Blackberry Jam and Lemonade

When I was a little girl blackberries grew wild by the tons around where I lived. Every summer my sisters and I would pick buckets of these large black juicy sweet berries for my Mom and she would make the best blackberry jam in the universe. I miss that jam of hers so much. Like I said, it was the best in the universe.

I have finished making a beaded Christmas ornament cover.


The colors I chose for this cover remind me of lemonade and my mothers blackberry jam. I used gold lined matte pale yellow seed beads in sizes 8 and 11, silver lined dark red violet seed beads in sizes 8 and 11, some 3mm round gold beads, 4mm yellow a/b fire polished crystals, and some small daggers.

The techniques used in this pattern are right angle weave, netting, and loop fringe. Here's a detail close up.


Here's a close up of the fringe. I tend to be a little tight on my fringe, and I see I still have this problem.


This is not an original design on my part. It's a pattern by Cathy Lampole called Faith Victorian Ornament Cover. It can be purchased as a PDF file on her web site. I did do a couple substitutes on the beads. I don't have any 3mm crystals in an appropriate color, so I substituted the size 8 seed beads instead. I also did not have enough 4mm crystals, so I used the daggers in the fringe instead.

Aside from finishing this project, I have not been beading or knitting. I needed to find something that really occupies my mind in order to deal with the frustration of being so limited in my movement and whatnot, so I have dug out a counted cross stitch project that I started a couple years ago or so and I'm working on finishing that. I plan to take photos and post them tomorrow.

I learned how to do counted cross stitch when I owned my shop, the House of Needlecraft. When I bought the shop it was already very well stocked with the supplies for this craft. In fact, it was about 1/3rd of my business. So I learned how to do it so I could more accurately understand the needs of my cross stitching customers. My employee, Sally, was an excellent stitcher and taught me very well (Actually, she still is an excellent stitcher). I ended up getting totally hooked on the craft. Haven't done much of it the last couple years though. I've got about half a dozen unfinished projects that I really should attempt to finish some time.

I am still healing-v e r y s l o w l y. I can walk a bit more. They have my blood thinned to where it's supposed to be now, so I don't have to go in for blood tests quite as often. But the darn swelling is still there. I'm getting impatient waiting for it to go away.

It rained all night last night, but now it is a very windy, but sunny day today. The wind is just howling out there, 30 to 40 mph. Kind of scary. It's also kind of chilly around here. I finally broke down and turned the furnace on yesterday. Summer is over. Autumn is here.

Have a great day.