Saturday 31st March

Well shan't go into details but a somewhat fraught last 48 hours or so!

On the positive side, a whole load of new bookmarks to be beaded up arrived from Australia. I don't know whether my seller has bribed the Aussie post office or what, but I've never had anything arrive so fast from down under. Very welcome indeed, as my shop was running low on shepherds crook type bookmarks, which are one of my best selling items. I've spent a fair bit of today busily beading them up, ready to be loaded up over the next week or so.

As I type this, I have the dulcet tones of whoever's commentating on Match of the Day ringing in my ears, which brings me to something I watched last night, which was like - well being taken back to the days of my youth!!! I watched the programme on Hawkwind on Beeb 4, and it was brilliant. About 1977 - it could have been earlier, but I don't think it was, I went to a gig at the Birmingham Odeon, to see Hawkwind. I used to go there regularly, and this was in the days when gigs were real gigs, not mega multi media super stadium events, and you got no closer to the stage than what, half a mile?? No this was the old Brum Odeon, and I went on my own - which was slightly unusual, but I don't think anyone else fancied it. Have to say that was a major, major mistake on their part!!!
Anyhow, I can remember going along, and being searched on my way in, which was the first time it had ever happened to me. I have to say that this may have been before 77 now, because it was before the bombs, and it appeared to be more of a drugs search than a security search which became routine in B'ham in the late 70s. But this could be my mind playing tricks on me.
I had a ticket for the stalls, and can remember staying to watch the support because I'm none too happy in bars on my own, but I remember nothing of the support at all. Whoever they were, they vanished without trace in my memory.
I don't even remember that much about the gig itself. I couldn't tell you know what they played, what order it was, because I was visually suffused with it. I remember Sonic Attack which made an impact on me as if I'd been shot - this was in the days of Bob Calvert, and he seemed to do the thing through a megaphone. It was a riveting experience for a young female science fiction fan - it was the first time that two things had come together for me, the music and the sci fi. I had no idea that there was such a thing as sci fi lyrics, and you know what it's like for a kid when that kind of thing coincides. I can remember getting Quark Strangeness and Charm when it came out - I still have it, it's still one of my favourite albums. They were saying on this programme last night about how much Calvert had wanted to be known as a poet, and dear God if ever a lyricist deserved to be known as a poet, Calvert should be. And my God what a loss. He died a good while ago now, heart attack, and suffered from bi-polar all of his life by the sounds of it, but what a loss. Anyone who can write the following really deserves to be known as a poet. (Incidentally it's Spirit of the Age, from Quark Strangeness and Charm, Hawkwind album.)

`I am a clone, I am not alone
Every fibre of my flesh and bone is identical to the others
Everything I say is in the same tone
as my test tube brothers voice
And there's no choice between us if you'd ever
seen us you'd rejoice in your uniqueness
and consider every weakness something special of your own
Being a clone I have no faults to identify
Even this doggerel that falls from my pen
has just been written by
another twenty telepathic men
All word for word - it says
"Oh for the wings of any bird other than a battery hen."


I think it's brilliant.

28th March 2007

Hello there!
Time for a new book I think, and I've found an absolute stonker! (Stonker being a Birmingham expression meaning brilliant, for those of us not from B'ham!)
Yes, ok, I need a rap over the knuckles for excessive use of exclamation marks, but I like a little bit of upbeat punctuation from time to time.
Today's book is The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde.
Firstly, anyone calling themselves Ford with two ffs is asking for trouble - you should see PG Wodehouse's opinions of girls calling themselves Gwladys (seriously, it is actually the Welsh spelling of Gladys, I believe) and various other exotic girl's names around the 1920s. I throw this in as a mere comment, but Mr Ffordes surname is really none of my business. However it does vaguely move in the direction of exotic.
Ok down to business.
I first noticed these books in Waterstones a good while ago, because of the rather nifty front covers which are bright and yet mottled and 'torn' around the edges - very clever. They're made to look like they are pulp fiction from way back when, and it's all terribly too, too designer-ish. The really odd thing about this is having gone to all this trouble to make them look like they come from the 1920s, they use colours that frankly, a reputable publisher way back then could only have dreamt about. They also have a cartoonish style that tends toward the children's colouring book end of the market. But of course, the reality of all this is fiendishly clever, because frankly the content of Fforde's book is absolutely unquantifiable.
I actually bought the thing on my way out of Sainsburys - hardly one's bookseller of choice, and if there'd been anything else there that I fancied, I probably would have gone for it. And that would have been, frankly, a tragedy. The sheer pleasure I would have missed had I indeed gone for an alternative would have been postponed until I finally picked up, and read one of these books. (There are several of them; The Eyre Affair is not the first, and I'm afraid that I don't know which is, since there doesn't appear to be a list of other works by the author in the book.) If I tell you that there are reviews from such publications as the Sunday Times, Guardian, Wall Street Journal , SFX and Elle, it'll give you some idea of just how far flung an audience this thing aims to reach.

