The Lurgy and Recent Projects.

Hey!

So at the end of last week I was hit with the dreaded lurgy that seems to have been doing the rounds, I’ve had a persistent cold for the past month but then developed a spectacular cough over the weekend that has been so kind as to keep me awake nearly all night for the past four nights. So running on practically no sleep I returned to work today at the little deli cafe I work for and somehow managed to muddle through my eight hours of  bank holiday chaos (without burning myself)!  To recover this evening I decided what better than to sort out a few photos of my recent craft projects to get you all up to speed on the madness that is my crafting life, all helped of course by a glass of wine and watching Wallace and Gromit and then How to Train Your Dragon! haha

About a month ago I decided I needed a new challenge in my crafting life, I’m a comfortable knitter, a much practised flower arranger and a keen cook (oh yes I class all of the above as crafts of some sort ) and on top of this I also write fiction.  But I was beginning to fancy something that offered a little bit more of a challenge again so off I trundled in search of something that really grabbed my interest. Now I spend some of my time when not working at the cafe as a volunteer for a group who make up care packages for our armed forces serving abroad and through some of these wonderful people had come to hear about paracord bracelets.

It didn’t take me long to find some very good tutorials on the internet which made me decide I just had to give this a try! That very evening I sourced my paracord and even some stainless steel adjustable shackle buckles, none of this flimsy plastic for me! haha But being true to myself I could never be content with just one new project, oh no I had to learn two new crafts at the same time! My second choice was chain maille to satisfy my love of the pretty shiny things 🙂 Wow was that a HUGE order of craft materials that day and being ever impatient I ordered it as next day delivery to ensure it was ready and waiting for my day off.

My wonderful postman appeared at the cafe the following morning with many, many small parcels of exciting craft goods and yet again I received that look from my colleagues that reads ‘you’re utterly mad aren’t you?!’ as I explained that I planned to make a bracelet out of all these tiny little metal jump rings. My answer was just a little manic giggle and frantic nodding as I thought ‘oh crikey I hope I can find my glasses I think I may be needing them!

I very sensibly thought to purchase Karen Karon’s ‘Chain Maille Jewellery Workshop’ book to have on hand as I learnt the new weaves, and what a wonderful book it is I have to admit, for clear instructions this was the perfect book to learn from. Now my family tradition when learning something is that we can never start at the beginning of the book, it’s just not in our nature! We like do dive straight into the exciting bits of course so for my first chain maille project I chose to make a byzantyne weave bracelet and here’s the results!

Now this first piece took me all day to make with several breaks to warm up my hands and to recover from the cross eyes that began if you spent too long looking at it. What I instantly loved about chain maille is that you can sink into a very calm meditative state whilst weaving, you are entirely focused on this one simple thing and that is purely following the repetitive steps of the weave.

When I fancied a rest from the rather eye straining weaving of chain maille I decided to get the paracord out and have a go and what a polar opposite! Including the time it took to measure the cord to the correct length, lace up the buckle and weave the actual bracelet my first paracord item using cobra weave took all of half an hour from start to finish, it was amazing! This is my new bracelet that I am very very attached to and wear as much as possible.

I loved both of my newly learnt skills as much as the other and have already moved on to experimenting making different items like European 4 in 1 weaves and making cat collars and handbag handles from paracord
but that, as they say, is a story for another day!

I feel much better about my day at work now that I’ve reminded myself of all the fun things I can look forward to when I’m home so I may call it a night and potter off to order some more paracord! 🙂

Night all, hope you all had a good bank holiday full of crafting joy.

Take care.

Rhi xx