Knit "Converse" Baby Booties

Now that I've given these to our friends at their shower I can post about them! I usually knit a baby blanket for friends who are expecting but Jenn is a knitter and I figured she'd have things that she wanted to knit so I offered her to pick something for me to knit for her. She sent me the Ravelry link to this adorable Converse baby bootie pattern. 

It's like 8 pages of directions but I couldn't seem to knit just one pair. So they got three. I would definitely knit these again, and it's easy to find and use stash yarn for these, so no need to go hunt down specific yarn (at least not in my world). 

I would definitely knit these again. 

Resilience Bangle

Shop HERE

I didn't expect to start beading and finish this bangle on our short trip to Chicago at the beginning of this month but it was done in like 2 days. That doesn't include the designing and picking out beads but that's still a really quick turnover for me on a bangle this size whos pattern doesn't repeat. A 4 hour train ride and quiet, comfortable hotel can do wonders for my production. 

After creating my "nope." (Golden Boundary) bangle last year I realized it's time to start putting my word themes into my beaded jewelry. Then it dawned on me...statement bangles....why it took me 20 years to put that one together...

I've been called resilient repeatedly in the past 7ish years. It finally started to sink in. The more things thrown my way, the better I bounce back stronger both mentally and physically. I'm in a good place these days (thanks to my golden boundary and sobriety). Resilience has become a clear theme for me. So I created a big bold Bauhaus version of this bangle. 

I think the font translated well. I find playing with fonts in all of my work to be really fun. When I was thinking of what colors to use I thought maybe greens was a good starting point and when I asked Bryan what color he thought of when he thinks of Resilience, he said green too which solidified the color direction for this first bangle. I already feel like making another one in different colors, probably a rainbow direction. 

Bryan and I in Chicago

I Voted for Kodos, Cobra Lounge, Chicago

This bangle was finished just before a test in our resilience. It's been a crazy 3ish weeks. It started with a short trip to Chicago for 3 days for an I Voted for Kodos show, a fun little getaway. We stayed in the West Loop and liked the Sonder hotel set up so much that we also booked it for Riot Fest in September. I managed to come home drained and super sick, so on Thursday after getting what I needed to get done in my department I left work early to sleep. Bryan woke me up around 10:30pm to see if I wanted to eat and while we were eating a yummy marinated grilled chicken that he had made a weather warning and tornado sirens started. Before we really got going to grab cats and get to the basement, a HUGE boom and crash happened. I was so sick and out of it that I didn't realize at first that a tree had come through our dining room window. Like 8 feet from where we were sitting on the couch. Lois shot down into the basement and we had to go find the boys (kitties). My impulse was to start dealing with the tree situation but I made myself go to the basement to wait out whatever damage was going to happen. 

Tree in our dining room window

Tree from the outside the next day

When the warnings stopped we kept the cats in the basement and started to figure out what to do next. We had a tree come through the window and a tree next to it come down on our cars. I got on the phone (on hold for forever) with our insurance company while we cleaned up the window, glass and cut back the tree. Our insurance company set us up with ServPro for disaster relief, they were over first thing in the morning looking everything over and getting approval to have the immediate issues taken care of. The tree company made it out in the afternoon and removed the tree from the window and off our cars. Miraculously our cars were mostly unscathed and working. The tree guy took a peek at our back yard and said he hadn't seen anything that bad since 2023. With the privacy fence (and yes, all my doors) crushed and fallen, we've met our next door neighbors (they've only been there 2 years) and are sorting out what to do next. 

So many trees and branches down...

I'm thankful everything was triaged quick enough to make sure our cars were good and we made it to the Devin Townsend and Tesseract show in Detroit that we've had tickets for since December. We were tired, but it was VERY worth making it to this concert. 

We have a long way to go to get the back yard cleaned up and figure out what insurance will be taking care of and getting our own quotes to put the house and back yard together. Just one more project, which is turning into a bit of a creative project. The problem with two creatives trying to clean up a fallen forest of a large yard is there's a lot of "look at how cool this log ended up with the bark peeled off" and "check out this cool stick!"...there is a cool stick pile and cool log pile started. I'm sure there will be more to come on that. 

Resilience, onward and upward.

Black Based Fade Bangle and Earrings

We went to a formal dinner that a friend is hosted on Sunday and it dawned on me that I haven't had a reason to wear a more formal dress in ages...and do I have any that fit? I looked through what I have in my closets and pulled out a few options, hoping that one I got from Grace would still work. It did and I decided to make a new bangle and earring set to go with it.

I wanted to stick to playing with color without trying to graph out any designs. I also imagined the bangle to be mostly black, like the dress. So I pulled a basic opaque black bead and a matte black to go along with colors in the dress. I made half the bangle black and the colored potions smaller sections on the other half. I was hoping that the black would help create a little more drama and I it turned out as I had hoped.

I thought I might make this bangle wider but I got a bit bored of beading the black so it's only 1/2 inch wide. Then, of course, earrings to match. I having been making my circlet earring with multiple "mini" bangle but these I wanted to keep simple. They are beaded to match the bangle, half blacks half colors. I liked them so much I decided to try a second pair with a pearl accent inside of the circlet.

