gwenbeads

Chaos & Order Day 4

2012-01-28T12:01:00.000-08:00

Here is my Day 4 progress on a commission for a large, flat, beaded angle weave art piece that I showed you a few days ago. I thought I'd try photographing it with a black background.

If it were a bracelet, which it isn't, but if it were, here is what it would look like.

New Ring Nebula Kits

2012-01-27T10:55:00.000-08:00

We have a new kit colors scheme for our Ring Nebula pattern. I call it Metallic Rose because it's got some nice warm pink and burgundy beads in it and a whole bunch of silver and bronze.

The first six people who order this kit will also receive a free silver pressed glass ring. I would have put them in all of the kits, but I bought all that they had. The color and size matches the Ring Nebula perfectly.

Commission Jan 2012

2012-01-25T11:03:00.000-08:00

I started working on a commission do a large, framed piece of flat beaded art. I started with free form hexagon angle weave, but not so free form as to loose the pretty patterns in it. I purposely started with a few odd bits, rings of 5 instead of 6 and a couple of 4mm beads just to make things challenging. Then, I spent hours trying to "fix the mistakes" by making adjustments so that everything will fit and lie flat. What results is a crazy patchwork design that is a combination of order and chaos, where one pattern drifts into the next as do the colors. I keep coming back to this theme. I think there are some nice metaphors there, about working around the problems, and that order and confusion can coexist. It's not done yet, but I thought you might like to see my progress. Here is what it looked like after the first day of weaving.

Here is my progress, day 2. I included a dime so you can see how big it is.

Day 3: I added some super right angle weave and Kepler's Star. I think I've decided to make it sort of a rectangle shape, working on towards the left.

Night Sky Bracelet Kits

2012-01-22T11:21:00.000-08:00

I finally got some Night Sky kits available that I showed in my recent post on bead art at the Joint Math Meetings. This kit has been a long time coming since I first published this pattern in 2007. The kit includes all of the materials you need to weave the bracelet, including a piece of ribbon to lace it up.

The kits make a patch of beaded lace as least as large as this bracelet, but you can also use the beads to make a narrower bracelet and have leftovers for a pendant or two, like the Southern Cross and the Greek Cross Pendants shown below.

One of my friends suggested that Night Sky looks like some coloring books she has, and she shared a link to Altair Design. If you don't want to bead right now, you could look at the pretty coloring book pages instead. Fun stuff.

Tutorial -- Twisted Cubic Right Angle Weave

2012-01-20T12:37:00.000-08:00

I just finsihed my newest tutorial on cubic right angle with a twist. Twisted cubic right angle weave is a just like regular cubic right angle weave, but forms a twisted tube. The twist in the stitch allows you to color it like a candy cane. It is suitable for a cable on a necklace or bracelet. You can also join the ends to make a small donut-shaped beaded bead, which is what I like to do with it because you get nifty torus knots and link designs on the surface of the donut.

The pattern gives complete instructions for weaving the donut including the use of several sizes of seed beads and different numbers of repeats around the tube. Of course, I had to make the smallest one I could since you know I'm a sucker for itty bitty beaded beads. This one is just 13 mm across and 5 mm thick.

I end this post with some happy donuts, because donuts make me happy. The smile is also a bracelet, because you can also make jewelry with twisted cubic right angle weave, you know, if you're into that sort of thing.

Bead Art at the Joint Mathematics Meetings 2012

2012-01-08T19:29:00.000-08:00

I just got back from Boston, MA, where I gave a talk on "Using Tiling Theory to Generate Weaving Patterns with Beads (PDF)" at the Joint Mathematics Meetings. This image shows the basic idea of what I presented.

I also showed five of my beaded star weaves bracelets in the Mathematical Art Exhibit which I designed using the ideas I presented. Here I am posing with my bracelets and the handout I distributed at the meeting.

You might recognize some of these beaded bracelets. From left to right, they are Kepler's Star, Archimedes Star, David's Star, Night Sky and Snow Star. You can see my beads at 0:57 in this short video about the exhibit narrated by Robert Fathauer, a regular curator of mathematical art.