Plot Alert!!!
What is this book about? Ok, on a very basic level it's about a girl called Thursday Next who works for something called SpecOps. All of this takes place in some species of a parallel world, which is sort of the Earth that we now, yet it's one where literature has reached the status of worldwide obsession, the Crimean War is still being fought, and the jet engine doesn't seem to exist. However, people are cloning dodo's in their own kitchens. Basically the plot involves Thursday Next attempting to save Jane Eyre, who has been kidnapped out of the eponymous novel. To tell you more than that would frankly ruin it for you, but let me just run some of the character names past you - they're a delight. Our chief villan is Acheron Hades, Thursday's boss at the Swindon LiteraTecs is Victor Analogy. Her boyfriend is Landen Parke-Laine, and her dodo is Pickwick. Wales is a republic, and the cheese tax is iniquitous.

All I can say is go read this book. It's brilliant! It was totally un-put-downable, and I aim to scoop up the remaining books as soon as I can lay my fat little hands on them. Stunnningly good - it actually made me laugh out loud, and the last time that happened reading a book was probably the first time I read Wodehouse or Tom Sharp. And frankly, I think at some point, Fforde's going to be up there, a name spoken of in the same breath as those. It's that good. I just pray the rest of them are, because I need the laughs right now!!!

27th March - How to make a knitted wire bangle!

Time for another How To..! A friend off Flickr makes fabulous necklaces using wire, beads and a crochet hook. Having seen her work, I thought I'd love to have a go, but I didn't have a crochet hook to hand - but I do have a load of knitting needles. So I experimented, and here's how you could have a go! (You need to know how to knit to do this!)

A knitted wool bangle!

You need a pair of metal knitting needles - it doesn't matter what size they are, I just grabbed what was to hand.

A roll of fine guage wire, preferably on a spool like cotton.

Beads - small ones, seed beads are best. You can use any size I should think, but I've found anything over 4mm is a bit too big.

Jewellery findings - cord end clamps, jump rings, pliers and cutters.

Firstly, thread the beads onto your wire. Don't cut off any length, simply thread on the beads to the loose end.

Cast on your stitches, using the wire - I've seen people put the spool of wire into a cup to stop it from running over the floor at this point, but I found it sat quite nicely on my bead board.

Here you can see the cast on stitches, and the beads threaded onto the wire. The beads should be between your stitches and the wire should run freely between the spool and the needles, so that you can pull up wire through, and knit comfortably.

A word about this. You will not be able to knit with the speed that wool can be knitted, and you will need to practise easing your free needle into the stitch. Even on a bead free row, which is a lot quicker, it is still slow going in comparison to wool knitting. Don't worry too much about this, it gets much faster with practise!

Initially when I started, I cast on only 20 or so stitches. On my next attempt, I cast on sufficient stitches to go around my wrist - but remember that this will be stretched and twisted when you take it off the needles. I admit I didn't count how many stitches I had, but I use short needles, and the needle was pretty full - you have to use your judgement as to how many stitches you need.

Basically, you then knit. Insert the free needle into the stitch, and before you wrap the wire around the stitch carrying needle, move beads up so that they are between where the wire exits the previous stitch, and the point where you will wrap it around the needle to form the next stitch.

