Finishing Some, Shelving Others

Between noise and chemicals from the construction going on in my house (across from my bedroom door no less), I've gone a little crazy this week. It's been hard to settle to anything and concentrate on it, even out of the house though that is worlds easier than in the house. I'd been trying to make progress on the Birka piece anyway. But I finally accepted yesterday that that was doomed. I went to a fighter practice to weave. I must have worked at least two hours, probably closer to three. I wove about five inches in total--that was net gain. I wove far more than that, but I was making mistakes so frequently that I did nearly half my weaving in unweaving mistakes. This isn't a pattern I understand fundamentally enough to reset the cards and go on, even if I were inclined to accept the mistakes.

I took it off the loom carefully and clipped it with a skirt hanger to either side of the pack of cards with enough tension to keep them falling all over the place. That way I can put it back on the loom and have another go at it once the construction is done. I'd woven up nearly half of it, about 4 feet or so.

I had far more success this week with wire work. The picture is of a bracelet I finished for a friend using the behind-two-rows technique. I'm getting better at the starting and ending part of the projects, the hardest part for me. I took in my stuff to a couple local beading and jewelry making stores, looking for clasps. The first place was less helpful but did have the clasp you see here. I was hoping to find something to fit over the often-less-pretty ends of the chain work, but alas, anything of that sort was far too tiny. Except two, one of which I also bought, but both came only in silver so I'll try it out on another project. For the copper I just had to make it as pretty as possible myself.

I think I may try either unworking the beginning which is behind-single-row and tends to stretch out more, or adding a few rows of single row at the end on future projects so that, either way, the piece's ends would be more symmetrical.

That aside, I'm very pleased with this latest piece. I was impressed at the second place that she recognized it as Viking wire knitting at once. She showed it around the other staff too. Fun stuff. They gave me some good ideas of other ways to end pieces and showed me some simple wire linking pieces that should be more sturdy than jump rings.