Someday soon, I'll finish a complete paper explaining all of the details of my talk, with my coauthor Blake Mellor. Blake and I met at the meeting to review our paper together (version 14), and after years of writing, we are getting close to being done and submitting it for publication. (You might remember Blake as the mathematician with whom I wrote about the symmetry of beaded beads. He is a mathematical rock star as far as I'm concerned. If you don't want to buy the journal's version of our paper, you can download a PDF file of the pre-print for free here: beaded beads paper. The publisher's version has undergone peer review and revision by the editors at the Journal of Mathematics and the Arts. The writers and editors of JMA are many of the same people who spoke gave talks on mathematical art, and showed their work in the mathematical art exhibit.) Here you can see me with about half of the exhibit.

I am happy to report that the JMM mathematical art exhibit has been getting noticeably larger every year as more people hear about it, and the organizers of the meetings provide more space to show all of the entries. This year, there were over 80 artists showing their work, but only three sets by beaders. In addition to me, the folks over at The Beaded Molecules showed three pieces. You can see me standing right next to their giant beaded beads above. Susan Goldstine and Ellie Baker also had a nice set of bead crocheted bracelets, and Ellie let me take a picture of her next to them below.

Susan gave a slick and elegant talk on how they designed their bead crochet patterns right before I spoke. It was nice that they scheduled the talks of beading together. In general, the JMM are amazingly well organized. Mathematicians are good like that.

Here's a little history of JMM and bead art (and me): Last year (January 2011) my Ionic Beaded Beads were the only bead art in the exhibit, and the year before (2010) I didn't exhibit, so I got the task of writing an article about it for JMA instead. The only beads in 2010 were bead crochet bracelets, by you guessed it, Susan Goldstine and Ellie Baker and this time joined by Sophie Sommer. In 2009, there were no beads, and in 2008, Laura Shea showed a few pieces with triangle weave. Laura also showed triangle weave and beaded polyhedra in 2007. In 2006, I showed a selection of symmetric beaded beads, and they were the only beads in the exhibit. Blake and I also presented a talk on our associated paper that I mentioned above.

The first art exhibit at JMM that I participated was in 2005. There were only 21 artists that year and nobody submitted any beads, including me. I hadn't started beading yet, but I did paint, and my piece was gouache and ink on paper, called Symmetry 1. Maybe you can see that what I was doing then with ink and paint is similar to what I'm doing now with beaded angle weave designs. I believe the art exhibit started in 2004, but that year's exhibit is not posted on line. As far as I know, there were no beads in the exhibit or contributed paper sessions before mine in 2006.

Here is a link to the complete list of related mathematical art exhibits organized within Bridges and the JMM, just in case you'd like to sit here a while an appreciate more mathematical art. I know you'll find more of Laura Shea's bead work in the Bridges' conference exhibits there every year from 2006 to 2010, and perhaps a few other pieces of bead work if you search for it. They've got the eye-and-brain candy if you have the time. Go make a cup of tea. Stay a while.

Rivoli Urchin Necklace Kit B&B 2012

2011-12-28T11:47:00.000-08:00

Florence Turnour and I will be teaching three classes together this year at the Bead & Button Show 2012, our first year ever going to this show. This is one of the exact kits we will be offering with our Rivoli Urchin Necklace class.

Here is the sample for the Ubercube Necklace made with Infinity Weave. This exact color scheme is not a kit, and the lampwork beads won't be included, but this necklace is the kind of thing you will learn to make in the class. All of the materials will be included to make all of the beaded beads.

Here is a photo for a Bustier Beaded Bead Necklace, but I still have to design a kit or two with specific colors. I'm hoping to offer at least two different color scheme kits for each class. I hope to see you there.

Felt cuffs: It must be cold outside

2011-12-23T11:44:00.000-08:00

If you love fiber, click on this photo:

It must be cold outside because all I want to do is make warm fuzzy things. I hadn't made any felt cuffs in months, so I dragged out my collection of wool and other fiber delights, and I made these cuffs. I sold out of all of my purple cuffs, so I went with purple and black, and again, purple fails to show its true colors in photos. These photos show much more blue than what I see in the wool. I think they're prettier in real life. See the listing for these felt cuffs.

And then I made this pair is similar colors but in a smaller size. For these, I used yarn that I spun by hand to embellish the cuffs. The base of these cuffs are from a recycled wool sweater, so they are very stretchy, but the wool embellishments are firmly felted into place.

