Some Happy Things

Last night, I went to the 40th anniversary party of Sam's parents, Cheryl and Richard. I really had a lot of fun meeting their family and friends, and of course, hanging out with Sam and his brothers, both of whom live in Chicago and had flown to New York for the occasion. They finally presented them with the photo album that that they (mostly Sam) had been working on for over a month! It included anecdotes from their loved ones, as well as photos. It was a great success!

After the party, Sam, his brothers, and I went back to Cheryl and Richard's for a night cap. We looked through the album. At this point, they opened a few presents. That's when I presented them with this box:
You see, Sam's parents collect little boxes. I've had this pattern by Julia S. Pretl in my beading repertoire ever since it appeared in Bead and Button Magazine about 6 years ago. They take quite a while to make, but I love making them and giving to people who love them. Seeing Richard's and Cheryl's happy reactions to this was sooooooooooo cool! :-)

Another happy thing is that I am currently being featured on NightMaiden's blog, Going Handmade! I am so grateful to NightMaiden for featuring me! I know that when I answer interview questions (just like when I used to write essays, and before that, reports) I tend to write a lot! So I really commend NightMaiden for taking my looooooong answers and putting together such a wonderful article! I also commend her for taking so much time to promote Etsy artist. Her blog is very new, but she has featured a different Etsy artist every single day since its birth! If you check out her blog, be sure to check out some of the other Etsy artists she features! Her post on Maoiliosa prompted me to impulsively buy these gorgeous Japanese washi earrings.

Ever since they arrived at my apartment a few days ago, I haven't taken them off! (OK, maybe for sleeping and showering, but that's IT!) :-)

OH NO!!!

So as you may recall, as soon as I heard the theme of this month's EBW challenge, A Midsummer Nights Dream, I immediately got sketching. I worked out a pattern and ordered the beads I needed. I wasn't quite sure which colors would work best, so I ordered a few different colors in small quantities.

I actually spent a large part of this month working on gifts (more on that another day!) so my challenge piece got pushed back a little bit. I figured I could finish it this weekend.

A little while after having started the challenge piece, I realized that the colors I was using just were not working out. There was not enough of a contrast between them, so I started over, using one of the colors I had used for one of my gifts.

I don't know why this did not occur to me at the time, but I did not have enough beads in that color! Last night, I realized this, and immediately spent a small fortune on two-day shipping. They should be there by Monday or Tuesday. Problem is, I'm supposed to stay at work late on both Monday and Tuesday (tutoring is canceled this week because of the 4th of July holiday). With my job, that could have me home anywhere between 7:00 and midnight! It's not so much the beading that I am concerned about as much as the trial and error. While part of my challenge piece is in my comfort zone, part of it is something I've never done before, and it takes a while to figure out how to make it work! And then there is the photography part of it. I want to take my pictures in natural light, so I'll just have to hope that July 3rd or 4th is a nice day (for more reasons than the obvious! ;-) ) Plus, it's the type of piece that really needs to be photographed on a person. So I'll have to make sure that I'm with a person who can photograph me wearing it during bright daylight hours. The July 4th holiday might complicate things, because I'm also going to have access to my computer - i.e. be at my apartment and not a barbecue or the like, for at least part of the day. AND if this piece does not end up working out, I won't have a challenge entry at all...

Earlier this morning, I ran out of the color I needed. At least this will force me to do the seemingly never ending house work I need to do... That's actually a good thing. :-)

Anyway, this will probably all work out. I did work on the piece a lot last night, so it's not as if I have the whole thing to make. (If I hadn't already done so much work, I would have just used another color!) But this is my progress report. I have made a lot of progress - I'm just impatient and I wish I could make some more progress now! :-)

An Almost Knitting Night...And Other Adventures

For exactly a year now, I've tutored GED students every Tuesday after work. I used to only tutor math, but now I almost exclusively tutor reading. This is something I look forward to every week, and I always come home invigorated. Like many who volunteer, in many ways, I learn more from those whom I teach than they learn from me.

