the Birds & the beads!

I got these cool beads from my friend Kathy Jolman as part of my Christmas gift from her. The podlike bead, is a vessel that can hold something like an essential oil. I got a2 new lenses for my camera from my DH, & played with them yesterday & today.
I just stuck my head out the door & snapped pictures of the Redpoles,

Nuthatch,

Chickadees,
& Grossbeaks.

Inside Broccoli was being teased by the squirrel...

I got Mail, & WIP Wed.

I got lucky with the mail today. This really cute wrist pincusion & postquard came today from Jen. I really love them, thanks Jen. Broccoli was really interested in the pin cushion. He sat in my lap sniffing it intently for serveral minutes, I think he must smell Max on it!

The next package was a beautiful glass bead from Sarah Hornik in Televiv. I found Sarah through the blogs, & went to Ebay to buy this. It will inspire a beautiful purse some day.

I woke up early this morning. It was about 445, & I couldn't fall back to sleep. I started thinking about the mess in my studio, & wanted to get some work done, but just can't until I get it organized again. I messed it up on Saturday before my lecture at the museum. I started looking at my yarns which were overflowing 3 baskets, so I sat for at least 2 hours roling yarns into balls, until they all fit into 1 basket.

Then I put all of my metallic threads into a basket that used to hold rubber stamps. I put all the stamps into the map case, so now they're all in one area. So with all this reorganizing, then going out to dinner with Warren, I didn't get very far on my next little project...

but I started by cutting out some whacky cup shapes from some Angelina Fibers, ready to be featured on my next small works, for the Art Meme.

& as for WIP (works in progress) I have a stack of them..... here are the ones under the table, & then there's the ones that I want to do for Christmas, which of course I CAN'T show, so sorry for being a WIP DUD! But th..th..that's all folks!!!!

Experimental Felting & Lampshade

Yesterday I did a little playing & some experimenting in the studio. I also just now found out, that in using Beta blogger I can post more than 7 pictures in one blog! I have 8 here. The 1st is just a few fabric beads I made, in prep for part of my lecture & demo next weekend at the Anchorage Museum.

The 2nd is a piece of cheese cloth right after I painted it with fabric paint.

Then I layered on bits of silk rovings & a little bit of Angelina Copper Flash (not heat bondable type). I've never done regular felting, & don't know if this is even how it's supposed to be done, but I was experimenting, & this is what I did.
I used some Orvis soap in a little warm water, drizzled it over the whole mess, rolled it up in a plastic bag, then kneaded & rolled it for about 15 minutes.

It was something of a matty mess when I finished, but I liked the texture & color. Note I had to repaint some of the cheese cloth, because I hadn't waited for the paint to dry, & it washed out!

I dried it out, formed it over some copper mesh, & stitched it around the edge on my sewing machine to keep it on the metal. Made a couple of little beads from some of my painted & burned dryer sheet, & stuck them in between the fibers.

& turned it into a lampshade for my little Fenton glass lamp, whose glass shade was broken in our last move!

The little bowl, next to the lamp is one of my threadplay bowls that I made a while ago.