Furry Elf Slippers

2011-12-21T19:55:00.000-08:00

In early November, I had the wonderful opportunity to spend some time with my good friend Zelda, who is, among many things, a costume wizard extroidenaire. I presented her with the idea of designing a pair of slippers, something whimsical with a turned up toe. I was thinking of something you might see on an elf or gnome, large and comical, much bigger than regular shoes to exaggerate the size of your foot because big feet are funny, and adding extra padding makes the slippers warm. Zelda helped me imagine how the tops should look, and I drew a few pictures. We decided that faux fur was the best choice, for so many reasons, not the least of which is the yards and yards of it stashed high up in the closet, leftovers from previous coat projects.

I have never sewed slippers before, but I was confident that if I wasn't afraid to cut up and waste a bunch of fabric, paper and tape, I could eventually figure out a pattern. That's what it takes to make a pattern. You also need a needle and thread, a seam ripper, scissors, pencils, and patience. I also used my sewing machine.

To start, I traced and measured my foot, and drew a paper pattern that I used to cut the ugliest mustard yellow quilting cotton. Ew. I sewed it together, ripped it apart, pinned it, resewed it, inked in the lines, ripped it all apart, and made a new pattern. I did that whole thing again in a different but equally ugly piece of fabric. Two tries done, I realized that I needed to work on the lining FIRST, and THEN use that to design the fur pattern with the curling toe. I was doing it backwards. So I made another draft, but this time of the lining, something that conformed to the shape of my foot. The lining took me two rounds of drafts, and then one more draft for the fur. I made many adjustments at each draft.

And then FINALLY, I was ready to cut some fur. I knew my pattern was still wonky and unlikely to meet my vision perfectly, but it was good enough to make slippers, and my feet were cold. So I made a blue pair which are super comfy, but I didn't include enough ease in sole, which caused the toe to only curl up halfway. My sister wanted them, so I traded for her home made chocolate covered caramel with two kinds of chile and salt. She also gave me a really ugly cookie, that I asked for in particular because I felt sorry for it in the beautiful bouquet of flower cookies. It was yummy.

Anyways, I altered the pattern again, and made myself a pair, finding only a few minor improvements, like trading in the icky polyester batting I was using for nice natural cotton batting. Then I made the pair in the first two photos, and they are just the way I wanted them to be, so I put these slippers in my Etsy shop. I think maybe I'd like to write up and sell this pattern. I'm pretty happy with it. They're super comfy.

Furry Hats with Ears and Horns

2011-12-11T13:40:00.001-08:00

Making fuzzy hats with ears and horns makes me happy because people always seem to smile when they're wearing them. People also seem to smile at me when I'm wearing mine. We call ourselves Horny Hatters.

I'm offering two new hats for sale so you can be a Horny Hatter too. I decided to start numbering them so I can keep track of how many I make.

Pink and Purple Horny Hat #13
I got a bundle of faux fur remnants from the fabric store, and this super thick fur was in the set. I matched it with purple horns in cotton and a pretty purpley pink silk lining from my overflowing stash of silks.

You know I love pure silk, right? Well this one is particularly stunning, the way it shimmers in the light.

Blue Horny Hat #14
After making a pink one, I wanted to make one in boy colors. Here you can see the blue one with the matching coat I made my sweetie.

This blue one has especially big ears. I used a button clasp instead of pom-pom ties, just for a change.

Flashy Blue Labradorite Sunflower

2011-12-06T20:32:00.001-08:00

I made this pendant by capturing a large labradorite coin bead with the fringe method for beading around a core bead. In particular, I used variation of the Rivoli Sunflower design for the pendant. I adore the blue glass beads in this piece and the way the inclusions shimmer in the light. I think the shimmer works well with the blue flash of the labradorite stone.

For the necklace part, I used a variation herringbone weave that I described in my Toggle Clasp & Cable pattern.

For more information and to purchase this necklace, click the photos. Thanks for looking.

Leopard Print Beading

2011-11-30T18:39:00.001-08:00

I just listed this earring and pendant set made with my "picnic weave" but I think this color scheme looks more like a leopard print than a picnic blanket.

Although they look quite different, this weave is an easy variation of my Night Sky weave.

Flower Ring Bouquet

2011-11-28T14:19:00.001-08:00

If I had all of the time in the world, I'd make a large bouquet of beaded flowers like this.