How many beads you add per stitch is up to you. I added between two and three seed beads, to one large 4mm bead. If I had a larger bead, or a bugle for example that seemed to stretch the wire, I'd add an empty stitch to allow a little give when the knitting was being stretched and twisted. I like randomness but with practise I'm sure you could set up a pattern, or you could use identical beads. I'm already thinking of different combinations that I could use, and there are so many fabulous colours of wire out there these days - the sky is well and truly the limit on this!

This is the finished knitting. I did four rows, with an empty row in between the two beaded rows. I put that in solely to add 'give', not for decorative purposes.

I didn't cast this off - it's not that I don't believe that you could, but that it's quite difficult to do. I think if you do want to cast it off, you'd need to put in an empty row to do that. To secure it, I slid the knitting off the needle, and then threaded a long piece of wire through the open stitches. It's not like wool knitting, where stitches can disappear at the drop of a - well, I was going to say hat, but needle is really the word here!

When you've threaded the wire through, twist the end into the work (I actually do this several times as I thread through), and it's good if you've left a long chunk of loose wire at the start of the work. You can work the wire down to meet it, twist together and it's a good way to provide a link. If you twist this really well, you could add a big bead at the other end and have a loop and bead fastening.

At this point, you need to pull gently at both ends. Stretch it out to the length that you want. Do this gently, there's no need to heave at it. Then pick an end, and again, gently, twist. Grasp two or three larger beads, or a clump of seed beads and twist them; continue down the mesh. You can pull gently again whilst you do this - there is free give in this mesh if you've made your stitches loose enough, and looseness should be the key word here, and you're aiming to make a nice, chunky and long wire work. All the stitches will bunch up, and make for a fabulous mingle-mangle of beads and wire. We are aiming to make something neat, tidy or ordered here, we're going for random, freeform and meshed.

At this point, I find it best to add cord clamps. Do this in the standard manner - open the clamp slightly, pick a nice thick end of the wire and trim it off so that the clamp will enclose it. I also add a good jewellery glue - I use Strass, which I find very efficient. Close the clamp firmly over the ends of the bangle, and leave it to dry.

At that point I secure the fastening of the bangle either with a single large substantial jumpring - if it's big enough to slip over the hand, or with a clasp and jumpring if you're going to need to open and close it. If you have been clever enough to work in a redundancy of empty stitches at either end of the knitting part, you could of course thread these together, twist, and you'll have a bangle without any need of a fastener. Remember you are in charge of this bracelet, and it's going to be the way you want it to be!

The finished bangle!!!

And this is the green bangle that I made first. This is thicker because it's made of shorter strands wound together, and it's wrapped to a thick rubber circle because of the instability of the short strands. I don't want one to come apart when I'm wearing it!

Friday 23rd March

You know, I have this feeling that sooner or later I'm going to put the wrong date on this blog!!!

Anyhow - well, todays big news is I've bought a new pair of ring nose pliers! To most of you out there, I expect this will mean nothing, but to those of us who are beaders - you know the angst that this causes. They are the single most important tool in the beading box, ring nose and cutters. I'm less thrilled with the new cutters that I've bought, but I expect it's because I haven't got the hang of them properly yet. But the new ring nose seem to fit my hand very nicely, and provide a nice large round in the wire.

So what else have I been up to? Well, last night I watched a programe on BBC4, Abduction. It was an extraordinary documentary, about these young people who were literally kidnapped off the streets of their home towns and taken to North Korea, where it appears they were made to instruct spies on how to appear native born Japenese. Most of those taken were in their late teens, but one girl was only 13 when she was taken. Whilst some of these people have been returned to Japan, the Koreans have stated that fairly large numbers of them have died, in particular Megumi (I think that's how it's spelt) the 13 year old. However, the Koreans don't appear to be able to provide any proper information about this, and an urn puporting to contain her ashes, was proved not to do so according to DNA tests.
Over the years since this girl was taken, her parents have fought constantly to get her back, involved with the pressure group on the Japenese government to put pressure on the Koreans to repatriate their abductees. One appreciates it's obviously a very complex political situation, but dear God, the Japenese Government took it's time about getting involved in this issue! How could they have tolerated the abduction of its citizens off the streets of their home towns by a foreign power!
It was a totally awesome documentary, really showing the power of the medium of tv. And your heart goes out to those parents - one poor man, whose son was taken, became the carer of his wife who had clearly been destroyed by the loss of her child. Luckily his son survived, although his wife had died before his return, which was tragic. But the pictures of their reunion were incredibly touching, and if this programme had one fault, it was that it would have been interesting to know how he was re-adjusting to life back home, what he thought of his experiences. Clearly they had experienced some form of brainwashing, and at a press conference in Korea before their return, they were all apologising for being the centre of this 'scandal'. How awful to think these people were forced to apologise for being stolen from their homes.
As for Megumi, it appears she has a daughter in Korea. She is the spit image of her grandmother, which is a fascinating thing in it's own right - she's never met her grandmother, but not only does she facially resemble her, she appears to share her grandmother's mannerisms of speaking. It would be nice to think that her grandparents would get to meet and form a relationship with her, but in the current political situation it's unlikely. It just goes to show how politics wrecks human lives, politics with a capital p. These diverging political systems crush the people who live under them, in the same way that they start wars and propagate systems it's hard not to think of as evil.

