Enjoying the Possibilities

I have this thing that happens in my brain sometimes.  It feels like an explosion of ideas, good feelings, excitement, hope.  It's happened a few times today.

For a good chunk of the afternoon and evening, I was chipping away at the continuing efforts to get my studio set up just right.  Also getting set to make more things.  I’m currently sold out of leather halters (SO happy about that) and I have many custom horses waiting for me to return to them. 

Plus:

BreyerWest is coming.

I have big plans for that, of course I do. 

Today there was a lot of enjoying the possibilities going on as I unpack more supplies and work on a bit more organization, before I settle in to get some work done.

I thought I’d share a glimpse at some of the fun stuff I have to work with and to work on.  Look at all of the possibilities!  Chaotic as it may seem, this really is my happy place.  😊

   

Quick Post: Pom Poms

There is an "Arts and Crafts Center" here on the base.  They have a store that sells supplies and some projects.  I like to go in there and now and then to check out the (ever changing) inventory.  One fairly steady thing they carry (maybe because I keep buying them, haha) are tiny pom poms.  They are only sold in small, assorted packs.  Here's what's in one:

I usually buy one or two packs when I'm in there, then when I get home I sort them into my favorite little bead boxes:

I think I have enough now to make something with pom poms one of these days.  ;)

These are roughly Traditional scale, I would say, for Marwari or Arabian costume uses.  Occasionally they have had TEENY tiny pom poms for sale, they are maybe even Stablemate scale.  I have a small collection of them now too. 

Box of Awesome

Yesterday I received a box full of awesome from Australia:

This is what I had actually ordered: a book on plaits (braids for Americans *wink*), and kangaroo lace: jacaranda, black, natural in two widths, and white.

However, also in the box were 4 pieces of kangaroo leather in beautiful colors - the white piece in particular is stunning!

As if that wasn't enough of a surprise, there was also a bundle of brightly colored pieces of lace!

I am so excited to use this stuff!

If you are in the market for some kangaroo lace or leather, I HIGHLY recommend Pete from Leather Roo.  He has good prices, a lot of variety, fast shipping, and will cut lace for you if he doesn't have something listed that you are looking for.  He's all around great to deal with!  You can find his listings on Etsy, or eBay, or you can contact him directly via e-mail, here's his address: sales(at)leatherroo.com.

I will definitely be ordering from him again!   But first, I need to get busy with what I've got.  ;)

Quick Post: Books, Lace, Horses, Oh My!

I've been saving up a bit of money here and there and decided to do some model horse-related spending lately.

Here's the most recent arrival, a book I've been wanting for a while now.  Upon a quick flip through, I am really impressed and excited by it.

I've been thinking about my Stagecoach project lately and I hope to finally put some time in on it before too much longer.

On that note, yesterday I placed my first big order for kangaroo lace (woot!).  The first thing I ordered was black lace to use for the Stagecoach suspension (much more on that later).  I also ordered natural in a couple of widths, white, and a pretty blue-grey (jacaranda) that I think will be one of my stable colors for Blue Bennu Stables.  I'm picturing lots of pretty blue stable halters for my herd.

Also yesterday, I ordered my very first Collecta horses.  On their way to me are 4 light grey Arabian mares.  I fell in love with the mold and color, via pictures, and decided to get one for Arabian tack making, but then I decided to get a few more to try painting them.  I envision leaving one the OF light grey color, then painting the others: black, chestnut, and bay.  Then I'll have several colors to model tack on and test out colors.  It will be fun!

New Year's Day In Japan

First off:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!


We didn't have any plans for New Year's Eve this time around.  Last year we'd made the 5 hour drive south to Sendai city for their "Pageant of Starlight".  It was stunning - every tree along a wide downtown street is completely covered in lights.  We did the trip down and back in one (long) day, making it back to Hachinohe city (not far from where we live) right before midnight.  We'd heard that at all of the Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples have celebrations to bring in the new year.  We managed to find a small shrine (and more importantly find parking!) just in time last year.

This year, we decided not to make the trek to Sendai, but instead decided to go and try to see the celebration at one of the Shinto shrines in Hachinohe.

At the last minute, I decided to take Chewie with me, snapping a quick picture of him in the car.  I wasn't sure if I'd be able to get any pictures of him at the shrine in the dark.

We got there around 10:30pm and it was not dark at the shrine!  In fact, the area was very well lit.  So I snapped a quick picture with the Torii gate to enter the shrine in the background.

