New developments

First: I moved to a new apartment in the Inman Square area! My girlfriend and I share a one-bedroom unit within a much larger building that houses us and 4 other housemates. Many of my housemates are crafty, and after things are a bit more organized, we should have a workspace in the basement for all sorts of projects.

Second: Jewelry studio! I was looking around for jewelry supplies on Craigslist and saw a listing for what's essentially a subletting of bench space within a studio in Joy Street Studios. The artist who rents the studio is John Lerner, someone who's been making jewelry for 30 years. For what's a pretty reasonable monthly fee, I get free run of a fully-equipped jewelry studio whenever I want to show up, and instruction/supervision/tips from John on Sundays and Tuesdays. I started at the end of August but missed a couple of weeks. Here's some of the stuff I've made so far:







As you can see, I'm currently in love with the combination of dyed blue freshwater pearls and textured, oxidized copper :)

There may be a time when I decide it would make more sense to buy my own equipment and work in the basement of my apartment instead, but for now, the studio bench solution fits my needs really well. I can get away from the clutter in my apartment and work on jewelry whenever I want; I have access to a really great teacher; and the other people sharing the studio space with me are great to bounce ideas off of. Oh, and it's in ideal biking distance from my apartment, or a direct ride on the bus.

Oh, and we're having an open studio on November 21-22!

Silversmithing and jewelry class

I made a ring today in the Cambridge Center for Adult Education's intro to jewelry class--it's many weeks' worth of material crammed into two 6.5-hour long Saturday sessions. I'm learning lots of cool stuff--some stuff that I can't really use until I invest in some more equipment, but some stuff that I can use right away. It's pretty cool :)

(I of course had to texture my first ring with the traditional message a programmer displays for their first foray into a new language!)

Yarn!

Spinning! Yarn! I've made more of it with my drop spindle and it totally looks like real yarn.



From left to right: 2-ply wool (the dyed strand is from roving that came pre-dyed in those colors); Navajo 3-ply tussah/merino; and a swatch knitted with said 3-ply. I kind of want to make a knitted version of this hat from the 3-ply with some as-yet-nonexistent colorful/wacky handspun stuff for stripes, but I'll need to do some calculating first to make sure there's enough. I haven't yet decided what I'm doing with the 2-ply; the colors are kind of cool but also kind of terrifyingly retro. (I'm half-jokingly calling it "The Last Juniper" in my head--there's no good reason to reference The Last Unicorn, but the colors *are* pretty juniper-ish.)

Still haven't gotten around to dyeing this two-color stuff purple. It may need to wait until after the move.

New stuff in the etsy shop!

Tell all your friends! :p


purpleshiny.etsy.com

Oh man, found objects

The coolest metal bits ever are lurking around the streets of Somerville!



Do you think I should oxidize (darken) the silver on this one, or leave it shiny?



It figures, just when I've decided I have all the jewelry supplies I need for a while, I stumble across even more cool things. At least these ones were free :)

Spinning yarn!

I tried to learn how to spin yarn a few years ago and didn't do very well. Sometime last week, I stopped by Mind's Eye Yarns and asked for some basic wool to learn to spin with--and I managed to make something that mostly looked like yarn! No pictures yet, as I still want to dye it. But then I took out some of the roving that I'd bought the first time I tried spinning:



Oh my goodness, it looks a lot like real yarn! I'm going to get some more roving and ply together different combinations of singles--I find this particular combination a little too much like all the yarn I already own :) But yay, spinning is neat!