Saltwater Purls

Summer: Fruits of Knowledge

I am planning a series of jewelry trees depicting each season of the year: My first tree is a summer tree bearing fruit....and it is the fruit of the knowledge I've gained so far in silversmithing. I love learning and I hope I get to spend the rest of my life learning, researching and discovering.

The tree is silver, made from precious metal clay and bezeled tourmaline cabs. The trunk is a natural tourmaline crystal (I unfortunately broke it in two places as I set it grrr). It is strung with faceted tourmalines.

How Does Your Garden Grow

Ingrid, Ingrid
Quite green fingered
How does your garden grow?
With tomatoes and lettuce, cabbage and beans
And monster zucchini in a row

 

Left: Zucchini flower; Right: Lettuce flower

Left: Bush bean flower; Right: Cucumber flower

Post-Holiday harvest

Each Peach, Pear, Plum Wrap

I mentioned in the last post I brought some new yarn...the temptation was Adrienne Vittadini Fiora...a mohair yarn with small sequins throughout....and now thoroughly discontinued. I have wanted this yarn for years, so when it appeared at Webs 1/2 off in plum, it was destiny...right?
 
So I am making the wrap cardigan from Adrienne Vittadini Fall 2003 collection...which will  make this the 4th sweater I have made from the collection. In fact I adopted this collection on Ravelry...and then made the mistake of deleting one of the best projects. Apparently to prevent people being asked multiple times for their pictures you can only ask once.....so the only way to fix my screwup is for the person to reupload their picture....and they have not :( although I asked really, really nicely.

Sea to Sky Road

Finally an FO! My version of Road to Golden had been sitting aside waiting  for another ball of pale blue kid classic which could not be found locally. I didn't really wish to pay shipping for one ball so I waited until there was another yarn I wanted. Finally Webs had somehting I couldn't resist. Adrienne Vittadini Fiora....a yarn I've wanted for a long time but is thoroughly discontinued (more on that next week). So without further ado...drumroll....

Pattern: Road to Golden by Lisa Shroyer from Knitscene 2007
Yarn: Rowan Kid Classic in Feather, Bear, Oats, Glacier, Hurricane and Smoke
Words of Wisdom: After learning about the importance of dark versus light colours, I restarted the project with different colours. I added an inch to the bottom non-patterned area and did one extra 1/2 pattern repeat at the top. I also made the arms larger than the pattern The Kid CLassic grew in length so my sleeves are a little long.

another new garden

I finally finished the front garden with the help of my mother.

We began 3.5 years ago with the removal of sun blocking cedar.
 
Then came the new path.
  
Then last year we added the garden under the front windows.
 
The final touch is the garden beside the path. The shrubs are a flowering almond, a dwarf red japanese maple 'garnet', a yellow barberry and a white rhododendron.

Next will be new lighting (solar). I still have hostas and dwarf irises to add  as sales bring them in.

Owl boy takes wing

This will be a drive-by-blogging. I am around and fine just busy traveling, spending time with family and creating. Here are my two favourite silversmithing pieces thus far.

Owlfred the owl boy or night angel. He is the product of a class on precious metal clay I took a couple of weeks ago, Wow what neat stuff if you've ever dabbled in clay and the firing process uses the same tools as I use for silversmithing. I then added the stone setting (petersite - a recently discovered mineral from Jersey) and beading (faceted iolite)  afterwards.
 
Ammonite cycle of life. The ammonite was a broken piece I scored a little while ago and had ground to a triangle shape and then I paired it with rutile quartz and tiger iron or banded tigers eye.