I’m a bit late in posting this because of Shabbat, but this is a picture I took of an anemone during my photography course on Friday. Thing-a-day has been a lot of fun. Hope to do it next year!
Today I went to an all-day conference for technical writers. I knew you would all be thrilled to see photos of conference rooms, mediocre food, and PowerPoint presentations, so I am showing you this photo instead. I took it just outside Binyanei haUma, where the conference was held. It’s the partially constructed bridge designed by the Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. The bridge is also called the Bridge of Strings and is situated at the gateway of Jerusalem. It will support the light rail network, which will be completed …. some day.
We all know how important a high-fiber diet is, right?
This is a crocheted Triscuit with a slice of cheddar, cucumber, and tomato.
2 inches wide, made from perle 8 cotton. Teneriffe, also called Sol lace, is a form of needlelace that is worked over a web (the spokes of the wheel) mounted on a form (in this case, a squeaky slab of styrofoam). Design from Alexandra Stillwell’s ,”The Technique of Teneriffe Lace.”
One of the things I really like about Thing-a-day is that the framework gives me the incentive to try new techniques without getting bogged down in trying to produce a masterpiece. Since the projects have to be quick, they lend themselves to experimentation. This is my first attempt at Romanian Point lace, which is worked by crocheting a braid (the heavy outlines of the heart, couching the braid to a pattern on a piece of cloth (I drew the pattern on copy paper and basted it to an ordinary handkerchief), then working the needlelace fillings with a blunt tapestry needle. The thread is perle cotton 8. The pattern is adapted from a bookmark in Angela Thompson’s book, Romanian Point Lace (now sadly out of print, but you can get Sylvia Moriartu’s Romanian lace patterns and booklets from www.nordicneedle.com).
Romanian Point lace is very quick to work and surprisingly durable. It’s also very portable, because you just need thread, needles, a crochet hook, and the project itself, which can be rolled up to fit in a small bag. Crocheting the braid is tedious, but it’s easy, mindless work that you can do while standing in line, sitting in a lecture, or commuting.
Posting this a couple days late because I forgot to photograph it on Sat. night when I made it. I wove two Weavette squares from my hand-spun, home-grown, naturally coloured, brown cotton. Then I sewed the squares into a bag. I messed up the weaving a bit because I was in a hurry on Friday when I was weaving the squares (Thing 22). I learned that brown cotton, loosely woven, bears a visual resemblance to burlap, so next time I’ll probably choose a different technique for this cotton.
Forgot to photograph Thing 23 from last night. Will do it tonight.Anyway, I was wondering why my allergies are so bad. These were all taken close to my apartment building.
I wove a couple squares on my small Weavette loom from the handspun naturally coloured cotton that I posted a couple days ago (before my eclipse pictures). I love Weavettes because you can make something from small amounts of yarn but the last few rows are a bit tough on handspun. The yarn can get badly abraded, so you want to start with a fairly sturdy yarn. I hadn’t originally planned to ply the yarn, but after producing half a square of brown cheesecloth, I decided that plying would be a good thing. It wasn’t worth setting up my Schacht spinning wheel. I had wound the cotton single into a center-pull ball, so I plied it on a square whorl drop spindle and wove it straight off the spindle (didn’t bother setting the twist of the plying since it was going straight onto the Weavette and I was in a hurry).
OK, I’m a lemming. I got up to go to the bathroom at 3 a.m., couldn’t go to sleep, and ended up sitting outside on my balcony taking pictures of the eclipse. I crawled back into bed at 5:30, got up at 7 to go to work. <yawn>
Here’s the series: Full moon at 3:08 a.m.
3:38 a.m.
3:57 a.m.:
4:07 a.m.:
4:27 a.m.:
4:37 a.m.:
4:46 a.m.:
5:05 a.m.:
Today I finally spun some of my homegrown, naturally coloured cotton. Here’s a picture of the raw cotton. Yes, it really is chipmunk brown. I gin it (remove the seeds) at boring meetings at work. I love naturally coloured cotton and I grew a few plants in pots almost every year, alternating green or brown strains. It’s really cool stuff, because the colour doesn’t fade with sun or age. But you do have to be careful not to grow it near white cotton, to eliminate cross-pollination. For more info, see www.vreseis.com (my cotton isn’t FoxFibre, BTW).
Cotton rolag with hand carder (it’s a wool carder because I don’t own cotton carders:
Spun on a tahkli (Indian supported spindle). I did this during breaks at work. It’s a bit slubby because it wasn’t carded commercially:
Skein wound off on a niddy noddy:
Setting the twist. The twist of cotton has to be set with heat and moisture. I added a tsp. of baking soda because the colour deepens in an alkali solution.
Drying the skein. The weight of the cup is necessary to help set the twist:
If all goes well, I hope to make something with this skein and post it tomorrow.
This snowfall wasn’t nearly as photogenic as the last one, so my pictures aren’t quite as memorable. (For pictures of the last snow, here’s the link.) Ths snow turned to rain by lunchtime and most of the snow on the ground has been washed away, but I managed to get a few shots while it was falling on the way to work.
Windshield of the minibus I rode in on the way to work. I was sitting in the second row of seats and used a zoom lens.
Ramot, taken from Har Hotzvim with zoom lens.
I made the beads months ago from a magazine picture of a purple sky over green grass. I finally strung them together with looped wire into a necklace. I think the wire was a good choice because paper beads are so light that they need the extra weight to make them drape effectively.
I can’t leave this one lying around because my husband complains that it makes him hungry. 
I’ve had the flu, so all I could manage yesterday was a few stitches on my ongoing embroidery project, “English Garden Sampler,” designed by Teresa Wentzler. But, hey, I’m on the home stretch! Only one more band to go! Then all those endless beads….
This is my second attempt at quilling. I made a 2″ origami box with lid (basically two boxes, one folded with paper that is a centimeter smaller than the other), coiled a couple strips of quilling paper, and glued them on top.
I still have the flu and am rather relieved that my photography class this morning was canceled. I suspect that the heavy rainfall closed a lot of the nature reserves, including Setaf, where we were supposed to shoot pictures of almond trees in bloom. They’re predicting snow for Jerusalem again! Maybe I’ll be able to get to Jerusalem and post some pictures of the snow.
I’m still sick with the flu, so it seemed like a good idea to try the new quilling tool and paper strips I ordered. This is my first attempt. I’ve had a bad case of Gluer’s Block.
I actually promised to make these earrings last summer, in exchange for a friend’s cast-off fashion magazines. The beads were originally a rather flat red, although the paper was slightly shaded, so I took a gold pen and added a few highlights. Then I covered the beads with a couple coats of clear nail polish (I *know* I have a can of spray lacquer around somewhere but I can’t find it and as these were so small, it seemed simpler to use nail polish).
I’ve been sick for a couple days and Thing-a-Day has been a great excuse to finish (or start!) small projects that I’ve been putting off.
I’m not sure I’d call this a real drawing. It started out as a doodle to test a new pen to see whether it would bleed through the paper of my photo book. It’s a sketch of the ruined village of Lifta. The houses really do look like they’ve been built at different angles!
The white blob is either mayonnaise or horseradish sauce, depending on your taste.
And here’s the sandwich deconstructed, showing the lettuce leaf on rye.
I made these beaded flowers during a hectic day at work. The first few were a bit tricky (I kept getting kinks in the wire) but eventually I figured out how to draw the wire smoothly with pliers. I got the idea from an issue of Adorn magazine that was published last summer.