper ovals I found on Etsy, in Christine Berube's shop. I used copper leverbacks, copper beads, with the copper ovals and coppery brown freshwater pearls. I am very pleased with the earrings and with my photos!

stunning red fruit.........

I sure needed this today!! A front page treasury!!

Let's cross our fingers for lots of sales for these very talented artisans!! Whoohoo!!

Frosted Olives

I started listing some of my fall fair pieces on Etsy today. This one is a gorgeous, pale pastel blue and olive green freshwater pearl necklace.

Delicate, pale elegance!!

Tutti Frutti Drops & Cocoa Plum Pods

I am taking time off from weaving, well, time off from from doing much of anything. I have tennis elbow and a sore in my left hand. Too much cutting of denim I think, overuse... and I was just getting started. 

It hasn't been a very good week. We went to the city with the cat earlier in the week. During a phone conversation with the vet the week before , he suggested we bring Lu in to have blood work and an xray of his head. He has massive tumors on his neck and throat, and is now having respiration problems. However, when the vet examined him, he said he could not sedate him for the tests as he would not survive it. Poor old cat, we stressed him out with a 6 hour drive, he hates traveling, for nothing really. We will enjoy his company until he is no longer enjoying life. He is a sweetheart of a cat! We love him to bits!!

So... my stuff... I have been taking photos of some jewelry I made for my last local craft show, to get it ready to list in my Etsy shop. I am not very good at photography, funny I studied it in college for three years, it was my minor, but it was mostly dark room work.

Tutti Frutti Drops

Gorgeous fruit coloured freshwater pearls paired with pretty copper findings! 

Cocoa Plum Pods

Earthy mauvey brown lampwork beads with a gorgeous periwinkle swirl, made by Gillianbeads, very talented Canadian lampwork glass artisan. I have paired the glass beads with rich brown freshwater pearls, and elongated copper kidney wires.

Recycled Wool Sweaters and a Felted Wool Sweater Rug

Last week I received the three 75 lb. bales of recycled wool sweaters I ordered from my supplier. Greyhound no longer stops here, so we had to drive to the next town over to pick them up.

Mark is very cautiously cutting the metal strapping. The bales are under a lot of pressure. It sounds as though a gun goes off when the strapping is cut. Then the bale expands and expands, revealing all the wonderous wool textile inside.

I am however finding it harder and harder to find pure wool. There is more and more  superwash wool.. I know, I know, this makes me rant.... I very much dislike superwash wool.  The way it feels when it is wet makes me wonder if it has any of the wonderful qualities of wool left in it. It feels just like acrylic...

I do have bags and bags of sweaters that I could not felt. 

My first rug woven from my new bales, beautiful purples, blues and greens!

Wow!! Roasted Beet Pizza!!

Last night for dinner I made a variation of the roasted beet pizza in the new Cooking Light magazine. It was so delicious, hmmm yummy!!

I have linked to their recipe, I will type out the recipe with my changes. I made two pizzas, and tripled the dough recipe. 

Roasted Beet Pizza

4 oz. Red Beets.....I did not weigh them but used more than they called for

1 1/2 heads garlic, loose skin removed, and cut the very top off

1 1/2 Basic Pizza Dough, 10" pizza

1/2 cup feta cheese

1 cup, crumbled goat cheese

1/2 large red onion, sliced thinly

1/4 tsp. flaked sea salt

1 tsp, olive oil, plus extra for drizzling on the garlic.

1. Preheat oven to 450° F.

2. Leave root end  and 1" of stem on beets: scrub with a brush. Wrap beets in tin foil. Bake at 450° for 40 minutes or until tender. Remove from oven and cool. Trim off both ends of the beet and remove the skin( it will rub off). Cut beet in half lengthwise and slice thinly.

3. Place garlic on tin foil, and drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, wrap tightly and roast along side the beets. Roast for 40 minutes, remove from oven and let cool. Squeeze garlic from skin and set aside the garlic pulp.

4. Saute the thinly sliced red onion in a frying pan in a small amount of olive oil, until very soft and well cooked. Set aside to cool slightly.

5. Position an oven rack in the lowest setting. Place pizza stone on lowest rack.

6. Increase oven temperature to 500°. Preheat pizza stone 30 minutes before baking pizza.( I only heated it for about 10 minutes).

