Wolf's Den

Safety First!
Handmade Kumihimo Cuff
7" long x 2" wide

Fits wrists 7" to 9"

* * *

Tired of not coordinating your accesories with your safety orange hunting vest? Missing the neon orange of the 80s? Want some dayglo orange for that rave coming up? Want to dazzle the school kids at your crossing guard job?

Look no more!

Safety First! is a handmade 8 strand kumihimo cuff made from dayglo/safety orange yarn, I believe to be 100% acrylic, possibly acrylic/wool blend. This awesomely bright yarn is from the Team BNA Traveling Swap Box and found its home with me.

This is a fun cuff! It features a gloriously cool handmade stoneware flower by Lisa Peters ART, securely attached to the cuff with a Czech glass druk bead in teal with a vitrial coating. The flower itself color coordinates with the cuff itself, with a glazing of cobalt, hints of teal and bright orange.

The ends of this spectacularly bright- and I mean bright!- cuff are handbeaded in peyote stitch, using 6lb FireLine, with Czech glass seed beads in cobalt and teal. The clasp is a silver plated extension chain and lobster claw clasp.

Amaze your friends! Blind the deer or wild turkey or men or whatever you chose to hunt! Flash back to the 80s! Where ever you wear it, Safety First! is sure to turn heads! If not completely blind people!

The first 3 photos are taken in direct sunlight- including this one. They serve to show just how bright this cuff is. The last 2 photos were taken in indirect sunlight. When I say neon, I mean neon!

Available HERE!(For now, Zibbet and Artfire soon.)

So I hand dyed some 100% pima cotton yarn a few days ago. Ok, actually I did it Friday, it sat over the weekend and I rinsed it yesterday.



I am in love with these colors. Rich, vibrant and deep. They're only 5-10 yd skeins, but that's plenty for what I do with it. And they're exactly the colors I wanted.



These two are mixed colors. The top one is Butterscotch and Rust Orange. The bottom one is Camel and Khaki.



These two are single colors. Top is Curry. Bottom is Pumpkin Spice.

Why'd I dye these in such autumny colors?



For these of course.}:P A whole slew of gorgeous new pieces from Lisa Peters ART.

Hope to have a few new cuffs listed on Etsy, Artfire and Zibbet in the next week or so! Stay tuned!

'Wine and Roses'




'Rose and Lavender'




'Whirligig'




'Meditation'

These are also available at Artfire and Zibbet

Not much going on here lately.

Made the decision to reopen my Etsy shop, temporarily. I'll be listing my kumihimo cuffs there, now through Jan 1, 2013. Hoping to drum up some sales.

Artfire has me rather disillusioned with the entire thing. Monday, I tried listing a new cuff and was having issues with their listing page. As of last night, absolutely no response to my post in their bugs forum. Yet other bug reports were getting responses immediately. That's not cool. So now, I'm no longer listing there and may end up just shutting that shop down.

Zibbet's bringing in views, lots of them, but again, no sales.

Relisted a few items in my Big Cartel shop. That at least is a free shop, but I can only list 5 items there.

Starting to feel like all I'm doing is throwing my money away. My last actual sales on Artfire was in August, before that it was Dec of last year. My last actual sale on Zibbet was also in August, before that it was Oct of 2010. Yeah. Even offline sales have dropped off- last one was in Sept, before that it was July.

Granted they were good sized sales that made up for a good portion of the monthly shop fees, but still, I'm getting tired of not having any extra funds for supplies without having to pull the money from elsewhere.

I guess I'm just feeling really discouraged right now.

It's been in the low 70s to mid 60s during the day and high 30s to low 40s at night for the past few days/nights now.

It rained for 2 days straight- dreary, grey, cold rain. Made me rather glad I found some plastic to cover the volunteer tomatoes with. Also glad I brought in the plants that over winter inside on Friday too. The cats aren't real happy about losing one of their easterly facing windows for plants- well, Max and Aries aren't, Morrigan thinks it's grand because SHE fits in the window sill behind them. That would be the Peace Lily, the Anthurium and the Bay tree. Good thing I have cats not inclined to chew on leaves.

The Curry Plant, which has quadrupled in size since I repotted it, is in the bathroom, where it gets southeast light and a lot more humidity/moisture than it would elsewhere.

The clematis vines are dying back already, trees are putting on their fall colors now- quicker than last week.

A few leaves even fell past one of the kitchen windows earlier.

Meanwhile, my Russian Sage is budding out, the Lavender, Catmint, Chocolate Mint and Rosemary are still growing and I swear the Lemon Balm never stops growing. The transplanted Hollyhocks have new leaves on them, so I think they've gotten mostly established in their new bed for now, thankfully. It also looks like the Wisteria is finally stopping its growing to settle in- there's a few yellow leaves on it, and it's made a lovely nearly green cover over the wood fence now as well.

The feral cats are showing up again- a little black kitty, rather the same size Morrigan was when she showed up 2+ years ago, was in the driveway. No getting near this one though, it ran as soon as we tried talking to it. Either a feral or the resident hawk left a 'present' next to the CR-V for Mark the other morning- a gutted, half eaten rodent carcass was found. Fun times.

In the meantime, I've been busy making cuffs and bracelets and listing them, 5 in the last week or so. Working on a new Bead Soup cuff and have 2 more kumihimo cuffs in the works- they need beading and the clasps put on. So look for a big post containing photos of all those within the next few days or so.

Started out last Thursday with having to take Mark over to Urgent Care for abdomen pains. They thought it might have been his appendix and sent him over to the ER for further testing. Thankfully, it wasn't his appendix, but was a part of his colon inflammed and irritated.

We spent close to 8 hours there. Needless to say, THAT day was shot. Luckily he's slowly getting better- they don't know what causes it, and only time and good meds will fix it.

Saturday was our 19th Wedding Anniversary. If you follow me on Twitter, you'll have seen the photos of our lunch together and the dinner (filet mignon, fresh cut from our local butcher and hand wrapped in bacon by me! local grown sweet corn on the cob! homemade heirloom tomato macaroni salad! garlic dinner rolls! baklava for dessert!) there. The filets were absolutely delicious, simply dressed with sea salt, black pepper and a bit of butter.

Sunday I hand dyed a 5 piece set of Habotai Silk Fat quarters in rich autumn colors. Rinsed and hung to dry yesterday. Whereupon it promptly clouded over and even sprinkled a bit. Which meant, photos didn't get taken until this morning and the set was listed this afternoon.



Procion MX dyes in the following colors, left to right, back row- Harvest Wheat, Golden Oak, Bronze.
Front row- Pumpkin Spice and Curry

These weren't Low Water Immersion dyed, which meant the colors would be a lot more solid with less mottling. In fact, the only pieces with any mottling, are the Harvest Wheat and Bronze, and even those it's very little. Deep, rich colors.

Available HERE on Artfire, or HERE on Zibbet.

Next up- hand dyeing another 12 piece colorwheel and a 7 piece 2 color run, both in Habotai silk. Hope to have those listed by this time next week. Stay tuned!

New hand dyed colorwheel batching. I love the colors I'm getting in this fabric. Hopefully when I rinse them later tonight or tomorrow, they'll be just as rich. And you'll have to wait to find out what kind of fabric it is. Good thing is- I have roughly 8-9 more yards of it, all ripped into 1 yard pieces.}:P The plan is to do a few color runs as well.



This 2 color run was listed today. Cranberry to Indigo, 6 pieces, Fat Quarter size (22"x18") 100% cotton (bleached muslin), so it's a lighter weight fabric.