All Wired Up

When I was a kid, (about 6 1/2) we used to make jewelry from telephone wire. One of my favorite things to do was to make bracelets from coiling a piece of wire around itself. It was quick and easy and a lot of fun to do. I still have one or two of them tucked away in a box somewhere. The only problem was that it was not that easy to score telephone wire.

The only way to get some, was to beg it off one of the guys you saw on the street working if you happened to catch them on their way up or down a telephone pole. I can only hope no one ever got into trouble for giving away wire to little kids.

Recently, I discovered Twisteez wire. I was going to have a booth soon at a small neighborhood celebration so I decided to make some bracelets and see how people would receive them. I wrapped a piece of wire around my wrist to get he size, bent it and started coiling. Unfortunately I ran out of wire before the coil was complete. So much for that idea. I tried using multiple pieces but that was a disaster.

Today I got the bright idea to finally visit the Twisteez web site. There are a few lessons for cool projects, including a coiled basket. Theirs is thicker and combines wire; maybe I'll give it another shot with their version and see what I come up with. I saw some beautiful African bracelets online recently from telephone wire, but they were a little out of my league.

I'd made a coiled wire disk a while back trying to figure out how to make a basket like the ones from South Africa, but I couldn't figure out how to build the curve and now I can't even remember how I got the coil started in the first place.

A little while after my failure to launch with the bracelet inspiration struck and I decided to close my initial coil into a teardrop shape and create an earring. This time my effort met with success and I set about coiling more wire and creating more earrings in different colors.

The little celebration where I had my booth got rained on and sales were pretty poor for the day. I did get good response to the earrings though, and I even sold two pair. (There are more available online at my new Etsy store!)
The same day I made the coiled wire earrings I began digging through my container of leftover polymer clay beads. I had a bunch of pretty ones that I had never used so I dug out the head pins and started to play. Polymer clay is such an interesting material to work with and creating unique beads is so easy to do. Making earrings only requires a couple beads, unlike a necklace. When I have time to make more filler beads I'll so some more bracelets and necklaces, hopefully before Christmas.

I have been itching to start crocheting even though it's still a little early and I couldn't resist experimenting with yarn anymore so I played around with combining two variegated yarns in a scarf and hat set. I can't decide how I feel about them, but it always seems that when you make something you think has turned out strange, someone else falls head over heels in love with it.

Next I started on a shawl that I like during the day but not at night. The reason of course it that it looks better in natural light. During the day the purples and greens look like a garden of violets but at night it's a whole other murky, mossy story. At any rate, it's all about the journey. I had hoped to post more photos with this post, but the camera died (after only one year!) and my phone is not cooperating. Until next time...