Everyone knows that on Tuesdays from 6:00 to 8:00, I am not free. So yesterday, when Amna and I decided to see the New York Philharmonic play a free concert in Central Park, Amna got there a couple of hours early to stake out a spot. The plan was to knit in the park while we listened to amazing music. But, in typical Adina fashion, I forgot to bring my knitting needles to work! Luckily, I live right near the site of the concert, and when I got to Central Park West around 8:30, I ran home to find them! But (sadly!) I haven't knit for months! I have three scarves on the needles right now - all were going to be gifts last December! - and I was determined to work on one of them! But I couldn't find the matching needle to ANY of them! I scarfed (seriously, no pun intended!) down a bowl of cereal (I am NOT a pretty sight when I am hungry!) and tore through my apartment, looking for any one of the three needle mates. Finally, I found one! But that scarf was a cable pattern, and I couldn't find my cable needle (of course)! Finally, I grabbed a crochet hook, figuring I could improvise and use it as a makeshift cable needle, and bolted out the door.

When I got to where the concert was, there were droves of people walking towards me, and I was sure the thing was over...but it's wasn't! It was just intermission! I found Amna with surprising ease and, armed with my quarter-finished cable scarf, sat down on her huge picnic blanket to knit. And then I realized that it was too dark to knit. (It was even too dark to take pictures!)

Well, at least it was great company and amazing entertainment. And I hadn't seen Amna in over a month and I missed her! So it was great seeing her again. And, well, the New York Philharmonic! Enough said! Even without our knitting, we had so much fun! And then we went to Pinch for pizza. Yuuuuuuuummy.

Then, tonight, I had a tutor appreciation dinner. Also so much fun. I think I surprised the other tutors because I'm usually so quiet when I see them. But then, I'm usually concentrating on tutoring when I see them! Get a glass of wine and some good food in me, and I can't stop talking! Like our students, the tutors themselves are all so diverse, and getting to know them better was a pleasure!

It's late...

...and I have quite a few things I want to write about, but I will have to save most of them for later in the week. For now, though, I wanted to post another treasury here. It's another patriotic treasury, and this time, my red necklace is in it! (It's currently in two treasuries!!)

This treasury, red white and blue, which will be open for your viewing pleasure until 11:40 a.m. on Friday, was created by Jessica of bruizerbeans. There is no denying that Jessica is an amazing artist, but I am in complete awe of her beaded purses. Here are just a few of them:

Aren't they just stunning?!!

And with these beautiful treasures, I wish you a good night! :-)

Good Thing Come in TWOS

or at least treasuries seem to...

I'm in two more treasuries!!

This one is called Shine On Your Crazy, and it was put together by the very talented Carol Dean of SandFibers. It's the second treasury to feature my three tier blue cylinder necklace, and I'm so happy about that because that one took soooo long to make and is one of my favorite designs! Also, sometimes when the picture is small, you can't tell that the cylinders are made out of seed beads, but when the picture is bigger I think it looks pretty cool.

Happy Independence Day, America!
You can see this one on Etsy until Thursday at 5:05 a.m.



My red hexagon necklace is in Symphony of Color, a treasury chosen by Ileana of enchantedbeads. I really love the concept behind this treasury. The different colored treasures are sitting together like sections in an orchestra! I think that to come up with something like that, you have to be very artistic, and and it is obvious just how creative Ileana is just from her own work!


You can view this one until Wednesday at 5:41 pm. I highly recommend taking a look at both of these treasuries, because (as you can see) all of the pieces in them are beautiful, and (as you can also see) most of them are beadwoven!

Challenge, Corporate Style

The Corporate Challenge is a huge annual running race entered by employees of thousands of companies. It is held in different cities, and in New York, it is held on a 3.5 mile course in Central Park. I participated in this race on Thursday. It was my second Corporate Challenge.

At the end of the work day, I was getting changed in the bathroom when I realized that I had taken one of the wrong shoes with me to work! Somehow, my I had thrown one running shoe and one Chuck Taylor in my bag! I couldn't run like this! Not only would I look hilarious, but this would probably have been quite bad for my back, ankles, and feet. Wearing two different types of shoe at once tends to do that to you - plus, those Chucks are so old and worn out that I can't even wear them walking for long periods of time.

Luckily, I live near Central Park. So I dashed home to change, and walked back to where my company was stationed, waiting for the race to begin. Inevitably, I got lost finding it, but I made it just in time!

I really love running and I used to run several times a week. Lately, though, I've been lucky to fit in one weekly run. This, combined with the stress of the shoe fiasco and the fact that I'm only used to running in the morning, when I have little food and drink in my stomach, resulted in the worst side cramp I can ever remember having. I ran the first two miles while grabbing my aching side and, occasionally, walking. But by the third mile, I was pretty much OK. I'm really glad that I did it! I loved participating in such a huge event, and I LOVE the idea of bringing fitness to the sedentary corporate world.

