Knitted necklace

I was working in my sewing room to clean it up.  I love spending time in there, poking around.  Okay, so I got a little distracted when I ran across 2 spools of wire I bought at Ornamentea in Raleigh in the Spring.  I have long wanted to try my hand at knitting a necklace in wire, and adding beads as I go.  It was so tempting; the knitting needles were right there too....

For this first time, I just used cheap beads as I wanted to see how it worked out, but I'm very pleased with the result and will experiment again.  I don't have a pattern - didn't look one up - not sure I can duplicate it exactly :)

Basically, I cast on and cast off, working beads that I'd threaded onto the spool first of all, into the stitches.  I added them randomly, in the center, because I wanted it to have an abstract element.  When it came to the clasp, I knitted it in, and the same with the closed jump ring.  {Luckily I had these "findings" in my stash!}

For the sheer heck of it, I tried my hand at some earrings too.  I'd never wear them both together, but I know someone who might like the earrings!

I still have a spool of the gold wire....

PS. I love green too!

When people tell me that they associate me with blue, I tell them I have never met a colour that I don't like!

I am crazy about all colours really.  My home sports a lot of blue and white so that is why it is natural to assume I am a blue freak {and I am!}  But I really groove on all colours, be they pastel, bright or dull and somewhere inbetween.  It makes it hard for me to have a cohesively decorated house that flows because I have blues and then greens and then browns and blues and then red, black and white.  Oh well.  I love it all so that's what counts, right?

Recently, when contemplating redecorating what we call "the hall bathroom", I bought a shower curtain.  This is something I have not done in the past.  I have always sewn all the drapes, valances, comforters and duvet covers, cushions, and certainly something as easy as a shower curtain.  I just happened to see one that I really, really liked and it was sort of an impulse buy.  The colours sucked me in - that marvelous lime green, and also the leaves.  I haven't told you yet how much I love leaves!  Leaves are a recurring theme throughout my house and even my wardrobe with scarves I've made.  Yes, funny I'd love leaves this much because {in my new life} keeping up with them in the Fall, they have become the bane of my existence and one of the {many} reasons I don't get to craft or sew.

Back to the hall bathroom, I have just recently done a wee bit of updating with taking out a boxed-in fluorescent light and adding a new fixture, and then replacing the medicine cabinet with mirror-backed glass shelves - this was Susannah's brilliant idea and I'm doing it in my bathroom as well.  I replaced the mirror with a framed one that a friend found for a song, and then other things like taking down the wallpaper with Waverly ivy-violet border {what made me love that in 1998?}, new knobs on the cabinet and painting the walls {actually a neutral color, although I did contemplate lime green.  OK I made a mistake - I did have lime green mixed, brought it home and chickened out...it was going to be too insanely green :) }  

I needed something on the wall where a wicker shelf had been, and then I spied 4 unfinished mirrors that I'd bought from Ikea a few years ago and done nothing with.  I have no idea what I planned to do with those mirrors when I bought them, but I suddenly thought: aha they'll be perfect! I haven't painted anything with my craft paints in a long time, so I fished around.  I came up with some paint Shannon and I mixed for a garden bench years ago - green, but the wrong shade and then I did find some lime AND....I found some crackle glaze from who knows what year that I had never used.  My brain started into overdrive as I contemplated how to proceed.  I wanted the lime on the outside but whatever you paint underneath shows through the crackle, but the mixed green from the bench would be fine for the under color.  I don't have enough experience with this, and I obviously didn't paint on a thick enough coat of the crackle glaze, but I love how they look - even the spot where I put my finger {by accident} and there's a blotch.  Yep, that spot of lime green is just what that blank wall needed.  {oh, and I painted an old basket from the Goodwill pile for hand towels, and the ivy leaves on the laundry hamper...I'll unabashedly admit that I went a bit wild with the lime green!}

Glass shelves aren't in the "opening" yet.  Coming next week :)