A Mini Project for Non-Wizards

Math problem: if you have a craft project that takes a person familiar with the technique at least 4 hours to complete, how might you conduct a class of newbies to finish a project in under 2 hours?

When I was invited to teach a class on Viking Knit at the my local arts center, I didn't think it could be done. The smallest thing I usually create is a bracelet, which would take way too long for a single class. I'd have to be a time-condensing wizard to make that happen. Since I'm not a wizard, I needed to get creative.

Solution: invent a different, smaller project for the students.

I was inspired by the necklace below, first found on Pintrest, created by the woman who posted it to this web page.

First, I have to say, her technique is lovely, and the pearls are a really great accent. Thank you for creating this, Necklace Maker!

My students will not have time to double knit or to add accent beads, but I figured a pendant like this would be an excellent beginner project.

Here is my prototype:

I think this will look great on a suede necklace cord. It took me about 45 minutes on my first exploratory try. It only needs about 4 of 5 inches of VK chain, a jump ring, and a necklace to hang it on.

I'm super excited to teach my first class in a couple weeks!

Good Things Come...

Here's one that's been waiting for its time to shine!

This fun wine-themed necklace here was inspired by the combination of the cluster of grape beads and the cork. They just seemed so right for each other! However, together they didn't make a complete piece of jewelry. 

As regular readers know, I'm a bargain-hunter and on a budget, so I couldn't just buy a bunch of supplies all at once and experiment like crazy. I had to wait for each new material, and plan the necklace piecemeal. In the end, serendipity brought everything to me. See how long it took me to assemble everything!

Gold colored chain --- acquired in thrift store June 2013

Shiny glass bead --- acquired in hobby shop March 2013

Bright copper wire --- acquired in 2012 and woven April 2013

Old wine cork --- acquired from mother late 2012

Cluster of beads --- acquired in a garage sale summer of 2011

Funny thing is, I'm still not done! (Observe the loose wire hanging from the VK weave!) A lot of my pieces come together slowly like this, but this one takes the cake for longest incubation time.

Future blog(s) to come on this necklace!

Clasps

If you think finding a decent clasp for a bracelet would be pretty simple.... You'd. Be. Wrong.

I was lucky, and I somehow began with a clasp very well-suited to my bracelets right away. You can see what they look like in the photos below. It has one large loop (not always a circle) and one straight-ish part that you have to point forward to get it through the loop. This kind of clasp -- the toggle -- is on all of my earliest bracelets, and is still my standard.

Recently, though, the quest for cheaper and possibly differently-styled fastening devices drew me in some interesting directions.

These next two hook-and-eye variations weren't necessarily cheaper, but I liked their designs. The copper swirly clasp is neat looking, but this one wasn't made very well, so it swirl was a little too snug.

This silver one I knew was too big to be successful on a bracelet, so it went on my circuit board necklace.

I have also tried lobster clasps, as seen on my leather band bracelet, and on the copper bracelet with blue charms.

Personally, I usually find lobster clasps difficult to open with one hand, and have never liked them. I thought I'd give them a chance on my bracelets, to be open-minded. However there is a major problem, that has less to do with the "lobster claw" than the ring it hooks onto.

When the ring you are trying to hook on to is not very heavy, it swings around too easily, no matter if the hook is a lobster claw or some other shape. I've tried to think of a way to fix this problem without buying new supplies. (I like to keep my operation simple and low-cost.) But I am fairly certain that the solution lies in a heavier ring.

The last hook is one that I made myself, with the help, once again, of online tutorials.

I didn't buy wire that was stiff enough -- even though I DID purchase thick wire especially for this project. I also had the issue with the "destination ring" being too light again, so, until I get stiffer wire and a heavier ring, you will not be seeing this on my designs. (I might not even bother, though. I thought it was too much work for too little return. I'd rather by ready-made fasteners.)

If you were good enough to read this far into my ramble, perhaps you are a jewelry-maker or frequent wearer, and maybe you have some thoughts. If you have any tips or anything, put them in comments!

Hoops and Loops

You know what makes things take forever? Procrastination and fear.

Making my circuit board necklace took the span of a many weeks. Weeks! It took me so long because there were two things that this piece was missing that I had trouble making, and was timid about trying. One was end caps for the VK chain. The other was a bail, a thing that would hook the pendant onto the necklace.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, I found two tutorials that helped me fill those gaps.