This is a pile of Flower Rings made with the fringe method, a technique for weaving beaded beads that Florence Turnour figured out and showed me in 2004. If you haven't tried the fringe method yet, check out this free beaded bead tutorial that Florence and I wrote together.

Wonka of Wonderland Top Hat #5

2011-11-27T12:32:00.001-08:00

Last night, I finally finished a custom order for another top hat. This one is number 5.

What these photos don't convey is how springing this hat is. If you bend the brim, it will spring right back into shape.

What you also can't see is that inside of the silk and cotton fabrics are stiff double buckram and wire, which together, give this hat its form. Double buckram is two layers of cotton fabric with a thick coating of sizing. Sizing is a combination of glue and stiffener that can be re-wet with water or steam to sculpt it. When it dries again, it stays in whatever shape you left it to dry. To shape this hat, I only used a bit of steam as the wire is doing much of the work. I really love the sculptural possibilities of wire and buckram, but they require a very firm grasp when working with them, and sewing through the buckram requires strong fingers.

I learned that a thimble and pliers are invaluable tools for pushing and pulling the needle through the sturdy buckram. All of that grabbing and squeezing is really hard on my hands. So for the mean time, I'm putting these materials on hold, and I'm going to play with some soft fabrics for a while. I see some faux fur slippers in my future, something elvish with a comically turned up toe.

Steamy Ruffled Cuff

2011-10-26T22:48:00.000-07:00

I had so much fun making the first one, I decided to do it again.

Click the photo to see the listing.

For the Love of Silk Ribbon and Lace

2011-10-25T01:21:00.000-07:00

Last time I was preparing to visit my friend Jennifer to teach at her bead shop, Naturally Jennifer's Gallery and Beads, she asked me if I had any clothing that I wanted to tie dye. See, Jennifer had something around 30 buckets of dye set up in her garage because she was filling a large order of tie dyed t-shirts for a local music festival. As luck would have it, I had just won a HUGE lot of silk charmeuse remnants on Ebay. The fabrics were gorgeous, but some of the colors were a bit boring, like khaki, pale lavender and tan, and this was the perfect opportunity to make them beautiful with some hand dying. Could Jennifer's dyes work with silk? Sure they would!

I wanted a mottled look rather than a traditional tie dye, so Jennifer taught me to "artfully wad" my fabrics in large plastic tubs. With over 30 colors to choose from, I poured maybe six different, related colors of dye into each tub. Here is a photo of one little corner of the purple piece. Pretty, isn't it?

These dyed silks have been sitting in my closet since Spring, patiently waiting for me to figure out how to use them. Last night, I was browsing hand dyed silk ribbons on Etsy, and I saw that a few different vendors were selling ribbon with serged edges. I realized that I could make ribbon by CUTTING strips of of silk from selvage to selvage, and then SERGE a rolled hem on both edges. OMG! I CAN MAKE SILK RIBBON AS WIDE AS I WANT! See, if you've ever shopped for wide silk ribbon, you know it costs a small fortune, often around half the price you'd pay for 45" wide fabric. Silk ribbon is a real luxury item, especially the wide, hand-dyed stuff, and as a consequence, I don't own any wide silk ribbon... until last night!

On my first try, I made a gorgeous yard of silk ribbon in purple and burgundy with black serger thread. At nearly an inch, it's significantly wider than the narrow ribbons I own, and the fabric is a bit thicker as well. Once the machine was set up and the strip was cut, sewing it was pretty quick and easy. It's a little under an inch wide, over a yard long and I tapered both ends to a point. I strung some beaded beads on it, but didn't love the way they hung because they weren't heavy enough to weigh down the ribbon, So, I ruffled the ribbon by sewing a zig zag like in my Doceri drawing below.

I rolled up my silky ruffle to make flowers, folding and twisting it, this way and that. I made some wiggly lines with it. I sat at my cutting mat, rather mesmerized by this little ruffle, all soft and squishy with undulating colors that shimmer in the light like only silk charmeuse can do. I became inspired: I dug through my bags of lace, cut some pieces, and arranged them under my ruffle. I tried some ribbon flowers. Deciding a cuff would be a good project, I found a scrap of black rayon jersey fabric leftover from the lining of my new mini dresses, and I cut a rectangle about 8 inches wide. Starting with the bottom layers of lace, I sewed my appliques to the jersey, layer by layer. I started with hand sewing, and switched to my machine where I could. After all of the lace and ribbon was attached, I sewed on a few pressed glass flower beads. Then, like making up a pillow, I attached a lining made from some purple cotton corduroy. The corduroy lining makes the back soft, adds a little warmth, and hides all of the stitches and thread ends. I left open a side seam to add elastic button loops, pinned the loops in place and finished the last bit by machine, which you can see running vertically below in black thread. I finished it by attaching the buttons, sewing through all of the layers for stability.

