Amy Butler Apron Swap

I've completed my Amy Butler Apron Swap and will be coming up with the finishing touches in the next few days. But here's a sneak peek of the apron I created. This was a "Franken-Morph" pattern to suit my partner's wishes :-)

And...the Winners Are......

I'm declaring the winner(s) of my name-the-necklace contest now. I appreciated all your wonderful ideas - they were sooooo much more creative than I could ever have come up with! I want to say that I loved "Beads of the Vine" and "Beads on the Vine." The runner up is "Grapes and Glass." But I have to tell you that my favorite is.....hold on to your horses...."Weads." Yes, Val - I know you meant it in jest. But it is my favorite! It's quirky, like me! It is absolutely inspirational! And so...it is the new name of my necklaces! I can see a lazy, scrolly, sprawling signature - "Weads." To thank ALL of you for your encouragement, I am going to send each and every one of you who suggested a name or provided inspiration, a custom-made necklace. I'll be contacting ALL 8 of you, either by e-mail if I know your addy, or on your blog. Thanks again for visiting my blog, and helping me name my jewelry!

Anyone Want to Win One of my Crazy Necklaces?

Here's one of my crazy necklaces. I made this one for a very dear friend's birthday. She loves green, so of course I had to make her a green necklace. Lately, I've been packaging them in "ribbon bags" that I make, which I think are kinda sweet.

I need a name for my creations. I tell everyone "they're what you get when you combine a box of beads and a couple of glasses of wine." So I'm thinking perhaps it should have "bead" and "wine" in the name. Yes, I've already thought of BeadWine Creations, or BeadWine Jewelry. But that's just too darned ordinary. I want something more unique and catchy. Maybe I should ask you all for your suggestions, and offer a custom-made necklace for whoever comes up with something I like. I guess the next question is: "Would anyone want one?" I don't sell them, I just give them away - sometimes I include one when I send a swap out. Or for a friend, like this one. Here are a few more I've made...

So - how about it? Anyone got any brilliant ideas for my crazy jewelry? If you do, and you're interested in a free necklace, please leave a post here on my blog with your crazy name suggestion, and I'll send a necklace in the colors of your choice for the crazy name I like the best. Let's say...crazy names will be accepted through January 25. Wow - I think I just created my very first giveaway!

Two Gallons of Milk...

Oh my goodness....the Pacific Northwest has been "blessed" (right...) with some "weather." First we had a ton of snow. Then we had torrential rains and flooding. I am sooooo hoping that we are a bit done with all that exciting stuff...and some plain old, boring weather is on the horizon. Our rural county road has some washed-away parts, but mostly our driveway has some horrendous ruts which my son will be fixing with the tractor/back blade come Spring. It interfered with some UPS deliveries for Christmas, but I am happy to annouce that my Amy Butler fabric arrived on time (thank you Fabric.com!).

This weekend I plan to post some nice, fabric, crafty posts. But for tonight....I just have to tell you about this. So...I stopped at Safeway last night (Thursday). I seriously needed some groceries because a) we had tons of snow, and b) my car was broke but now it's fixed. We were eating weird stuff out of the freezer and pantry. So I quick-like bought some food. I got ONE GALLON OF MILK. ONE GALLON. NOT TWO. But somehow when I got to the car, I had TWO GALLONS. I didn't buy two gallons...but I GOT two gallons. I don't know how that happened. But the important thing is...even before I got home, I knew that we didn't have power. Darn. I hate it when we don't have power because we are rural and I never know when we'll actually get it back, but it's never "first." So I bought just what we needed. Except, and I must reiterate this...I got ONLY ONE GALLON OF MILK. Well....I really didn't have room in the fridge for two gallons. And with the power out, I just didn't want to try to make room for the second (unwanted) gallon. So I put it on the deck for the night...it was COLD, after all. Here is what we found on the deck on Friday morning.....what do you make of this?