Anyhow, if you're in Britain, or you can get the BBC on cable, you should watch this programme. I'm sure they'll repeat it, they seem to repeat everything on BBC4! It's terribly moving, and fascinating - I can't think of a better reason to watch a tv programme!

Monday 19th March

Hello there,

Boy I've had a busy weekend! Saturday I was meeting up with old friends for lunch, Sunday dashing off over to Mum's for a family lunch at the pub in honour of Mother's Day. Very tasty it was too - we go quite often, it's a pretty local pub for us, in Freshford, and they always seem to do a really nice Sunday lunch. I had the roast beef, which came with roast potato's, and Yorkshire pudding. It's also rather nice to be able to say that the vegetables were great - red cabbage, nice courgettes in a tomato sauce, carrots - all with a crisp bite to them, which makes a change as it's so easy for vegetables to get overcooked.

Anyhow, we had a nice time. I had made a cake for Mum, but it turned out rather disastrously. It did not rise - I'm convinced I must have put a tad too much flour in it, and it was heavy. Shame, as it would have been lovely, but these things happen, and if you can identify where you've gone wrong, well, you're unlikely to do it again.

Here's a piccy or two...!









My sister Jo and brother Nick! He's taking the mickey out of my photography skills because the recent photo's of Jo I put on Flickr all appear to have her eyes shut!

Me and my brother in law Ken!

And Mum, about to tuck in to her lunch. My other brother was there, but isn't keen on having his photo's put on the blog, so rest assured...

We had a good time!

Friday 16th March

I've got some very special items that I've just finished, and are up for sale. Some are on Ebay now, other's will be going on over the next week or so.

This is a fabulous bag charm - well a little clip on charm. It's a Goddess pendant, which I got from the BeadStasher shop on Etsy. It's on sale on Ebay now.

I got three of these Goddess pendants, and this is another of them - but it's enhanced by a fabulous lampworked bead, called Flower in the Dunes, made by Chickadee Beads, also on Etsy. It's a fantastic pinky bluey peach background, with a white flower and green leaves worked onto it by lampwork. I think it looks like the Goddess holding up the world - isn't it great?

And I've got loads of lovely earrings going on sale now, and over the next week or so!

So whip on over to my Ebay shop, the link is on the left hand side and a single click will take you over there! Lots of good things on sale now!

15th March- How to make a KeyCharm 2!

It's been a while since I did a post on how to make a keycharm, and I took some photo's whilst I was making one last night.

So - here's a step by step guide as to how you do it!



Whilst this may look like a messy pile of bags and stuff, it's actually quite a well ordered collection of my working needs. Beads in the large red box, and the blue case contains all of my findings.

From all of that, you gather tools and working tray. I use the top of a very large plastic food container - it has a rather useful lip that stops beads rolling out of control. I could get a fancy beading tray, some of which come with a rather wonderful fabric that grips all of the beads and stuff on top of it. Every now and again I say to myself, I must get one of those - and then it slips out of mind. In fact, I rather suspect that I actually like the rather tatty arrangement that I have. It's what I'm used to!






