I Don't Bake Cookies
When I bought my townhouse, the oven... in the kitchen... kitchens being good for resale value... was a convection oven, which didn't mean a thing to me until I started working with polymer clay. With the clay, a convection oven is a much better choice for baking the clay evenly.
I don't bake cookies. I bake pendants, buttons, beads, and other "yummy" clay things. The ones above were made for my holiday wardrobe only the green is not quite the right colour, and that's probably good. This one is more wearable than the colour I was aiming for, which is too olive for my skin tones.
These are three colours straight out of the packages. I chose them to have a variety of shades that went with the swirl in this fabric I used for pants. The flat and round shape is one of my favourites but I tend toward tone-on-tone colours rather than solids like this, in fabric and with jewelry.
This tool is the size of an electric toothbrush. Its cuteness sucked me in and I bought it at first sight. The size is perfect. I prefer how light it is to hold, how easy it is to store away, and that it's cord-free compared to a flex shaft attached to a motor that needs to be hung up. I'm trying to keep the size and the number of tools I utilize small and manageable.
I wondered if I could scratch down the green beads into a colour that would work better with the outfit. I couldn't but I could scratch these ones to make them less solid and more variegated. It takes 1.25 seconds (like who actually knows this but I'm timing things) to sand each bead. I have forty-six to sand and then drill holes. I also have scraps of these three colours to debate making a focal bead with.
This is the focal bead for another necklace. It's polymer over an aluminum foil core and so much lighter than it looks. I tried a metal core first and it was too heavy. This one is also more organic and I like that. I'll be adding silver gilding to the black beads you saw earlier and then stringing these together to wear with the grey top and the olive-ish pants. I'm leaving mid month and my wardrobe is coming together. YES YES! I'm having fun.
After the last adventure with crochet, I was all set to abandon crocheting a cardigan only that felt like giving up so I started looking for a more suitable pattern and found the Twilight Button Cardigan from For The Frills. What's particularly fascinating to me about this pattern is the delivery method. You can use the pattern for free from her blog if you don't mind the advertising or you can purchase a low cost, ad free, version from her Etsy store. With both, you get access to a step-by-step video that walks you through the entire process using the numbers for the size that she's making. If you're that size, the information about the yarn group and gauge are in the free pattern or on the Ravelry page so you can, if you choose, use the pattern for free and crochet it with her via the video. This is something I am seeing more often, which I take to mean it works for the designers. I know I bought the pattern to avoid the ads HOWEVER... ...one thing I noticed with my career in quilt making was how hard it is to make a living in someone else's hobby. Copyrighted materials were copied and given away for free. Class notes were copied and given away for free. A guild would pay for one person to take the workshop so they could go back and teach it to the others for free. While we can, of course, share what we know, this is more specific than sharing accumulated knowledge and from the professional perspective, it can be VERY discouraging and feel more like betrayal than support from the people you're creating for, and wanting to support with, your work. It' was a big mix of emotions. YouTube has similar overtones in that a content creator is giving away what they know for free and YouTube is making the money because monetization only adds up to big bucks for a small number of channels. Most content creators are generating income in some other way and use YouTube as an advertising and marketing platform. They sell workshops, or patterns, or products to create multiple revenue streams. This is not new, it's just a variation. For all of us, there are no guarantees... in creativity... in business... in life. It can be so easy to get caught up in you the idea that have to do this or you have to do that if you want to be successful only you don't have to and what is successful? The only thing any of us can hope to guarantee is what we can control. I can control what I create, how I create it, and how I share it. I can decide which hoops to jump through... or not. I cannot control how that thing is received or what happens next. As I try out each new idea, I've been thinking about that more and more to make sure the balance is tilted in the direction of me remaining creative and holistically healthy. Have a thought to share? You can email me at myrna@myrnagiesbrecht.com.
Talk soon,
