Silver Clay

I am a very curios person; the family calls me “Curios George” for reason as I always want to try something new. I have been making simple bead jewellery for quite a time and heard a lot about the polymer clay. Then I came across a completely new technique- silver clay, which is pure silver blended with some particles and has a consistency of clay. When burnt in high temperatures (in kiln or by torch) these particles burn out and you get a piece in fine silver.

I enrolled myself to a course and this is what we managed to do during the two days we were there.

Pendant Black Current.

It is a technique when you have a real leaf, for example in this case from a black current bush and paint it with silver clay in the form of paste. You need to apply 10-12 layers and let the piece dry completely between the sessions of painting. Then you attach a holder and decorate with the clay syringe if you wish. I also added a white pearl later.

Small pendant Colourful beads

The same technique, although with a much smaller leaf. Three colourful beads were added later. When choosing leaves it’s better to go with more robust, like black current, pelargonium etc as very thin or fragile leaves can crack under the weight of the clay.

Pendant Old Runes

We also made pendants from the clay and decorated them with artificial zirconium stones. It is important to use specially created stones as the natural ones will crack in the process of burning.

The results were amazing, although it was not always easy to reach the look you have in your head. It’s a lot of fun to work with this technique and you can also continue at home as it does not demand complicated and expensive equipment.

For help and inspiration I would recommend books that I bought myself, by Irina Miech:
Metal Clay for Beaders
http://www.amazon.com/Metal-Clay-Beaders-Irina-Miech/dp/0871162334
Inventive Metal Clay for Beaders
http://www.amazon.com/Inventive-Metal-Clay-Beaders-Exciting/dp/087116258X/ref=pd_sim_b_3
More Metal Clay for Beaders
http://www.alibris.co.uk/booksearch?qwork=10207155&matches=11&author=Miech%2C+Irina&browse=1&cm_sp=works*listing*title

There are of course many other sources, just google it!

Double Chocolate bolero

Some time ago I spotted out a very beautiful bolero that girls from osinka were crocheting on-line. That actually means that there is only a picture and knitters are making their own versions by choosing similar patterns. Very often the things done this way are extremely different from the original photo and sometimes in my humble opinion are better than the original. Many thanks to the girls!

In my case I used the pattern they suggested and the method of crocheting (in one piece) plus sleeves but had to adjust it directly on my mannequin for a tight fit.
The original was in black and other girls versions were mostly monochrome, yet I wanted to make something in several brown colours so I went for two shades of chocolate: milk and dark. The yarn is viscose/cotton.

As the yarn was rather thick it took barely a few days to make this piece.

Bookmark “Italian traffic light”

Every September millions of school children and students start their new academic year. At my favourite site we organized a lace competition “School start”. Works sent to this competition could be done in any of lace techniques, and should be connected to the world of studies/school.

My choice was to make a book mark in tatting (frivolité) with beads. In Russian lace making there is a technique called ANKARS, which appeared rather recently. I had a wonderful book by Rina Stepnaja. Tatting in Ankars Technique (http://www.labirint-shop.ru/books/156305/ ) and wanted to practice in making this unusual very beautiful lace.

When I chose the colours I was thinking of bright fall colours: red, yellow, green. Later when I was done (rather successfully) with the project I needed to choose a name for it too, and then I suddenly remembered our trip to Rome, some years before. The most impressive thing I saw there (besides the tiny cars) was their traffic lights. The upper, red light was at least 2-3 times larger than the others, yellow and green. Approximately like in the picture here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/acampada/1102958493/

We read in the travel guides before the visit to Italy that there are only two kinds of pedestrians there: the quick and the dead. We tried to be the former ones and I guess the huge red lights were meant to help us with this. Yet I should say they did not really work, cars were moving no matter what light was on.

So my little bookmark has disproportional 2-head red “light” and “normal” others.

More about ANKARS technique and books you can find at this page:
http://www.beadsky.com/make_gallery_ankars.php?ln=en

Wine red bolero

Wine red is one of my favourite colours. Not so sticking-in-the-eyes as scarlet or classic red yet nobody will pass unnoticed in this hue. And in combination with pink it really looks great.

Since a long time I got as present two balls of violet cotton yarn of rather unknown origin and did not know what to do with it. Besides the very limited quantity I found out that it gives away colour easily and it was not a good idea to use it as it is. So I decided to dye it to another colour.

The dyeing process went very well and the bolero does not give away any more colour.

The pattern I found in a knitting magazine Diana from 2006. I am not however completely satisfied with the result, as I find it too short and constantly trying to mode up when I raise my arms. So it is possible I’ll make some alternations later.

Black and white ot tatted lace t-shirt

At the same hobby site http://www.forum.hobbyporta.ru/ this time being myself the organizer of a lace competition I finally fulfilled the complete make-over of an old favourite t-shirt, which white parts faded with time.