7. Roll pizza dough out as thin as you can, take stone from oven, and transfer your rolled dough to the stone, carefully the stone is hot. Rub 1 tsp. olive oil over the dough. Smear the roasted garlic evenly over the surface.  Sprinkle the onion evenly over the surface. Next add the sliced roasted beets, and then sprinkle both cheeses over the whole surface, leaving a 1/2" border.

Sprinkle with the sea salt.

8. Bake at 500° for 8 minutes or until the crust is golden.

Enjoy!

cornelious..taste me. everyday

This morning I built a treasury on Treasury West, on Etsy. It wasn't a couple of hours.. and it was on the front page, whoohoo!! A few pieces have sold which is fantastic, my dream for every collection is to have all of the pieces sell.

Gorgeous greys and greens!

Unisex Necklace

This is my first Etsy listing for a unisex necklace. It would be equally appealing to a man or a woman. Gorgeous vintage ribbed wood beads, gunmetal grey hematite, and matte black glass saucer beads.

I made a similar one for Jordie this summer and he loves it!

Recycled Textile, Handwoven Wool Rug

This was a red Hot morning for me!! I had one of my felted wool sweater rugs featured in this front page treasury. I am not sure who curated it, but am very grateful to whoever did!!

Always a pleasure, always a thrill!! Thank you!

Pebble Bracelet on the Front Page

Much to my surprise and joy, I found my Lake Superior beach pebble bracelet on the front page of Etsy this morning. It was in the wonderful treasury of Etsy artisan, Lala, of LaLaFelt

This morning got even better when my pebble bracelet sold!!

Forest Thicket in the Tundra Dune.....

As I was thinking about getting ready for bed, I caught a glimpse of the front page on Etsy and thought, boy, that looks familiar...wowee it was mine!! What a thrill!!

The moment I built it two pieces sold, so I changed one up, and later when the artisan listed another locket, I replaced it with the new one, I see tonight that the new locket sold too!! I hope many more pieces sell while it is still up.

Gorgeous grey, green and brown earthiness!!

Big Denim Rug

After two weeks of prepping, I have started my first denim rug on this upright loom. I used a frame loom previously. To date I have cut up about 35 pairs of jeans for this rug, and so far I have used about 28 of them. I will have to cut more before I am done.

My loom malfunctioned twice as I was getting ready to start weaving. Mark has found a solution for the problem, and so far it is  holding up!!

The rug is 49" wide and hopefully 6' or 7' or 8'  long. I will see as I progress. I had a hard time winding the warp on due to all the seams in the jeans. I am excited now... another few days or so and I will have it finished, off the loom and all the ends woven back in.

Apricot and Olive Dots

I listed new earrings today on Etsy today. Another pair using gorgeous lampwork beads from Gillianbeads

I have used pretty apricot coloured freshwater pearls with the glass, and used little copper leverbacks. I still think they look like polka dotted nougat. Hmmmm!! 

Whimsies in Wool

The article I co-wrote with Wendy Tremayne, for Craft magazine is out on the news stands. Wendy wrote the article, and I did the step by step, on how to weave a felted wool sweater rug.

I had a friend call today, she was in Athens, Georgia and was at a bookstore,  and happened to pick up the magazine and she said it fell open on page 152. There I was! She was very excited to see my name there, and the article!

It is exciting, my first time published, and  in an International magazine! I am hoping it will bring people to my shop, and maybe generate some excitement about my rugs!

Afternoon at the Beach

A friend and I decided today, to go to the beach to "suntan", really just to sit and talk. It was the first day we got to go this summer, September 1st. Time flies!

We were going to go to the pump house beach, but when we tried the road was closed due to construction down at the lake. They are putting in a new water intake pipe. The town has been using the mills water, but now will have to pump their own.

We had to go to the main beach, which is beautiful too, but different. The sand is coarser and the beach.. lake bottom is not flat going out, it is steep, drops off. There were also waves today, I waded a little, and the water actually felt warm. I joked about how packed the beach was... we were not alone, as the photo shows.

This is a pretty packed beach in Terrace Bay on Labour Day!!