Dragon Update #1

Forearms complete.  Now to do the upper arms, hammy legs, batwing ears, spine, body, head, face and tail.

The Dragon. This Time For Sure?

From my blog post back in May of 2007:

"I should take a moment to explain about the dragon. I made a doll I named Valeria Gloria, and she is a dragon rider."

She needed a dragon to ride, though. I found Melinda's Dragon. I made a few modifications to the pattern and built the form in muslin. I've been staring at this pale cream shape now for a year and a half, waiting for it to tell me what to do."

So I started.  Time and again.  Drawing patterns on the form, starting to bead only to stop and rip out all the work I'd done.  Now it's really shouting to be finished - no matter how much I tear up my fingertips.  I gotta find my leather thimble.  The path to completion is, well, painful.

Here's the dragon in the raw.

The front legs aren't attached - I'm beading them right now. 

I need to find that thimble . . .

Embellish The Runway, Project Accessory edition

I'm trying hard to keep up with the Embellish the Runway, Accessory edition (Flickr group)but they just ran the third episode and I've only now finished my stuff for the first challenge.   The challenge itself was to root through a storage locker and find enough material to make a necklace, a belt, and an object of the maker's choice to jazz up a white tee and a pair of jeans.  Adapting the challenge, I spent a few minutes in a local thrift store and came up with this stuff:

Then I made this stuff with it:

Time's disappearing faster than usual, and I'm moving at the speed of evolution here, but I really want to keep with it.

Embellish the Runway is an open group on Flickr and anyone can join - c'mon!  It's fun!  Even if it does take me  forever to get these challenges done, I'm in there sluggin'.

Maybe more later.

Bookman's Holiday

For our annual fall vacation, we chose to stick around and get some things taken care of around the book store.  Major shelving, cleaning, some plumbing work, getting the heat turned on, that sort of thing.  More importantly, we decided to go on a Santa Fe Thrift Store buying spree to replenish the stock.  We rented a mid-sized SUV for comfort, and were instantly confounded by the technology.  Understand, the youngest vehicle we've ever driven is our little '85 Toyota Tercel hatchback.  We couldn't get the freaky "keyless locks" to work for a start.  And it kinda went downhill from there.  The drive was super comfy, though, and we went there and back again safely, quickly and successfully - we visited 6 charity shops, bought almost 300 books and had a late lunch at the Santa Fe Outlet Mall - there's a delicious little French-themed place there called Cafe Vingt Cinq - the special of the day was a wonderful chicken fillet sammich with avocado, pesto, and fresh greens on a freshly baked chunk of bread with a side of jacket fries.  Soooooo tasty.  But I digress.  The vehicle.  It was as big as a damned cabin cruiser.  We had some white-knuckling in every parking lot.  AND two days' rental - with a gas fill-up and their insurance - was almost $200.  An interesting and educational experience.

I have now had my current cold for just over two weeks.  I'm becoming quite attached to it.  In the bad way.

About the Embellish the Runway Flickr challenge - you can see what we did here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/etr/ - I fell way behind, but at last I'm finished.  Here's some pics of what I've made since the last posting:

 

This necklace was loosely inspired by the winning look for Episode 7:

This was inspired by Viktor's win from Episode 8:

 

This was inspired by Viktor's winning look from Episode 9:

 This piece was inspired by Bert's win from Episode 10:

For Episode 11, we decided to choose our own inspirational bird.  I went with the raven:

 You can see the inspiration picture above for the mini-collection win from Episode 12.

 This was my offering for the finale (Episodes 13/14).

  Glad that's over.

Now we're busy with Project Accessory.  I just managed to watch the first two episodes all the way through, but I had a general idea of what was up for the first challenge.  And no, I haven't pulled it together yet.  Shouldn't take long - maybe that's why I'm dragging on it.

Well, more later - probably much later - as always.

A Quick Word

Just thought I'd bop in to give a short recap on what's up in Another Country. I've mentioned in the past that my husband and I own a used bookstore.  I've also mentioned that he has a chronic, debilitating and degenerative condition.  This is a situation for which we've been planning, and things have advanced to the point that I now work by myself, full time, 6 days a week and he is on full, permanent disability.  My beading time is very precious and limited.  

That being said, here are pictures of the stuff I've made since last I posted here:

 

(actually, I made half a dozen of these)

I've been participating in the "Embellishing the Runway" weekly challenges over at Flickr - and having a lot of fun with it, too.  I haven't the time or energy for much else - I've dropped the Beaded Journal Project and only manage the odd commission now and again.  

It's been much easier for me to use Facebook these days - I can keep up with my friends and family, run my bookstore's updates there and post updates for AnotherCountry BeadWorks as well.   

Guess that's it from here and for now, but there's bound to be more later, as always.

Time Out

This break in the blogging brought to you by Them Low Down Dirty Blues.

March '11 BJP.

Way behind, but whattya gonna do.

Not only is it finished, it's up for sale on Etsy:  Linkage

Machinarium Fall

Etsy Link

Machinarium Spring

My son gave me this wonderful little game for Mother's Day, called Machinarium.

I love everything about it, from the music to the animations, puzzles to story line - it is just delightful.  I was strongly influenced by its atmosphere when I came up with my current bunch of beaded bead pendants.

Here's the most recent:

More info at Etsy here -> LINK