Sam participated for the first time this year, for his company. It was awesome seeing him afterwards and stopping for sandwiches and frozen yogurt with him on the way home. We even trained together exactly once - last Saturday to be exact! Maybe for next year, we'll start training a little earlier. Like, perhaps, tomorrow! Then again, that's what we said last year, when I ran the race the first time and Sam decided to enter this year's race. So maybe I'm being a little optimistic. But whoever said optimism was a bad thing? :-)

I'm behind

This week has been pretty hectic for me. Really good, but busy.

I woke up Monday morning to a request for a trade! It was something I'd never done before but was eager to try! I traded this little "charm" bracelet
for three sets of adorable stickers from beckynot! Now I have cute stickers I can use when I send things to my canine-obsessed relatives, and I can also adorn my packages that I send out to Etsy customers with them! (You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find cute stickers in New York City. I had given up. New York City children are apparently beyond stickers.)

I have apparently become an avid Etsy buyer, because I've made quite a few Etsy purchases since I joined. I'm usually pretty frugal, so this could get dangerous!

I came across Chopstix Waits' shop kind of randomly. I was looking at the blogs on a "blog roll" Etsy Forum, and when I read Mary Jane Frances' blog (which is, itself, very inspiring, and a great blog to read), I just knew that I had to visit that shop! Chopstix's sewing is impeccable, and is inspired by African textiles. No matter what I end up doing as a career, I will forever be the anthropology major I was in college. I'll be the girl who loves all crafts - especially those from other cultures, whose thesis structure was loosely based on an ethnography about Guatemalan textiles. Best of all, these clothes look like they were made for me! I impulsively bought a beautiful knit summer top, and a few hours after it arrived, I could not help but to buy another. And you know what? I couldn't be happier!

I also did something very uncharacteristic for me this week - I went out on both Thursday and Friday nights. (Gasp!) I had lots of fun, but was left kind of behind in my craft-related work.

So I fell behind in my EBW Team emails and posts. I was pleasantly surprised last night to read an Etsy conversation from Grandma Marilyn's that I was in this treasury along with 11 other EBW Team members:

(As you can see, some of the images in the treasury got cut off - I still have to figure out how to get better screen shots.) You will be able to view this until Monday at 2:19 a.m.

I was so far behind, that I actually MISSED a treasury that I was in. I just saw this screenshot of it on Carol Dean Sharpe's blog this morning! (She is, rightly so, the queen of Etsy treasuries.) It also had some other amazing EBW pieces in it.
Now I have to work on a gift whose owner should be getting it alarmingly soon. I might also finish a bracelet to sell, with which I am almost done. We shall see...

Here they are!

(Thanks, Marylou!)

My beeeeeeaaaaauuuuutiful new beads.
I tried to find a background for the purple mix that I already had, but now I'm thinking maybe the blue mix. I think I'm going to have some silver in there too. So I got a LOT of potential background colors, but I got them in small quantities (I can always get more), knowing that I will find other uses for whatever I don't use for this particular endeavor. Now all I have to do is get beading!!

And now I will talk about the weather. (Seriously.)

It's been unusually cold here in New York. But all of a sudden there is a heat wave. I think my body is in shock. I went outside to take pictures of the finished necklace that I started last weekend, and after a couple of minutes, I had to rush into the doorway to relieve myself of the heat. I went back outside to finish the job, and quite frankly, I don't even care about the shadows right now. When I got back inside my apartment, I could barely see, even though the the lights were on. This is something that I'm not used to happening in New York. (Sydney, but not New York.) I got a couple of pictures of a gift that I just finished so that I could post them after the gift is received. But just barely. They're pretty bad pictures, but I couldn't stand the heat anymore! I'm supposed to go out tonight, but I'm not so sure if that's going to happen.

Here is the finished Etsy necklace:

As soon as I finish the necklace and bracelet that I started last weekend, I'm going to have to put Etsy pieces on hold for a little while. I have some gifts that I have to start and finish working on. Why oh why do I always leave these things so long??!

I also need to start my entry for the Etsy Beadweavers' July Challenge, a Midsummer's Night Dream. I have something in mind, and the beads I ordered for it came yesterday. I'm so psyched!

