Peonie Beads update

Peonie beads don’t shrink much.

The peonie beads turned out great.  I gave them to my daughter to polish.  I might take them back and see if I could polish them myself.   I ended up adding some mexican cinnamon to them.  I think next time I do that I’ll use a coffee grinder and grind the cinnamon before adding that to the clay mixture.  The truth is that at the beginning of the experiment the first chopped leaves smelt like green would smell if a color could have a smell.  Then it went downhill fast.  When we were using the rose petals to make beads, they always smelled like roses.  Peonies ended up smelling like green with a huge hint of peanut butter with a touch of vinegar.  I still can’t make up my mind if that is a good smell or not.  Not being able to decide if I liked the smell, I added some chopped mexican cinnamon.  I then put the entire mixture in some cheesecloth and strained the clay through that.   Then two or three times a day for the next couple of days  I’d run the cheesecloth covered bundle under running water.  Now the beads smell pretty good.  I think once they are polished they are going to be great beads with a nice hint of cinnamon.

Dried Rose petal bead. Starting shape was the size of a quarter.

The smells were not the only differences between the rose petal beads and the peonie beads.  The rose petal beads lost half their size in the drying stage.  The rose petal beads would start off the size of a quarter and end up the size of a dime.  The peonie beads, on the other hand, ended up being the size of a nickel.  I think that is because peonies have bulkier petals.  The colors changed at the same rate though.  The rose petals started off a moderate red and became a very dark brown, almost black, by the time they were beads.  The peonie beads started off a light pink and turned into a light coffee brown when they dried.    I hope next year I can try the experiment again and see if I can make the process better.    Now that both sets of beads are dried out we go the next stage and polish them.

Peonie beads at the start of the drying process.

Polishing the beads, to me, means smoothing them out a bit.  My daughter talks about sanding them down but another experiment that I am thinking of trying is putting a couple of beads in a pill bottle with some sand and shaking it a lot to see if that will smooth them down.  That is how rock tumblers work:  you put sand and some other fine material in a tumbler with the rocks that you want smoothed out and rotate.  It might be quicker to hand sand them.   Another option would be to hook a small bottle to the spokes of the bike and ride a lot.  The friction would be good but I don’t think there is enough space between the bike wheel and the crank case to allow a pill bottle to pass unhindered.  Hmm…., a car wheel might work though.

Time and USB cords

My USB cord for my camera  is in Denver.  I am not.  Does anyone besides me recognize that 15 years ago this would not have been an issue?  Time has a funny way of moving on.  My Mom and I were talking about a mail order house.  Every time we go down this one road she states “Somewhere on this road is a house built from a mail order kit from Montgomery Ward”.    Montgomery Ward is a company that no longer exists and a mail order house ordered from a general goods catalogue is a concept that today’s youth would find hard to picture.  Our society is much more used to Walmart having everything we need.  Walmart is the new Montgomery Ward.

What really strikes me is how things are really the same only different.  There are mail order houses.  Just not in a general goods catalogue.  Instead you’d find them on the internet.   A USB cord acts as a conduit between two machines.  My mother tells another story about an ‘itty bitty gal’ who stood between two trains holding a message fork with a message attached so the engineer could grab the note as the train went by. The gal was not on a platform between the trains.    A USB cord or an itty bitty gal do the same things.  They both take information from one source and pass it on to another source.  It is my belief that using a USB cord is a lot safer.    A locomotive is much bigger than I am and I’m at least 3 feet taller than any itty bitty gal.

The older I get, the more I realize that the new technology of today could not have happened without the problem solving skills of the past.  I keep reminding myself of that every time it takes me an hour to card weave 2 inches.  Somewhere out there is a machine that could do something similar to what I am doing only much faster.  However, in order to create that machine, someone had to sit and weave for many weeks at a speed of 1 hour per two inches  figuring out how to make the process faster, smaller, or more precise.  There is a lot of thought time invested in making a machine.

Something to think about while I long for my USB cord.

One of ‘Those’ days

Today is one of ‘those’ days.  You know the type.  ‘Those’ days where there are a bunch of one liners floating around that need to be said but have no connection to each other?  This is one of ‘those’ days.

1.  There was a huge fire in Colorado.  I have heard it burnt 49 thousand acres.  I have no idea how big an acre is, but 49 k is a big number.  This picture was taken in Estes at the Wool Festival there.  It is a huge cloud showing that the fire was only 4 mountains away.  The next day that cloud had floated over Denver and I woke with the taste of smoke in my mouth.

