Speaking of art and craft and manufactured handmade series of things (yes, we were speaking of those, in my own head anyways)…. Because I am nothing if not easily amused by ‘meta’ stuff, or, um, era-commentary, let’s say, I bought something today: one of these.

The 842, to be precise. See, I am broke, so I had to pick a high number to spend less on it — check the formula and you’ll see what I mean. This one seemed more appealing than most possibilities though, because it’s all 2s. 2×2x2-2×2-2, is what it is. I like that in a number.

Unrelatedly, I picked up from where I had stashed it a happenstance, unfinished project based on yarn, and finished it!

I’d started making a large swatch in seed stitch with this thick (8mm needles) pure acrylic yarn I bought, the day I bought it. Which was some time last year, but please spare me; I am slow.

When I had taken the needle and slid it away from the knitting to start unraveling what was, after all, only a warm-up tryout knit, I’d noticed how the knitting curved to form a perfect hemisphere, and how gorgeous the knitted seed stitch band looked.

The texture and stitch definition was just… eye-catching. I decided then and there that I should try to make it a necklace, a neck-plate-ish thing like I’ve seen in museums except you know, in yarn and not in bronze.

I did think, though, that it would require something more than what I had so far, beads to weight it down and give it a more refined shape perhaps, something to put it more firmly in a ‘jewelry’ category instead of ‘wearable, supple accessory stuff’.

Don’t ask me where that line is and why it seemed important to me at the time; I doubt that’s a permanent state of affairs.

Anyway, today I realized I had the right beads for the job, and I finished it. I blurred Mom and her interior fleece-y robe here, because I know she’ll be unhappy with me otherwise. I already had to push to have her let me take the picture.

I have more of that yarn in that great blue - that I already knitted a fun pointy not-quite-beret with - some in grey, and some in a pale green I like very much. It’s pure acrylic, but it has the feel of a felted wool of some kind; I think the thread itself, so thick and round that you can weave it in other ways (I plan to, as well), is actually a knitted icord of very fine thread, felted chemically, or something like that. Anyway, it has a very interesting texture, I feel there is more to explore with it (and someday I will find and post the label / brand / numbers etc, perhaps).

Edited on June 16: I put a somewhat better, later picture of the necklace up on Flickr here. I think it does a better job of showing the detail, despite being perhaps too heavy on the contrast. It’s the same picture inserted in the next entry of the blog, too.

It would be dishonest not to share the result of yesterday’s fumbling with onion skin.

So that’s the result, after a wash and a night of drying. Amateur yellow, irregular in places… Not too bad.

Except for the stains here and there made by the close proximity of - you may say rubbing against - a few crushed blackberries.

Oh well. Colour experiments are fun no matter what!

After doing little more than reading on the internets for a good long while, I made a break for cooking and eating. Today was chickpeas + chicken breast marinated with lemon juice / olive oil sauce mit crushed coriander seeds and, of course, saltnpeppa. Then I returned to my reading, exercised for ten minutes, whined some in my livejournal.

I don’t know if it’s a seasonal [dis]order or not, but inspiration and desire for doing things are rising like sap; the only problem is that some winter-y physical ‘ennui’ remains, coupled with indecision and some material-waste related angst.

The inspiration bit is a strong tide though; it makes me do things like take pictures of the bottom of a new pan just because of the colour and shapes on it.

Seriously. I love bronze, and I love bronze offset by greens. Isn’t this all so cool looking?

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