Speaking of EBW team challenges, the entries for June challenge, Anything Goes, are now posted on the Etsy Beadweavers' blog. These are all stunning. I am not exaggerating. Seriously. LOOK AT THEM!! :-)

I didn't enter this one, but I am currently drooling over these pieces. It's amazing for me to see elements of the different designers in their work, and to see everyone's best. How one can decide which entry to vote for is anyone's guess, but voting begins June 7.



....yep, still drooling....

The Return of the Camera

I am a woman of my word, and for that, I will bestow upon you pictures of Sam's reunion. (I can't believe it's already been a week and a half!)

Here is Sam during the gig (yes, that is a dorm in the background, but they pulled it off well!)


And here's one of the two of us in front of one of the houses he lived in in college. I must say, that is a very purple purple!
I've become kind of obsessed with different shapes of peyote stitch. Here's another one I made this weekend (I have yet to add the chain to it, which I guess is kind of crucial for any necklace if it is to stay on one's neck):(Blurry, but you get the idea...)

Another Reason I Can't Use My Camera

This Memorial Day weekend, Sam and I went to his reunion in Oberlin. At Oberlin, they have reunions in clusters, so while Class of '03 was having their five year reunion, Class of '04 and Class of '02 (i.e. Sam) were there too. It was weird (but not a bad thing) staying in a dorm again. It brought back memories of college for me (it smelled like dorm!) and more, I am sure, for the people that actually went to Oberlin.

One of Sam's college bands played. They do punk renditions of Simon and Garfunkel, under a name not suitable to mention on a crafts blog. Here is a clip of a show they played in Boston last year:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igMZq37ZOdU

We did a "car share" with two nice Oberlin people (and Andy - who of course is also nice!) on Monday and drove for hoooooooooooours. We got back to Sam's place in Astoria and crashed (as in, bed - not crashed the car!)

Needless to say, I was exhausted and running late on Tuesday morning, so I left all my stuff at Sam's place and have yet to pick it up. My camera was there. (So was my phone charger!) So I have no pictures from the trip (and can take none of my latest star necklace).

I promise I will put one or two of our trip up here...and to prove that I am good on my word, I will finally put up some pictures I've been promising for a while.

Here is the custom bracelet - my first sale in 7 years:
And here is that rowdy (but soft, I' m sure!) alpaca that we met in Australia:

It worked!

My star experiment worked! I think it will look better in natural sunlight, but here it is! (Oh yeah, and a chain. That would help too...)

This weekend

was very productive! Obsessive, yes, but productive.

I had applied to be part of the Etsy Beadweavers Street Team a few days earlier, and on Friday, I was invited to join the group! They add new members' names to the blog on the first of every month, so my name is not quite up there yet, but just wait...because it will be soon! :-) Now I just have to finish going through all my Etsy

My next big feat was making my banner! I still want to change the font, but I'm super excited about it:
I spent Saturday night (see, I told you it was intense!) making this star of David necklace. I had noticed that with a little tweaking, the hexagon necklaces that I made for Angela, Hilary, and myself would make cool stars of David. I also figured out how to make it lie flat.

Sam's parents may or may not want this one for a bat mitzvah to which they are going next weekend. Either way, I plan to make more of these - it's really fun to see the star shape appear as I make them. I am also going to try to make a five pointed star.

Today, Sam came over to use my printer. He and his brothers are planning a 40th wedding anniversary party for their parents, and he had to print addresses on envelopes. The ordeal took almost the whole day, but it was a success!Meanwhile, I spent a few hours cleaning up my apartment, which had recently turned into more of a disaster zone than it already was. When I sat down to take a break, it turned into a necklace.

YouTube

My pieces were in a YouTube video! Courtesy of The Electric Diva. Isn't it awesome?! (If I do say so myself...) :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waMSpgoamLg

I made my first Etsy sale today!! That totally made my whole morning. :-)

On Blogging

I'm sitting here at work after hours, waiting for my evening plans to pull through. Most likely, it will be a movie with Sam and our friend, Adam, but we're not sure which borough yet. So for now, I am planted at my desk.

I've been spending a lot of time on my new business. I still needs some finishing touches (like, um, a banner!) but it has become more and more of an obsession. A very fun obsession.

So I've been thinking long and hard about whether to start a new blog solely about my business (as opposed to my all purpose craft blog). It's the word "knit" that does it. Don't get me wrong, I still love to knit, but I just don't knit as much as I used to. So I thought I about having two blogs - one about all of my crafting adventures, and one dedicated to my business.