I saw a book in tatting in a book shop when I was 16 and was blown away by the stunning beauty of this lace. I bought the book, ordered a shuttle and after several days of hard attempts and sometimes despair I learned the basic tatting knots. Since then I use it from time to time in small works like collars but due to its time consuming technique it has been quite seldom.

This time decorating a t-shirt was really challenging as there are so many ideas to choose from. Once I was browsing a wedding magazine and came across a very unsual wedding dress by Vera Wang- white but with a black belt with flowers. I just reversed the colors, a black t-shirt and white cotton tatted lace. The lace pattern is my own, although I got inspired by some old English laces.

Again I was not the winner of the competition but I have a unique garment and already think to relook another t-shirt!

Baltic waves

On http://www.forum.hobbyportal.ru/ there is a good tradition of organizing different knitting competitions. It is a wonderful stimulant if you need to finish something quickly and I wanted to make something new for this summer 2008.

I already bought very beautiful blue linen yarn and completted it with viscose/cotton. The pattern I found at Scandinavian on-line magazine DROPS. As usual, I do not like following the instruction so I changed it after my liking.

I knitted it in circular needles and diminushed the diameter by appr. 20 cm. I also made it fit the body by several dicreases symmetrically distributed at work. The upper part is my own project.

I have always been fascinated by crochetted imitations of Brugge laces. After several experiments and gauges I created this diagram. It was real fun to follow all the curves of the lace.

Baltic waves did not win the competition but I am very happy about how fast I managed to finish it.

Going skiing in Chamonix?

Winter 2007/2008 Russian knitting society was hit by an urge of Chamonix. No, not the famous skiing resort in French Alpes but a sweater. First appeared at the runway its modifications were everywhere, all the repectable knitting magazines proposed their own versions.

I could not ignore this very interesting model and also bought alpaca yarn specifically for it. I decided to go after the original model from a fashion show but the picture was barely enough to go on my own. I am very thankful to girls from osinka.ru, a Russian hobby site who have already knitted it and shared their experience.

Despite all these precautions it was not going smoothly. I remade it 3 times almost completely untill I understood the trick- the upper part should be very large, at least 20 sm large than the diameter of the shoulders (in my case 120 cm versus 100). That will allow it later to sit well even if you raise your arms. My first version, made wrongly smaller, the sweater followed the arms with every up-movement, going almost up to the neck.

Otherwise it is a very easy model. By the time I almost finished it Gedifra published their variant, also very close to the runway one, and the upper part is considerably larger, like in mine.

Vogue Coviello cardigan

Sometimes a sweater is born because you know what you want. Sometimes because you saw an intresting model in a magazine. Sometimes because you have some yarn you do not know what to do with ...

This was the case with a beautiful designer cardigan by James Coviello published in Vogue Knitting magazine. I had some mohair yarn I did not what to do with and then I got an idea- why not to try crochet one like this?

Not wishing to wait too long I took a description in hands ... and put it away! I said probably several times even here I H-A-T-E word descriptions for 10 pages instead of a half-page diagram. Simply not able to read it in any language. While a diagram could be used even from a Chinese magazine.

So having such a description is equal like not having any at all for me. I browsed all my books and other magazines and lucky me! found almost the same pattern in the form of an easliy read diagram. Looking at the picture and ignoring the description actually worked fine for me. In less than 3 weeks I managed to finish the work and mohair yarn did matched this model.

Going Irish

I always wanted to try to crochet something in so called "irish crochet" but was a bit scared by this very complicated technique that has no precise descriptions.

One time while browsing different internet shops sites I came across a beautiful cardigan apparently in this very technique.

It was not so minuscule as in traditional Irish crochet and plus to that I found an approximate descriprion of a slightly different cardigan.

Crochetting the motives was fun, easy, fast, enjoyable. Yet when it came to putting everything together it took maybe three times more than the crochetting of the motives. And it was supposed to be symmetrical, too! I literally counted every stitch!

It was supposed to be a summer cardigan but I manged to finish it just before the New year. I do not know if I will dare one more time for such an adventure as Irish crochet big piece of clothes but I should say it was a very rewarding experience.

Design inspired by Karen Millen

Summer sales 2007, Karen Millen shop in the center of Stockholm, it became the love from the first sight. From the second sight it became ... a huge disappointment... it was far tooooo short than I wanted!

Well, not being able to forget it I decided to create something of my own inspired by that little cardigan.

I already had the yarn, 500 grams of beautiful golden viscose that I bought in Germany for years before for ...1 (one) euro the whole pack on some incredible closing sales. So I started to look for a suitable pattern but did not find any ready made. Then I made it myself. This kind of sleeves "reglan" I have never made before so it was a great experiment that involved a lot of adjustements and remakes. I am still not quite satisfied with it but I let it be.

Some matching buttons and voilà- a new cardigan!

Later that year I visited one yarn shop in USA and the shop assistant asked me if it was a Rowan. I could poudly say it's my own. Great thanks to Karen for inspiration, of course!