Then, the next step is to gather the beads. This means hunting through the bags to find a selection that you feel will make a good chain. In general I decide what colour I'm going for, and then it's a random selection. This Key Charm is going to be general stock - I sell a lot of these, and at the moment it rather feels like blue is the flavour of the day. People are grabbing blue Key/Bag Charms off me at a rate of knots, Blues and Blacks. I need to build up my stock of black beads, and I have a lot of purple so this particular charm is going to be a blue purple mix. These are the beads I'm going to use.







This is my bag of chain. I've found a nice big secure piece that I intend to use.









And I'm attaching the lobster claw clasp. It's a good secure means of putting the bag/key charm onto either a bag, or to your keyring - I use a particularly good quality jump ring for the link between chain and clasp, because I think it's the weakest link, and the place most likely to break. So - a good heavy duty jump ring minimises this.


You'll have to excuse the plasters - it's been a bad week for oven burns!






This is making the beads ready to attach to the chain. I've selected a blue glass bead, and I've put it on a head pin (this is a pin with a round flat piece of metal at the bottom, as opposed to one with a ring, to which you can attach further beads.) I've also chosen beadcaps (little caps of metal that sit either side of the bead) which in this case, as the bead has a large hole, help it to sit firmly on the pin.
Essentially, at this point you trim off the excess pin, and curl it round to make a loop at the top of the bead.






It's then attached to the chain by the use of a jump ring. You can see me opening the ring here. Jump rings should always be opened by moving one side of split backwards - you should never open one by pulling them apart width wise. If you can imagine looking down on the break, grip either side with pliers, and move one forward and one back gently. That way you don't weaken your ring by disturbing the circularity of it.


And these are the first few beads being attached to the chain.
















And - bead by bead, it grows.




























Clearing up. You can see the finished charm lying on the board next to my bag of purple beads - I always try to return them to the right bag! Occasionally there are a few happy accidents when a bead goes astray into the wrong bag and it makes for new colour combinations I hadn't thought of. Hence the recent experiments I've been making with purple and green.











The finished charm and a pretty well half cleared board. I inevitably end up with a few stray bits and pieces on my board!








And here's the charm, put up for storage on my charm tree (that's actually a kitchen mug tree, but they make brilliant storage for Bag Charms.) It'll go on sale in a while!

Wednesday 14th March

Hello there!

How's life with you? Mine has been a little frustrating this week, in that my back is preventing me from getting back to work as quickly as I would like. However, this has given me time to get on with making things for Etsy and Ebay, so shoot on over there an have a look.

My Ebay shop is doing very well, which is really cool! But being stuck at home like this is leaving me a little 'beading orientated' and for orientated, best to read obsessed.

So rather than go on and on about it, here's a few photo's to look at. I was out and about this week, and I took a few so...

This is the park over the road from my house. It's great to be able to look out over some green.

This is one of my sister Jo's bags. I've got them on sale in the shop, and they're really well made.

Over on the right, we have a beautiful beaded bookmark. At the bottom there is a lovely Swarovski heart in crimson with a huge Czech crystal facetted bead in fuschia.

And this one above is a silver tone bookmark, beaded in green. Don't you love that big leaf at the bottom, and isn't it perfect for the coming spring?

Well I guess that's it for now, as I have very little to put on here as I've done very little and I'm sure you don't want to hear about my trip to the doctors!
More again soon.

What's new in the shop!

All of these items are for sale in my Ebay shop - just check out the links on the left hand side.




This is a gorgeous Fluorite Quartz and Bali Silver necklace. It's 49 cm in length and comes in a presentation box - perfect for Mother's Day or what? And just think, it's chocolate (ie calorie) free!







This item has been sold!
And this is a lovely handbag charm, with pink Duranga glass beads, pink crackle glass beads, and gorgeous flower shaped beads. These have centres made out of small spacer beads, so each pink flower has a silver centre. It's got a lovely silvertone butterfly charm at the bottom! It also has a fabulous heart shaped split keyring at the top for your keys.