That cloud is smoke from the fire. This picture looks better bigger.

2.  The Estes wool festival was June 8-9th.  It was fun!  I was not quick enough to get a really good picture of this ram.  Take the character that you glimpse from this picture and multiply ten fold.  I very seldom see pictures of sheep with this much personality.  You could just tell he was disgruntled.

3.  There is nothing finer than enjoying someone elses fame.  I know the person who won grand champion hand spinner!  I am now officially a name dropper.  Or could be if I could remember her name.  🙂  Inside joke:  I have trouble with nouns of any type which includes names. I figure that if I remember the details about them that is good enough. 

I know the person who spun this. She got a purple ribbon!

4.  I am fascinated by working rope/straps.  I like seeing how well an inkle woven structure holds up over time carrying and supporting large weights.  I am equally enthralled by how tack is made.  For such a simple concept I have found a variety of ways that it is made.  This sample is made from one piece of uncut rope and is moderately adjustable.  It is a working piece of art.

working art: buttonhole stitch using sinew and a few neat knots.

5.  Some pictures I take look better bigger.  Other pictures look perfect at this size.  I went home the long way one day and discovered a water fowl park.  I hope to find it again.  I have a vague idea what road I explored.  I want to explore it some more.  This picture looks better smaller. The bigger it gets the blurrier it gets.

This was a nice peaceful lake. I think I’ll go back on a Wednesday with long pants and a shady hat and LOTS of water. There are no trees for shade.

6.  Update about the peonie clay.    I did chop every day for four days.  The third day, I started to question wether this was a good idea.  Peonies only smell good at the beginning of this process and towards the end.  The middle time is still debatable.  I did not refridgerate.  The third day the mix was small enough that I moved it from the bowl to some cheesecloth.  The next few days I ran the clay bundles under some water while squeezing.  Then I added some cinnamon sticks.  They now smell good to me.  Last night I formed the beads and now they are drying.  So far, so good.

1/2 a grocery bag of petals reduced to two compact clay bundles.

Flower beads

I have two divergent subjects to talk about so I’ll start with the short subject first and then move on to the one with the most pictures.  My daughter writes as well.  Her blog is titled  Majestically Me where she writes about things that are important to her at that time.  This latest subject, Storms, is a piece of writing worth boasting about.  So I’m boasting.  Go, take a look, it is a neat piece of prose.

Dried bead on a needle next to an US quarter for comparison. The original bead before drying was slightly smaller than the coin. The bead shrunk a bit during drying

My daughter and I share a lot of interests without copying each other.    She is more into beads than I am.  I like weaving more than she does.  Our conversations do meet at points because there are bead looms out there where you can weave using beads. She likes old pattern books and I like old cook books.  She was looking through an old beading pattern book and found a recipe for making beads out of rose petals.  My first thought when hearing this was ‘ooh another recipe from years gone by’.  As it happened my climbing rose-bush had just started to burst into bloom so I started gathering rose petals.  Whereupon we both started experimenting with different rose petal bead recipes.

Peonie petals before chopping. Very similar to the rose petals before chopping

Her recipe said chop and lay flat on an iron surface where the rose petals will interact with the iron and turn black.  Do this one time each day for 4 days.    The recipe that I found online said chop and simmer for an hour. Repeat for the  next 4 days.   Notice how both recipes want you to chop, let rest, and then chop again.  The end result is that in four days or so, there will be a clay that might or might not smell like the flower it comes from.  She didn’t cook her rose petals and at last report she still had the smell.  I cooked mine and there is no smell left.  I have not seen her beads but the one that I made shrunk considerably.  I get to see hers this weekend so will find out more.  The one thing I didn’t do for this experiment was to take pictures of the whole process.

Peonie in front hiding the chopper but not the bag of petals behind it.

Alas, my climbing rose-bush has finished flowering for the year and I still want to make beads.  However, a family member had this peonie bush in full bloom.  The petals on the flowers were about ready to fly away.  I got to thinking that peonie petals might be a good bead material as well.  So another experiment is born.

Chopped up petals before air has hit them. They are a nice light brown 24 hours later. I used a small electric blender.

