Beanie Babies!

The Bear wasn't looking at the camera.  These are very small hats for infants.  Next I will post some pictures of the babies wearing them.    

New necklace

Here I am with my own brand of yarn!!!  Marcelo brought me this yarn from Brazil.  It is 100% cotton and a great color too.  I guess he found it in the back of his mom's closet.  It is a little on the thin side which is great for fine projects.  So, this is the first thing I've made with it. 

The geode was something I found in a free box; the funny thing is that it was my free box!  I came home one day and found that someone had left this beautiful rock and some nice sunglasses out in front of my house where I usually leave free stuff.  After waitng  a little while I decided it must have been for me.  I am excited that I finally got to do something with the geode. 

Some new hats

Here is a nice hat that I made last week.  It is a variation on the classic summer style- red, gold and green with white.  Actually, I think it will be a great winter hat because I made it with really thick yarn and I doubled up the yarn when I put in the stripes.  That is what made that cool effect. Plus a cute pom pom. 

Here is another new hat that is the opposite: a very airy, open pattern.  This hat was also made with some of my new yarn that I got at the thrift store. 

 

More fun with earrings

Today I went to one of my favorite beaches ever and that is saying alot considering all the amazing beaches I have been to.  This beach is gorgeous- white sand, turquoise blue water, dark green cypress trees, and it is only about an hour away in Carmel, CA. 

While I was there, I worked on another pair of earrings.  Since I am low on beads, I have been working hard to come up with good color combinations.  I think these colors, silver and purple with a dash of lime green, worked out great.

I still haven't put them on hooks yet, which is the final thing I do and requires a pair of needle-nose pliers and takes about two seconds.  I am going to have to time the production of the earrings but for this particular pattern I would say it takes at least and hour each one, two hours total.  I do another style which is more open and much less intricate, and that takes only maybe an hour or an hour and a half total.  Here is another picture I took of them on top of my beading box, an old chocolate box.  Yum!
 

Earring Update!

The past few afternoons I have been beading down at the beach.  I still have some of my seed beads from when I was in Guatemala; but they are dwindling. 

I always think of my good friend Kerry in Ecuador because she taught me the pattern that I frequently use to make the earrings.  I have sold some awesome pairs over the past month or so, and it is time to restock.  I wanted to do a rainbow pair, but I stopped short of orange and red and so they are Brazil colors!  I also learned that sequin is "lantejoula" in Portuguese.  

The Three Bears

Today a family of bears came to live at my house! Actually, it started with a tiger. I was selling at the Boardwalk on Friday night and a guy asked me if I could make him a tiger hat. I just rolled my eyes and shook my head, taking him for the usual riff-raff that I often encounter there. But, later that night, I saw two or three hats with ears and/or faces and that got me thinking. More exciting news is that I just got two huge bags of beautiful vintage yarn thanks to my friend Erica who tipped me off to the great yarn selection at a thrift store in Scott's Valley. Recycled yarn and these vintage colors are amazing!

So, I had just gotten some great orange yarn and decided that I would give a tiger hat a try, especially because that is my mom's name, Tyger. The ears turned out to be pretty difficult for me, especially making them stand up. But, I got to use another beautiful vintage yarn that is a perfect tiger's eye- greenish brownish.

After that, I wanted to try round ears because they would be much easier. I wanted to try making a small kid’s hat first, but because I’m still learning where to position the facial features, it came out bigger. I made one bear and then two more.