These simple circlets are now available on my SHOP HERE.

The bangle and pearl earrings are headed to Crooked Tree's Gallery on Sixth this week if you're looking to shop for them. I'm keeping the "plain" circlet earring in my personal stock and might get it up on my online shop eventually. I've been avoiding the computer/smartphone a lot when I'm home so I'm slow to post...anything. I'm enjoying life a lot more worrying less about online stuff. 

Checker Huggie Earrings, Definitely Ska

While I was on on roll making huggie earrings, I went with a bunch of checker options. Checker is basically a baseline in my own wardrobe so it's nice to have the go-to black and white ones along with some colors depending on what I'm feeling like that day. The original black and white ones I was wear sold over the holidays so I had to start with a new pair of those.

Black and White Checker Huggie Earrings

My obsession with checker melds somewhere within my love of ska or "two-tone" music and love of nice even numbers, particularly multiples of 4. You may notice these are all 8 beads wide, the checkers in 4s. It's just very satisfying for me to work this way. 

Black and Blue Checker Huggie Earrings

I'm getting into whatever colors inspire me. Orange has been on the forefront for the last year: 

Black and Orange Checker Huggie Earrings

Purple is a staple in my life along with checkers: 

Black and Faceted Purple Huggie Earrings

I also made a pair of lime green and black ones, but Bruce has been playing on my table in the studio and I think he must have hid them somewhere on me. I have been digging around for them hoping to get them posted (or make a new pair) but alas, I'll just have to wait for them to turn up in a studio cleaning session. I am on to beading other things to send to the Crooked Tree Arts Center Shop in Traverse City.

Rainbow and Trans Support Beaded "Huggie" Earrings

I started making these small close-to-the-ear-lobe earrings based on the "huggie" earring trend I was seeing a year or two ago. It turns out they have become my got-to earring when I need some color and pattern but I don't want anything dangly. This design is super functional and out of the way and lends itself easily to checkers and stripes.

Rainbow Stripes with Dark Silver bar top

I started with rainbows, and then began dabbling in some of the trans pride flag colors (but pastels are a little difficult for me to work with), I feel inclined to do most of my beading this year along this vein. It just feels like my subtle way of supporting my friends and fellow humans whos rights are being questioned in this current political climate. 

Rainbow and Black Checkers

I've actually added all of these designs to my website. Some will be "made to order" since I will be sending a few off to galleries. If you order a pair of those, give me a little grace, I have a full-time day job too. 

Rainbow and Dark Silver Checkers

All links to purchase from my website are on the subtitles and the bottom two photos if you're interested. These have been really popular lately when I've done pop-up shows.

Rainbow Stripes with Black bar top

Trans Pride Flag Colors with Dark Silver bar top

Weaving Update: Perception

My larger weavings take some time so it's time to celebrate that I'm past the half way point on my current word-based double weave. I have a lot of additional ideas for this one. It doesn't seem...chaotic enough. So I'm thinking about adding bead embroidery and sequins for additional texture on this piece. I haven't done true bead embroidery on my weavings so I'll have to weave a sample piece I can play with. This fabric is a little loose and airy and beads can get heavy quickly. It's just a thought right now.

The middle of this weaving is all orange and black.  It fades out into other colors on either end, but the orange is the central glow. I'm laughing at my younger self because orange wasn't really a color on my creative radar and I kind of hated that my high school colors were orange and black. Here I am staring at orange and black while I weave and it takes on a new brilliance for me. I'm surrounded by orange on a daily basis due to my day job and it's definitely ended up taking the front seat as a color I like to work with in my fiber art in this moment. 

This piece is "Perception" and it calls back to a time in my life where everything felt like it was spinning out of control and what someone else viewed was completely skewed from what was actually happening. I knew what the lies were but the gas-lighting and drinking had gone on for so long I had lost all trust in myself. I have my confidence back...along with some extra that I had never had before in my life. 10 years makes a big difference when you start going in the right direction. I used to joke that it takes me 10 years to get over something, but now I really think it's true. The dramas of my past and the artwork ideas sketched during that time have started to come into physical existence. The first being "Playing with Fire" last spring. Once these ideas become a finished piece of artwork I seem to just...let it go. 

Bruce "helping"

Perception feels timely for this year too. I'm delving into my artwork in the safety of home and friends because I feel on-guard out in the world. Some days I still expect to open my back door to go outside and see the world on fire. I'm working on accepting and moving on, or moving...got my passport updated and have found myself looking into how to immigrate to Canada or what it would cost to move a house of furniture to Europe (mainly for my looms)....I think between myself and my husband we finally have our studio/offices set how we want them and have our equipment upgraded to what we've been dreaming of (my looms, his gaming and music) so I'm not desperate enough to move. I love our house, property, Lansing and our cozy little kitty-filled home.

Gratitude is celebrated regularly here in our home, there was a brilliant full moon this month and I love how quiet and haunting the snow-covered night and shadows feel in our back yard. This giant tree casts the best shadows.