Susan Sto-helit. Because in this world, after everyone panics,

I received from somewhere a mental image of earrings that looked like faerie or magical wands. So of course I just had to try making them. These are pretty much what I imagined.

Sterling earwires, 18 gauge sterling wire, 25 gauge brass wire, Czech glass star beads, glass beads. The trickiest bit was wrapping the brass wire coils around the sterling. I finally found the good sense to find my favorite wireworking book, Bead on a Wire by Sharilyn Miller, which reminded me to use a small piece of rubbery shelf liner to grip the piece I was wrapping around. The second trickiest bit was finding star beads with big enough holes to fit onto the heavy sterling wire. They’re light and fun and I’m pleased with them.

I finished two boxes-with-lids. The pink floral paper came from a kit with lilac bookcloth, which looked so drab and boring that I had to change it. I had a piece of linen bookcloth that I think works much better. The night sky paper and black bookcloth on the other are from my hoard. The bookboard was all precut from a couple of Books By Hand kits, but next time I’m cutting my own. I have a box cutter and a cutter ruler and I’m not afraid to use them - much.

Oh, the thing the black box rests on is a sand-filled weight made from Japanese fabric. It was in the Aged Parents’ house; my dad used it to hold open the pages of books he wanted on display.

I got a lot done over the last few days. All I have to do now is choose the stitch patterns for each journal, drill all the holes, and stitch them all.

Bookcloth corners glued onto tied page blocks. First pass at binding thread selections.



Covers glued on. I made one mistake, swapped page blocks for two journals. So the one with black bookcloth got the cover meant for the navy blue and vice versa. No one but me knows, and the colors are close, so it doesn’t really matter. Also I revised my thread choices a bit.

Here it is. Folkwear pattern 107 Afghan Dress, assorted cotton batiks from the hoard, except the blue & green skirt and upper sleeve fabric. I got that at Joann’s going out of business sale. Bias tape, satin ribbon for trim on sleeves and hem.

The front door, anyway. I put this festive holiday wreath together this morning. Dollar Store spiderweb wreath with glow in the dark spider, I wrapped wired orange leaf print around the outside edge, added small Halloween ornaments, a bow, and some little plastic spider rings with the backs cut off here and there. The ornaments and spiders came from Michaels, the ribbon from my hoard. I used black craft wire, hot glue, and needle and thread. It’s lightyears away from professional, but it’s the best I could do and I’m pretty pleased with it.

This pendant and earring were Aged Mum’s. She got them at the So Cal Ren Faire, maybe 50 years ago from Bindu, so they’re old. Somewhere in there, she lost one of the earrings. I brought them home when we cleaned out her house. I’ve played off and on with ideas for a second earring, not matching, but coordinating. So this week I had an idea, and today I put it together. I think it works.

Bindu bronze and silver pendant and earring. The earring is set with a small garnet. For the mate, I put Czech firepolished beads, two clear with a/b silver plating and one larger garnet colored, and two gold spacers onto a gold hoop. Also I replaced the wire on the Bindu earring because it was all bent out of shape. Yes, all from my hoard.

So today I made a pair of earrings to wear with my Medusa necklace (and without it, of course). They were sorta kinda inspired by a style of Roman earrings called “crotalia”, meaning “rattle” because the pearls rattle together when worn. Materials: Sterling wire, peacock blue freshwater pearls, assorted silver metal beads and findings. I didn’t have headpins in a fine enough gauge to go through the holes in the pearls, and I didn’t want to bother drilling the holes larger. But I did have some 24 gauge half-hard* sterling wire in my hoard. I made a tiny loop at the end of the wire and hammered it to make my own headpins.



* Leftover from my attempts to learn wirewrapping over 40 years ago. Half-hard means it’s not as easy to work as dead soft. On the other hand, I didn’t need to do wrapped loops because the wire is stiff enough to stay put when it’s bent.

I don’t think I ever shared these earrings I made some years ago - I had put glow-in-the-dark skull beads on top originally. When I looked at them again last week, I decided to try something else. I went through the tin of Czech glass moon faces and the bronze plated ones just looked right. Of course then the plain silver earwires didn’t work, so I changed them too.

The coffins are little cardboard kits from Retro Cafe Art Gallery https://www.retrocafeart.com/catalog.htm . They come flat ready to be punched out and assembled. I painted them black and poured in Diamond Glaze, with acrylic bats and pumpkins and holographic star confetti set in, and glued a flat star charm on the back of each one as a bail.

Here we go again, another shiny thing. I took the necklace apart and played with it, trying different combinations of beads until it felt right.

I bought the little bronze and peridot pendant at the So Cal Ren Faire many years ago. I’d strung it originally with the peridot beads, tiny gold beads, and freshwater rice pearls, and made the hook and eye clasp from gold-filled wire. I never really liked the rice pearls; they didn’t quite work with the round beads. But that was what I had at the time. I made the earrings a few years later. The tumbled peridots were a yard sale find, a short chain of tumbled chunks with little embedded wire loops, linked together with jumprings. I made the earwires. I used to do a lot of wirework. I should get back into it; I doubt I could do the really fine stuff anymore, but I could probably still make hammered wire clasps. Earwires, on the other hand, especially the classic shepherds hook, are not worth the hassle.

I finished the necklace while I was doing laundry this morning.

Materials: dried mini gourd, top cut off and inside cleaned. The gourd got spritzed with Butterscotch Ranger Adirondack Color Spray and sealed with Liquitex Satin Varnish. The netting is natural color 2-ply Irish waxed linen. The embellishments are vintage red white heart trade beads and African metal heishi, a hummingbird fetish (which I think is reconstituted azurite/turquoise), a turquoise bear fetish, and turquoise, coral, shell, bone, and glass beads. I tried something new; I added a bear fetish and some red white heart beads at the back knot.

Previous Progress Posts are under the Knotless Netting tag.