Lighting in the area was done with a lot of lamp posts and such, but also many beautiful lanterns...

...and some fire.

There were two braziers of fire, right outside the main Torii gate and each one had a crowd gathered around for most of the time we were there.  It was very cold and the warmth of the fire was very nice.

The picture above was taken just before midnight.  The line of people that you see are a tiny part of a massive line that led into the shrine and up to the spot where people pray.

We stayed until just after midnight, when a cheer spread through the crowd and the line began moving to the prayer spot, and then we headed home.


Today (New Year's) we thought we'd go on a drive, maybe do a bit of shopping if any of the stores were open.

I happened to see a message on Facebook about a big sale on yarn going on at one of the malls.  I told my friend Holly, who has a crochet business, and she set out to see if she could score some yarn (boy, did she!).

She called after a while to warn us that if we were headed down there, that the roads were packed, she barely found parking, and the mall was a sea of people.  'What was going on?', I had wondered.

It seems that New Year's Day is the equivalent of Black Friday.  Huge sales, everyone (or so it seemed) heads to the mall to shop.

We finally managed to find a parking spot out in the boonies and made our way into the crowd.  The mall recently reopened after a massive remodeling project and I'd been eager to see how the craft store (one of my favorite places to shop here) was looking now.  I was also curious what other sales, in addition to the yarn, that they might have.

It turns out that in addition to the yarn sale - which was: all of the yarn you could stack and then dump into a basket for 1,000 yen (basically $10) - they had another deal where they had a large bin of scrap leather and anything you could fit into a ziplock bag, was 1,000 yen as well.

Did I do that?  You bet!

Here's my bag (pencil for scale):

I'm happy to report that I was able to get every piece that I wanted (barely) to fit into the bag - AND close it.  Before I took my turn, there was a woman CRAMMING leather into her bag and trying to get it to close, so I wasn't the only one trying to make the most of it, haha.

The first thing I'd seen were some of the colors: reds, blues, metallics.  All small pieces, perfect for model horse projects, and about everything I got seems to be good stuff: small grain, smooth, most of it already thin.  There are even several pieces of very thin, super soft suede!

I had to dump everything out and get a quick picture.

I think my favorites are the metallic light blue pieces, one on top here.

After the craft store, we wandered around in the crowd a bit, poking our head into a couple of other stores, and then slowly made our way back out of the mall.  It was a experience, that's for sure!

In the end, I'm glad that we braved what appeared to be the Japanese version of Black Friday and I'm really excited about the scrap leather find!!

I'd say this year is off to a great start!

Oh, and Holly's yarn score?  She managed to stack and dump into her basket: 43 skeins of yarn..  for 1,000 yen ($10).  She is an avid Lego builder and she said her brick stacking skills helped.

Floss Backstock Storage

Dealing with my (ever growing) floss hoard- er, "collection" haha - has been an ongoing thing and subject of a handful of posts here already.

Last summer, I launched into making my own bobbins and storing my floss in plastic "bead boxes", or so I call them.  I had seen that's how my Granny keeps hers, and thought it was an awesome idea!

So that's how I've kept most of it, save for colors that I have a lot of, which have been stored in their original packaging, for multipacks,

or in plastic pencil boxes, for the loose skeins.  As I used up a bobbin, I'd find another skein of that color, if I had one, and wind it on.

That system was working okay, until...

The Great Floss Acquisition of 2016, as it shall forever be known.  I added 935 skeins (in 250 colors) to the collection.  I wasn't quite sure how I was going to store them, but started by winding one of each color onto my recycled bobbins and integrating them into the bead box system.  However, that still left me with several hundred skeins that were homeless.  I had sorted them into color groups, crammed into my pencil boxes and left it at that.

Until now.

First, after wondering if it was necessary - and finally deciding that it is - I started an inventory spreadsheet.  Until recently, I've done everything by color, the numbers on each skein don't mean much to me.  But I've been following some patterns lately (for things other than saddle pads designed in my brain)  and for those projects, the numbers ARE important.  I've had a couple of time consuming, frustrating sessions of digging through everything to see if I even have such and such number.  You'd think I'd have everything by now, but I don't!  I'm making due by using similar colors/numbers for the ones I'm missing and so far that's been fine.  I'm NOT looking to buy any more of this stuff for a good while.

An odd collection of random pencil boxes, crammed with floss, isn't a very useful solution.  And it would make doing inventory a nightmare (so far I've only inventoried my floss on bobbins).  So, a few days ago I was searching Pinterest (good ol' Pinterest..) for some ideas on how to deal with my backstock.