Upon initial start of the project I learned that there is a smell for green.  That is the only way I can describe the smell of chopped up peonie petals.  So far, peonie petals turn a brown when chopped and exposed to air.    Peonie petals have a lot of water and are very thick and smooth.  I hope, as I continue chopping, that they do become a clay.  Meanwhile, every day, I’ll be mixing them a lot to stave off those moldy spores that like wet things.   I am also not going to cook them but let the heat of the day act as a simmer pot.    I can tell this is going to be a neat experiment.  I’m taking pictures this time!

Catch up

Magic chord

Late yesterday I received my camera usb chord.  Talk about a snoopy happy dance!  (Even if it was only in my mind).  I had all these neat pictures to show off and I could get to none of them until I had that chord.

Auctioned shawl modeled by the artist

So here is the shawl I was talking about two days ago.  This was the shawl made for the benefit for Marcus Garcia.  It is a  gorgeous crochet shawl that the artist donated for use in a silent auction that happened yesterday at the Firehouse Tavern.

A new look for a baby blanket

This same artist made three doilies of which I’ll show you two.  I love the colors that she used when crocheting them.  The green/blue variegated is from a baby blanket pattern that she did in thread.  Most baby blanket patterns call for much thicker thread but she did it in thread and it is an exciting piece.  I like the story she told about the blanket as well.  Her friend was having problems with the increases on certain rows. One way to help the friend was to crochet the same pattern that the friend was using.  Except instead of knitting the blanket in the chosen yarn she used thread.  The purple/pink/white doily is also made from a thread much thinner than the pattern was asking for.   It is rather nice to see how sometimes changes in thread size can lead to new ways of seeing things.

The pattern is called Northern Lights. It was intended for jute thread but just as pretty done in pearl cotton.

The last  picture I wanted to show off is actually the more recent.  It is of a band using a weft based weave with some modern-day material.  This strap is strong enough to tie down logs.  I just thought it was neat because, even though it is fraying, it is still as strong strap.

Weft faced strap using reinforced cotton and nylon

Other peoples toys

I apologize for two things – there are no pictures and there will be strange characters in this post.  I am using a computer foreign to me.  The owner of this computer is learning portuguese so the keyboard uses characters in that language.  My computer is at home along with the usb port wire to access the pictures on my camera.  I never realized how personalized we make our stuff until I tried using someone elses stuff.

Examples:

1.Computer.  On my computer I have all these icons that are not on someone elses computer.  Furthermore, I know where my icons are.  I keep wondering why they aren~t in the same place everywhere.  Never mind having a keyboard set up for a different language and trying to figure out where the new key for a question mark is.  Not to mention that passwords are very character specific.  If one of your characters in a password is Ç  there isn~t a problem.  Did anyone notice that I can~t type a contraction without using a tilde instead of contraction>  (That greater sign is really a question mark.)

2.  Phones.  Not all phones are created equal.  Some have ringtones or you can get it to vibrate….if only you could navigate the menu system.  Oh wait, you have to be able to turn on the phone after you get done charging it.  I did manage to charge the phone but someone else eventually turned it on.

3.  Cars.  I drive a standard.  The temporary car is an automatic.  Did you know that first gear in a standard is not the same as first gear in an automatic.  What happens in my car (without the foot action) when I stop at a light is that I shift to first gear.   So that is what I did in the temporary car:  I shifted to first.  First gear in an automatic is park.  Cars do not go when they are parked.  It took me three minutes to figure out why I wasn~t going anywhere the first time I stopped.  Later, when I went to leave the car I did the same thing I do in my car.  Drove up, shut off the engine and went to remove the key.  In my car, I press a button and it lets go of the key.  It doesn~t matter what gear I am in.  Apparently, in an automatic you must have the car in park.    There are a lot of people in the world who know that you must have a car in park before it will let go of the key.  I didn~t.  Another three minutes of my life down the drain.

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In other news:  I have pictures of this beautiful shawl that is going to be auctioned off at the Firehouse Tavern for Marcus Garcia.  This gal in Erie crocheted it for Marcus Garcia.  He was in an accident and suffered life changing injuries.  The silent auction is on June 2nd at Firehouse Tavern.  There is a Pig Roast and a Poker run.  For more information go to http://firehousetaverncolo.com/Home.aspx.  I~ve never been to the place and don~t know Marcus but that shawl is Gorgeous!  It is a brown and gold and looks very warm.  I~d show you pictures but my usb chord for the camera is in another city.