As I sewed, I just kept thinking about how super girly girl this cuff is. It's purple and rosy, with flowers, ruffles, and lace. It's beyond girly. It's not my normal style for sure. I've heard people call it a "romantic" style. My boyfriend called it "too much," but the girly girl in me really likes this kind of explosive overabundance of ribbon and lace. A little part of me wants to be dressed head to toe like this, maybe just for a little while. Yes, this style is a bit out of my normal aesthetic, but I like that it all started with a piece of beautiful purple, hand-dyed wide silk ribbon. Yeah for Etsy. Yeah for silk ribbon. Yeah for inspiration.

Click on the photos for more photos and information about purchasing this cuff.

Stripes and Lime Mini Dress, What's Not to Love?

2011-10-23T17:50:00.000-07:00

If you have ever met me, you know I'm a sucker for anything lime green. Anything... if it's a good shade of lime, I will probably buy it, or at least pick it up and linger over it for a while. So, when I found this cotton jersey fabric in bright lime, I just had to buy it! I matched it with some black and white striped cotton jersey to make this mini dress.

Here you can see it on Marge, my dress form, framed by my Sarracenia plants in the foreground. They've been eating well lately, by the way. You can even see how full of flies they are. Eat up kids!

I actually made this dress twice to develop a pattern that fits me. The first one was just generally too big, I measured the width of the back panels wrong, and to make matters worse, while I was trimming the last hem, I snipped a hole right into the fabric!@#$% So I darned it, and will be giving it away to a friend.

The second one, in these photos, came out just right. I love the long sleeves and high neckline for Fall. Below you can see the extra seaming in the back to give it a more fitted form. I'm really tempted to keep this little dress, but a girl's gotta pay her bills.

Click on the photos to go to the listing in my Etsy shop.

Infinity Donut Beaded Beads

2011-10-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

I finished two new kits for Infinity Donuts. What I like about this particular design is that it's made entirely out of seed beads (including drops) but the tension of the thread holds the piece open and hollow. I also like that they have a lot of large holes; so you can string them in many different ways. Here is the green kit.

And here is the red and gold kit.

Here is one of the old kits samples that I now have for sale in my Etsy shop, the finished beaded bead, in case you don't want to make one, but you still want to own one.

Click on the photos for more information. Thanks for looking!

How to Video on Cubic Right Angle Weave with Beads with Doceri

2011-10-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

Cubic RAW (also known as three-dimensional right angle weave) is an extremely versatile weave. I used cubic RAW with size 11/0 and 15/0 seed beads to make this "impossible" triangle, "impossible" square, and actually quite possible jack.

Here are some other variations I found in my big box of beaded beads.

More simply, with cubic right angle weave, you can also make nice cables for necklaces and bracelets, like the following examples. From left to right, the four samples below contain 3.4mm seed bead drops and 11/0; 8/0 and two colors of 11/0; two colors of 8/0 and 11/0; four colors of delicas. The leftmost version with the drops is my favorite. It's got a nice bubbly texture.

I just uploaded a new Doceri video on how to weave cubic right angle weave like I did in the pieces above. I'm not sure that this is the best way to teach this weave, but somebody requested that I make the video, and last night around midnight, it seemed like a really good idea. So I drew a bunch of pictures in the wee hours, wove up the four little samples above, photographed the older pieces in the first two photos, and recorded it all the next morning for YouTube.

Since I REALLY don't enjoy recording my voice for these videos, this one is silent. Sorry, but this time, you'll just have to add your own sound track. The payoff is that it's much shorter when I don't blabber on and on, just 3 action-packed minutes of mathematical beady goodness.

If you like this post, you should read about twisted cubic right angle weave.