There's this one on the Katrina Lum Designs blog on end caps.
And this one on bails made with head pins,which is a small length of wire with a flat knob at the end to keep things from falling off.

As I was making my copper necklace for the circuit board pendant, I knew I wanted silver end caps to go with the silver in the bits of the circuit board, but I didn't really like the style of either of my purchased end caps. The end cap tutorial was awesome for the look I wanted, but after a failed attempt at making a pair, I was discouraged and it took me a while to get up the guts to try again.

You can see in this image below that it didn't come out perfect (there is a gap in the loops).

Then, when I saw that the circuit board pendant didn't come with a bail to attach it to my necklace, I thought "No bail? No problem."

But pride comes before the fall.

I thought maybe I could just put a silver ring through the hole, but the pendant is almost a centimeter thick. I tried to make my own bail with some 20 gauge wire that I ordered especially for the job, but I had no idea what I was doing, so nothing I made turned out very nice-looking. I was starting to get really irritated, so I gave up for a few weeks.

Then I finally got the bright idea to check out some online tutorials. (Why hadn't I tried that before??) I found one that was pretty easy, sticking a head pin through the hole, curving it up and around and making a little hook with itself behind the head. Presto!

After all that hemming and hawing, I eventually finished.

Maybe the time it took was part of the process. Maybe I needed time to recharge after each roadblock. I'm open to that idea. But I'm glad I wasn't stopped indefinitely. This necklace delights me so much! Thanks be to the infinite creative energy that keeps projects moving along -- even at a snail's pace!

Branching Out -- Nerd Style

As with many of my other stories, this one starts off with an object -- a piece of raw material from which inspiration grew.

Meet mother... board.

OK, it's not "mother board," per say, but a circuit board. It might not even be from a desktop computer, but you never know.

I saw this little number on clearance at my favorite hobby shop. Score! It's always exciting to try new stuff on the cheap.

Next, I took some time to think about what sort of chain it should be attached to.

I thought the copper wire would look pretty sharp with the green, but I wanted to use silver findings for the end caps and clasp to echo the silver-colored bits in the pendant.

You can see from the above picture that at first I had the hook clasp in the "middle" of two equal lengths of silver rings. I decided to change it so that the length could be adjusted by the wearer.

The result is a wonderfully, ostentatiously geeky necklace unlike anything I've yet made!

Read my next blog for some of the hoops I had to jump through to make useful hoops!! (The pendant didn't come with a way to attach it to a necklace! Ack!)

Learning Length

In making my second necklace (single knit, without a pendant), I had to overcome an error -- I had made the knitted section too short. As I have said, VK is a fairly forgiving technique, but there is a point past which you cannot add more material to the end of a length you have already made. 

So, I had reached that point of no return when I realized my mistake. What to do? It was too long to be a bracelet, and too short even for my skinny neck.

Thankfully, I had some beads on hand. The brown wooden beads coordinated fairly well with the bronze-colored copper wire. As you can see in the photos below, I simply strung a few beads on a single length of wire at the end of the knitted portion.

This is not the most symmetrical solution, but it serves its purpose. The asymmetry might in fact be a useful (and purposeful) design element in future pieces. Nonetheless, in the face of a piece that I have made too short, I think that this isn't a bad answer.

Further Creations, New Designs

It is my misfortune on this adventure not to have all the proper tools of visual record-keeping. Not only do I lack a fully-functioning digital camera, but I also am still learning how to photograph my work well. So we will all have to bear with some blurry pictures, I am sad to report. But that is part of the adventure! So, onward!

I am pleased to present to you my next four pieces (made in summer 2011). These pieces are not especially magnificent, but I was quite excited to have completed them. I was just starting to get the hang of things, and I even got to experiment with some new elements.

In this image there are four new creations, as well as my first bracelet (the green one). The silver one with the pendant is a necklace, and the others are bracelets made of copper.

Here is a close-up of the pendant. Those who know more about jewelry-making than I will see how clumsily I attached it to the necklace. I am still searching for better ways of doing this, as I intend to make more pieces with pendants. If you have ideas, feel free to suggest in comments.

The copper bracelet below is made with the double-knit technique. It's quite a different look than the single-knit used in my other works, and it cannot be made quite as small in diameter as single with wire of the same gauge.

I am rather proud of this next bracelet; not only did I craft very it quickly, but it also represents the introduction of beads into the loops. The winds were strong in my crafting sails that morning! The beads are wooden; the wire, copper.