But then I thought again. So what if "knit" is in the title?? It doesn't change the fact that this is the blog I have been writing in since 2006! Besides, the resurection of my beading obsession is documented here, and so is the evolution of my new business! So this knitstripedfrog is here to stay! It is my one and only.

And Now....

More on my Etsy obsession....

I have 35 items up now....

Etsy Buy Handmade adinahalperndesigns

I spent the entire day today adding fifteen of them! I didn't realize that adding the entries to Etsy would be so much work! A huge part of the reason for this is probably the fact that my apartment is so small that I have to "change the scenery" for everything I photograph, and this often invloves moving furniture (at least my desk chair) out of the way! I'm also learning what looks good as far as the photographs, and what doesn't. Today, I started to master that skill.

I've read that no flash and direct sunlight are best, and that cameras that have some manual features work best for detail. Needless to say, I don't really have access to any of these things. Having not sold anything yet, I just can't afford to buy an expensive new camera. And living in Manhattan, I have no yard at all to use to photograph. I could go to Central Park, but that would be kind of hard, especially on days like today when I have a lot of things to photograph, especially since I would have to take some of my own backgrounds with me (foam boards). So I open the shades of my apartment and only photograph during daylight hours, but especially on cloudy days like today, the flash on my very automatic camera turns itself on automatically. But I've learned that white backgrounds, ironically, work best to not reflect flashes and therefore to show jewelry in intricate detail and true to what it really looks like (for example, its true color). I've learned how to take pictures of myself in anklets without making them too distorted. I've also learned how to take photographs that will still look good when Etsy crops them to make them square. I will probably learn a lot more over the next few weeks and months, but I know so much more now than I did when I started - and that feels great!

Etsy

My etsy shop is up! I have four listings so far. (Picked randomly from a huuuuuge collection. I didn't realize how many pieces I had made to sell!) I also didn't realize how much work on-line selling would be! In order to get natural light, I have to photograph my pieces immediately before or after work (that is, when I'm not working overtime) or on the weekends. And since etsy crops the photos, I have to make sure everything will get in the actual picture (read: center, because I can't figure out how to crop them on my computer).

But to get those four images out there is such a rush! It really is a thrill!

Stay tuned, because I'm going to be adding a lot more images in the coming days and weeks!

And Sam wants me to tell you that he is cheering and bellowing me on in the background.

this and that

I'm still a little afraid of my camera right now, but I did take some pictures. I have yet to upload them, though.

I just finished my first commissioned work in about seven years. My co-worker's daughter's birthday is next week, so I really wanted to get this one done in time. I'm making two bracelets and a pair of earrings, but I'm going to give her the first bracelet tomorrow.

I took some pictures of it, so when I get through downloading my vacation pictures and taking old ones off my camera if necessary, I'll put them right up here. It's becoming increasingly clear to me that I'm going to need a better camera. From some tips on indiepublic (which I just joined, and which has already been extremely helpful for networking and tips!) I am also beginning to realize that I'm going to need more natural light for my photos, which might prove difficult in my tiny NYC studio.

Jetlag

Due to my jetlag, I've been awake since 5:15 this morning. Oh well, that's like a million times better than the night before last, when I could not fall asleep at all. Plus, today is my 8:30 day at work, so I would have had to be awake at 7 anyway.

My next big project is going to figuring out how to get the hundreds and hundreds photos from the trip onto my moody computer. But for now, the latest on my beading. (You didn't think I could go that long without writing about it, did you?)

I arrived home from Australia, equipped with the merchandise from my youth, to a package full of jewelry displays for necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings, so that's super exciting. Now I really do have to pin down a name. I'm still not hell bent on Funky Cold Adina, although I still like it a lot. But I was thinking, how about Adina Jessica? (Jessica is my middle name.) Or perhaps Adina Jessica Designs? Adina Halpern Designs, maybe. (Maybe not the most original naming idea, but it works...) Pleeeeeeeease comment here and let me know what you think! I need to get an etsy banner and business cards started. (Which will probably entail me paying someone on etsy to do it for me.)

I'm really surprising myself with this beading stuff. For example, I never pictured myself as a person who would use so much pink. And I can't believe how excited I am at the prospect of using bigger beads and crystals in my seed bead work. But enough of the revelations - I want to get some beading in before work!