Sewing mini dresses to go with my bloomers

2011-10-01T00:17:00.000-07:00

I love bloomers, short pants (or shorts) with ruffled hems. In the last couple of years, I have sewn myself several pairs of bloomers (including my black corduroy pair below), and I have noticed that I like to wear them mostly with my longest shirts or my shortest dresses so that the ruffles peak out the bottom. Unfortunately, I own very few mini dresses, so I decided to make some. I started with my oldest, dearest mini-dress, and since it fits me so well, I used it to draft myself a set of pattern pieces. I updated the design by making it a both longer and fuller in the back than in the front. I also updated the fabric choice from a tiny flower print to pre-ruffled fabric on top and slinky rayon on the bottom. Both fabrics are 5% spandex to make them nice and stretchy.

The first one I made turned out a wee bit too small for me, so I enlarged the pattern by a couple inches here and there, and made two more in just my size. Why two? So I could sell one and keep one for myself. I planned to keep the crappy one and sell the other, but I am happy to report that they both came out equally well. Here you can see me in the purple one. It's so comfy and I'm thrilled with the fit.

The purple on is a size medium, and the green one is a size small. Notice the extra seaming in the back to add shaping around the waist and fullness in the hem.

The hard part about sewing these dresses was working with the ruffled fabric. If you're not really careful, you'll get wonky ruffles caught in the seams when you sew them. From previous projects (bloomers!) I learned that the best way to control the ruffles is to baste them down so they don't move before you get the seams sewn properly. I did a ton of basting on these, every seam with ruffles was basted before I pinned it (or basted it) to be serged. In the past, I used my sewing machine to do the basting, but on these I did them all by hand. It takes a bit more time, but I got MUCH better results. In three dresses, I didn't get a single flipped ruffle, which is nice.

These two tops are also different in the hem treatments. The purple has a ruffled lettuce edge, and the green one has a folded hem with cover stitch. I'm really not sure which one I like better. What do you think?

Clicking on the photos will take you to their Etsy listings.

Found Mathematics on the Playa

2011-09-28T17:16:00.000-07:00

I've been sorting through my photos from Burning Man, and I found this set of photos of the dried playa ground. The playa is composed of a very fine particle dirt or dust that is wet mud in the winter and dry, flat earth in the late summer. As the lake bed dries, cracks are formed in the mud. The resulting cracks nicely demonstrate the idea of the self similarity of fractals in nature.

The idea is that as you zoom in, you continue to see more and more detail, and the over all shapes at every level always look the same, at least in theory.

Zoom, zoom, zoom.

Of course, this is the real world and not theoretical mathematics, so that perfect self similarity breaks down if we zoom in far enough. That reminds me of a riddle. What's the difference between theory and practice? In theory they're the same, but in practice, they're different. This is like that.

Anyway, the above photos were taking is the shade of bright daylight. Below is what the Playa looks like at night with blue and green laser lights shining on it. You can still see the cracks, but instead look at the patterns in the lights.

This pattern is quite complex since the lights are projected with more than one periodic pattern superimposed on top of one another. See how the blue forms one repeating pattern, and the larger green clusters of dots form another, but one doesn't quite match up with the other. And maybe you can even make out a repeating pattern in the smaller green dots. Pattern on top of pattern on top of pattern... This pleases me.

Infinity Truncated Rhombic Dodecahedron Beaded Bead

2011-09-26T16:35:00.000-07:00

This beaded bead has a really long, and very descriptive name. The weaving technique is Infinity Weave. I use this name for the weave because there are an infinite number of polyhedra that can be realized with Infinity Weave. The mathematical shape of this particular beaded bead is a truncated rhombic dodecahedron. I think of it first in terms of its symmetry, which is that of a cube (or octahedron). I imagine that on each face of the cube, there is a smaller square. This beaded bead has 6 squares holes just like this:

Square Face of the Truncated Rhombic Dodecahedron

The shape is further modified by replacing each edge of the cube with a hexagon. Since a cube has 12 edges, so does this beaded bead have 12 hexagons. In the photo below, see how the hole in the center has six sides? That's the hexagon.

If you would like to read more about this beaded bead, and see photos of it from other angles, click on the photos above.

I brought home some carnivorous plants last month

2011-07-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

...and I can't stop looking at them. So I photographed them, so I could share them with you.

The first one is of a baby sundew leaf doing her best impression of a Valentine.

That stem is less than a millimeter wide, by the way, so she's satisfying my love for itty bitty sparkly things pretty well. I also found the limit of how small my camera (a Canon G12) can shoot.

