clay ornaments

Has anyone noticed how little knitting there has been on the blog lately? The last few weeks have been a little nuts with visitors, several gigs (yay!), and getting ready for Christmas. My beautiful cabled sweater got a second re-start when I added waist shaping and then realized it wasn't in the right place. It's coming along nicely now but there really isn't anything new to show you there. Also, I started another test knit a couple days ago. It's a sweater in bulky, so it's going quickly, but I need to keep it quiet until I'm given the OK to publish a picture!

Meanwhile, let's have a look at a quick little project I did with my kids a couple of days ago. What you see below is the best of our second attempt.

This whole idea started when I was flipping through a cheesy family fun magazine at the hair salon while the kids were getting haircuts. Quick, easy homemade gift idea! the magazine claimed. Take some modeling clay like Sculpey or Fimo, cut out fun shapes, press beads into them and presto! You have a pendant that will make a lovely necklace. I thought it sounded fun so I got some supplies and we set to work.

The first attempt was rather disastrous. The clay didn't roll out flat, then it stuck to the rolling pin, the shapes we cut out got all distorted, and worst of all, the rhinestones I picked out for bling were made of acrylic and got all blobby during the baking, like on that misshapen blue star in the bottom right of the picture above.

We ended up rolling colors we liked into long ropes and tying them into abstract twisty knotty shapes, which actually turned out pretty cool. 

The second try went much better. I got some cookie cutter things made for modeling clay and found some glass beads, which I correctly guessed wouldn't melt in the oven. The rhinestones we glued on later. Thank goodness I had that hot glue gun!

My next post won't have knitting, but it will be a tutorial for a quick, useful sewing project that is not a bag. (It seems like all the quick sewing projects are bags…)

Until then, happy holidays, everyone!