Now...that "red stuff" is blood. Coagulated blood. Ugh. I pondered what that blood could be from. Raccoons. Coyotes. Then I felt bad because whomever it was, they were obviously hungry. They chewed off the top of the milk jug to get to the milk. In the process, they got bloodied. Obviously, we aren't going to partake of that gallon o' milk. However, Miss Piggy thinks it's just a vessel for her very long tongue....as you can see here:

That, plus the dead coyote we have by the side of the driveway (that's been there since January 1), lets you know we are RURAL dwellers. 'Nuff said, I think.....tomorrow, I shall post "nice" things :-)

Happy New Year!

Hope everyone's New Year is going to be great! I've already signed up for two Valentine's Day Apron Swaps. To get in the Valentine mood, I thought I would share a Valentine's Day "gift wrap" I created last year. A friend asked me to wrap a present for her boyfriend. She wanted the wrapping to be a little bit sexy, so here's what I came up with.This is the front.

I used a stretchy lace and just shaped it a bit like a corset. I added black organza ribbon garters with heart-shaped rhinestones glued on. The pouf on top was some leftover black net knit with large metallic hearts (I also glued one of the hearts at the "cleavage" of the corset). And here's the back - notice the red ribbon lacing, and straps going over the "shoulders" of the gift.
Needless to say, her boyfriend was thrilled, and while most guys don't care about saving "wrapping" stuff, he was very excited about his miniature corset! I'm not sure what he liked best - the wrapping or the gift inside!

Snow-Quake!

Snow-Quake: a cross between an snow avalanche and an earthquake (my own wacky definition). At 3:00 a.m. this morning, I was awakened by a huge noise and the house shook. At first I thought the deck that runs the entire length of our house had fallen from the weight of the remaining 13 inches of snow-turned-to-rain. But then I realized I hadn't heard any tearing and ripping noises. Phew! My next guess was the snow had slid off the slanted metal roof of our shop, but I couldn't see since it was still dark. Sure enough, first thing in the morning, I checked it out and saw from the relative safety of the front porch that the pretty blue roof was now showing. Here's the picture from the porch:

And as you can see, when it came down, it pretty much buried one of our cars.
Adam took me to town and on the way we stopped at the tavern a mile from our house (Buzz Tavern - isn't that a great name?) where we had burgers and fries - boy, they sure tasted good, but at that point, anything that wasn't my own cooking would have been like a little piece o' heaven! Our road is still horrible with ruts and thick mounds of slippery snow. And Christmas is still on hold...now we are looking at next weekend before we can all get together.

Everything But The Squeal!

Last week, as the snow just kept coming down and my Christmas shopping had barely even begun, I was starting to panic. On a previous post, I mentioned I was looking around the house, eyeing things that I might get away with "giving" as presents, LOL! I mentioned I had two pair of jeans that my oldest son, Ben, had wanted me to hem about...uh...two years ago. I said I was going to hem them right then and there, and wrap them up for Christmas. I'm titling this post "Everything But the Squeal!" I mentioned that phrase to my other son, Adam, and he asked what it meant. Uh oh...I guess that's one of those "old people" phrases! When folks used to butcher pigs, they used all parts of that pig - the head, the snout, the feet - in other words, "Everything But The Squeal," since you just didn't waste things in the olden days. Well, when I cut the bottoms off the jeans (and it was a good 5-6 inches), I paused for half-a-second, and then tossed those scraps in the garbage can under the sewing machine. As I began to wrap the jeans (hahaha), a plan formed in my weird little head. I snatched the scraps right back outta the can, cut a chunk out, frayed it, and made a pocket for the cloth bag I had put the jeans in. Then cut off some of the original hems, spliced them together, and used that for a drawstring.
As I wrapped a few more presents, I became obsessed with using "Everything But The Squeal." And here are the results:

Well, I did wind up with just the tiniest bit of those hems left, but since we STILL haven't had Christmas because of the weather (hopefully tonight), I may just find some odd thing around the house so I can use that last little chunk! Oink, Oink!!!