Next is a pair of Venus fly traps, just hanging out in a crowd, waiting for a fly. I think the one on the left just told a joke and the one on the right is laughing at it.

These are American pitcher plants, a particularly brilliant cultivar called 'Scarlet Belle' with some bladderwort flowers, and sundews showing off their sparkling dew. Three different species of carnivorous plants are growing in this one pot.

Here's another sundew, a rotundifolia cross breed. These colors just scream, "Summer!"

Below is a tiny patch of bonus sundews, "weeds" that grew in the pot of one of the American pitcher plants. After I took home these pots, I realized there were entire ecosystems growing in them.

This last photo shows maybe 1.5 inches across of turf. At last count, I found 20 itty bitty sundews in this one pot. Small stuff. Some of them are so small you can barely detect there's a plant, but the dew sparkles in the sun. I'm enjoying their mini-ness. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to bead any of these things yet, so you'll just have to be satisfied with the photos. I purchased all of these beautiful, healthy plants from the good people at California Carnivores.

How to Make a Digital Flipbook Animation on How to Tie a Slip Knot

2011-07-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

The first stitch to start crochet or knitting is typically a slip knot. Here is what a slip knot looks like.

I illustrated how to tie a slip knot with this Doceri video. To make this movie, I created a digital flip book of sorts, and the video shows different ways to play it back.

To explain how I did it, here I show you what my Doceri control panel looks like when I am authoring or playing back Doceri files. Specifically, here is what I see at the end of the 8th page of my 13-page digital flip book.

At the top of my iPad screen, you can see lots of buttons and ways of controlling my presentation, both for authoring and for playing back my drawings. The relevant controls are labeled below (with the help of Doceri, of course).

At the beginning of the video, I played the file, frame by frame, by touching the "forward to next stop" icon repeatedly. I similarly touched "back to previous stop" to play the file backwards. Later in the video, I showed the file by repeatedly pressing the "play" button. There, you can see each frame played out separately, where each stroke plays separately. I did not design this file to be played back with the play button, but I wanted to show you the difference, since I play most of my movies with just the play button.

To make a flip book movie like this, I drew several layers for the knot at a time, one right over the next. After I got at least two layers drawn, I went back in time on the Doceri "time line," and I added a "white stop" by touching the "windshield wiper" icon on the top right of the control screen. The 12 different white stop markers on the time line above each indicate that the screen is cleared at that point in time. In the images above, you can see that our point "you are here in time" is just before a white stop. White stops can be added and deleted just like any other stroke on the time line.

Since the screen clears after each complete image of the knot is shown, when I play back the file by forwarding to the next stop, an animation results. It's just like the flip charts I used to make in the corner of my notebooks as a kid. But since it's a Doceri file, I can easily color and edit my work.

How to Make an Easy Tutu without Sewing Part 2

2011-06-21T10:50:00.000-07:00

Last time I presented part 1 of making an easy no-sew tutu. This is the second half.

Next I added strips of tulle from the 6 inch wide roles. My strips were about 2 feet long for the blue. I added them with the same kind of knots I described in part 1. Then, I added 1.5 foot strips of white tulle. In each case, I equally distributed the strips around the waist.

Notice how my strips keep getting shorter on each round. The layering creates a nice rounded skirt shape. At this point, I decided I didn't like the look of the blunt ends. So I cut the corners into points like in my Doceri drawing.

This photo shows most, but not all, of the blunts ends cut off. I definitely prefer the look of the pointy ends.

Next I cut strips of ribbons. For the ribbons, I cut off corners or I folded the ends to cut notches in the ends of the ribbons. Here is my Doceri drawing showing my method for cutting notches.

I knotted strips of the various ribbons to the grosgrain waistband, just as I'd done with the strips of fabric. The thinner the ribbons, the longer I cut them. I pulled the ribbons down into the skirt so that they would hang from the inside. Here is the finished tutu and headpiece.

Here is the bridal nymph in her natural habitat. Isn't she beautiful! This was Day 1 of our bridal shower weekend.

On Day 2, the bridal nymph ditched the silly headpiece I made her in favor of sunglasses, but still wore the tutu on our daylong hike.

Yes, tutus are suitable for hiking, as long as there's no serious rock climbing. The netting might catch a few bugs, however. Fortunately, this is a pretty bug-friendly group of nymphs.