This necklace, and the other blue lariat style necklace have now been sold.And this is a lovely long, very long, blue bead necklace, with silvertone daisy charms at the end. It's made in a lariat style, with tails for the charms - the beads are a combination of Miyuki and Delicas, seed beads and slightly larger, in round, squares and triangle shapes, so it's sort of knobbly! The other beads are Blue Duranga's, some small round pressed glass beads in cobalt, and a couple of sky blue star beads. It's an ideal necklace for either the tall or big busted woman, because of it's length - there's nothing worse that a necklace that's supposed to be long and ends up in the middle of your bust. I've got a couple of these types in the shop, and I plan to put quite a few in there.

sunday 5th March

Well, March already folks. It seems that it was only Christmas a couple of days ago, and here we are, a quarter of the way through the new year.
It's been an incredibly busy week. I've been making cakes and stuff to take to the work party we had for a colleague who's - well, now left, sad to say. Like an idiot, I was making sugar syrup and forgot the pan was on the stove, and the next thing I know, the whole flat was full of smoke and fire alarms were going off - hell, quite literally, on earth.
Luckily, however, there were no flames, and a few hours worth of fan smoke clearing, and a damn good clean the next day and all was well again. But it was dramatic to say the least!
The new shop on Ebay is doing incredibly well. Well, it's doing well for me, let's say that, I'm sure that there are a million or more other people who'd do better - who are doing better, but when you consider that I make a few bits and pieces of handmade jewellery and bits and bobs, frankly, it's incredibly flattering to sell anything at all. And I'm not just selling the odd piece either, I'm making sales on a pretty regular basis, which is just so.. I can't really put the way it makes me feel into words! The very idea that people out there like what I make enough to actually spend hard cash on it, it's incredibly flattering.
I've been doing a bit of experimenting recently as well. I'm making more necklaces, and I'm just starting to get into the idea of bead weaving - stringing a main bead, and then weaving strings of other beads around it and so forth. I'm also looking in to making clay beads. In this country (the UK) you can get really beautiful polymer clays - Fimo, and the like, and then there are lots of classes and tutorials on the web to show you how to make various beads. I'm definitely going to get more into the idea of making new beads.
What else is new? My back is slowly getting better and I've been able to do a bit more work on a regular basis, without too much ill effect. Still taking the painkillers though, and still very twinge-y when I go and do something stupid, like bending without taking it slowly, or (God forbid) having to rush! This makes getting across roads a wee bit trepidatious at the mo!
I've just finished "The Interpretation of Murder"! This is the book that I wrote about last time, where Sigmund Freud is involved in a murder investigation in the states, in about 1909. It's interesting but I wouldn't say it was earth-shaking. Nowhere near as much of a good read as I thought it was going to be - somehow the characters don't really grip, and there's no real intellectual challenge.
I'm definitely in the mood for something historical next, but haven't made up my mind what, so more on that anon!
Of course, the other thing this week is the disappearance of Sky One from my cable box. I'm a telewest subscriber and frankly, I'm pretty pissed off about this. (So what else is new, half the country seems to be pretty peeved about it!) It's not so much that I'm enamoured of Sky One, I mean well over 3/4 of what's on it is drivel, but I do like Lost. I'm frankly furious that it a) disappeared off Channel 4, and now, thanks to what seems to be a (duck here if you don't care for this) pissing contest between two billionaires. I have to say that I'm strongly of the opinion that whatever Mr Branson says about wanting to give people choice etc, that he's doing his damnedest to work his way into Mr Murdoch's position. I'm sure he would love to have the degree of control over the media that Murdoch does. I don't think anyone should be taken in by his high flown stated ambitions of more choice or any of that claptrap, he's just bought up two cable tv companies. Not one, in the interests of providing a market with competition, but two. As far as I'm aware, and I'm no expert, I think there are only three in the country. And oh my God, you have to feel sorry for the people on the end of these customer service phones. They must be having to take so much stick right now. Frankly, I think that the management should spend at least a minimum of an hour a day actually answering those phones, not stuck behind nice posh desks, in fancy offices, with enormous salaries, making our, the public, their customers lives, more bloody irritated than they have to be, and that goes for both Virgin and Murdoch. In fact, frankly, Blair should pass it as a law that anyone in a management position has to spend a minimum of one hour a day actually talking to their customers and clients. If I ever run a company (which frankly is highly unlikely!) it's going to be top of my list of work procedures.
And that's my moan of the week!!!!