Even though he likes his sleep, Mingus whines to wake me before six most mornings. Something must have disturbed him yesterday because he started at 4:45 AM. Although my hives have finally cooled down and no new itchy patches have risen, three weeks of prednisone are making me rather manic. I'm coming to the end of this course of meds and hoping that I'll be free of them. Earlier this week I was a ball of furiously unfocused energy. Although I got quite a bit of vacuuming done, staying on task doing anything else was a bit of a challenge. As were coherent thoughts. And sleeping. Something I've taken has altered my sense of taste so just about the only thing I want is a tall glass of Coke (full sugar, caffeine-free and even better if you buy it at the Mexican grocery because they get imported Coke in glass bottles Coke made with cane sugar). I'm not much of a soda girl, but that strong peppery fizz does cut the deathly metallic taste that will not leave me.
I've made some more rings. This one in candy colors. I think I'm going to make a couple beaded beads and loops and swirls from heavy copper wire to pair with this one. I've been checking out some of the French and German beading sites and seen some long necklaces with loads of beady components. Here is one of the sites I like http://peetjes.canalblog.com/
This is a metal piece I worked on last year, but finally got around to adding the dangly polyclay heart. For some reason I could not get a decent picture of the whole piece. I still need to patina the copper wire a little bit. Or else I'll just let it hand around and nature will take over.
In honor of the full moon, which just happens to be on my birthday tomorrow (is that a good or bad omen?), I started playing with a moonface polyclay cab I made earlier in the year. This shows in progress, but now there are actually a few more rows of progressively smaller beads encircling the face. I think I'm going to use it as one component in a bracelet. I've got to put Sharpie to the bead foundation to finish this off.
I've been working the beads and the clay a tiny bit. I tested out some stamps on polymer clay and have unsuccessfully tried my hand at the peyote bias (an edge increase and decrease in every row) "Dewdrop Diagonal Bracelet" in Carol Huber Cypher's book, Mastering Beadwork. Something is not clicking in that one. I took it apart and started over at least three times. I even printed edge increase and decrease directions from a couple of different sites. This did lead me to realize that there are more names for the increases and decreases than I thought - not just edge, mid-project, gradual, and rapid. My basic problem is that after I make the increase, even though I know how many beads to add, I can't figure out where to put the last bead in the row that follows the increase. It is not lining up for me. I had a few glimmers of hope while looking at diagrams, but when I put needle and thread to bead, I was back to square one (well, maybe 1.5). Fortunately, the little bead shop in Havana, Florida is having a "Bring a project and we'll help you" afternoon on July 18th. Meet me in Havana!
Seed-Stitch Look Bracelet from Carol Huber Cypher
I made a button hole and toggle closure, but it doesn't really go with the inclusions that I added to the end. I think a button is actually needed for the closure.
To get a little taste of success, I moved on to the herringbone project, above. This one is easy, although I abandoned her method for starting the first tow row and used two base rows of square stitch. I actually think that ladder stitch is a better, cleaner (less thread showing) technique to use for a base stitch. I usually do a two needle ladder stitch so that I don't loose my mind. Being left-handed makes certain stitches ridiculously hard for me to follow from written directions and even from diagrams.
Mostly I am suffering from terrible itchy hives. I will not go into all the gory details, but I will say that they started on both hands and both below the elbow, then on my legs below the knee. A two days went by and they started to get worse and spread above my knee. Nothing at all is stopping the progression, although 1,000 mg acetaminophen every 4-5 hrs. is helping calm the itch a little. I mention it here because from what I understand, many people suffer from similar hive formations. I will be in my doctor's office as soon as it opens in the morning.