I settled on using this tutorial for inspiration and decided to give it a whirl.

The last few days I've been bagging the backstock skeins into snack bags, by number, or grouped with sequential numbers if I only have a couple of each, like 403 and 404 below.

Each has an index card, which I may write some information on later, or I might not, depending on how crazy I want to get with all of this.  They are mainly there to help keep a shape to the bag and not let things get all smooshed.

I quickly filled two plastic shoe boxes (all I had available) and..  I estimate I'm maybe only half way through.  Hmmm.

This morning, I went to the BX (base exchange) to check out their plastic shoe boxes.  They are a different design that the old ones I have, which vexed me, but I thought they were the only solution.  Unfortunately, they are even more tapered at the bottom and my snack floss bags won't even fit in them without significant smooshing (I took a bag of floss with me for size checking).

Next to the shoe boxes were these, the next largest size of plastic storage box.

Test bag indicated that they were way too big.  Sure, they'd fit in there, but a massive waste of space inside.  What to do?

It dawned on me to try standing them up.  Yes, that would work!  I can get two rows in each box with room for a divider and room to put the lid on.  Perfect!

So I bought two of these and I HOPE that alllll of the rest of the floss hoard will fit into them.  I also bought a roll of contact paper to line the bottoms, as per the tutorial.  I'm going to use some cardboard to make a divider.  Things might get fiddly until I get the boxes loaded - I don't want to permanently attach the divider I don't think.  But once the boxes are full, it should sit in there just fine between the rows I think.

The plan is to have additional dividers in the rows, by brand, and I'm thinking by number groups (100s, 200s, etc.) for the main batch -  which is Cosmo, a Japanese floss brand.

After everything is bagged by number, I'll add them into my inventory spreadsheet and then I should be good to go!

It may seem like a lot of work to get all of this sorted in such a way, but I think it will be well worth it when I don't have to spend so much time digging around to find such and such color and then determine how much of it that I have if working on a large project.

Good Mail Day

I think it's always a good mail day when you get something with this logo on it.

Here's my order!

I've been on a quest for itty bitty round nose pliers, hoping those might do the job.  Also got my first ever tub of tacky wax.

And...  hardware!

A cat! ...

She was already here, but she was very interested in...

Leather!

I've often heard how kangaroo lace is THE stuff to use for miniature leather straps.  So I bought 1 yard of each size they had, in brown.  Since I have a variety of projects in mind, I thought this would be a good "sample pack".

Bead Sorting Saga

When I made my supply score about a month ago, half of it was embroidery floss - almost 1,000 skeins - and the other half was a ton of beads.  (No, I'm not going to count the individual beads)  The floss has been, mostly, organized now.  I still have to finalize my plans to store the "back stock" - all of the duplicate colors that aren't on bobbins.

So the next project was sorting through the massive pile of beads and beading supplies.

Everything, already mostly sorted at this point

To be totally honest, I had a bit of buyer's remorse about getting the beads.  It was the beads my friend had first told me about when she saw the ad.  My reaction was kind of, "meh" - I could take them or leave them.  Then she told me about the floss and that got my attention.  I figured if I was going for the floss, I'd throw in the beads too.  But afterwards I kind of regretted it.  I wasn't sure how much of them I would even use.  I was really only interested in tiny seed beads, for Arabian costume making, and at first glance I wasn't sure how many "useable" beads there really were in the whole lot.
Another issue was how in the world would I sort through and organize thousands of tiny beads.  It's not as simple as cutting up more cereal boxes, like I do to make an endless supply of floss bobbins.  I need containers, lots and lots of containers.  A lot of the beads were already separated by color or size and put into containers.

However there were still quite a few in mixed batches and I wanted to separate out all of the colors.

This was important, because:

1) I actually enjoy such "tedious" tasks as sorting seed beads by color.

and

2) I wanted to know all of the colors/sizes that I had and how many of each, for future project planning.

I started with a trip to the base thrift store and bought a few odd random divided containers.  That was a temporary solution.  However I wanted everything to match, be stackable, etc, versus a collection of oddly shaped and sized containers.

Then I thought I'd check the (**magical**) 100 yen store to see what they had.  My thought was I'd buy a ton of their version of the "bead box" which I had hoped would fit my floss bobbins, but it too shallow.

Instead, I discovered these.

Even better than one big lid, subject to having the whole container of tiny beads dumped due to my clumsiness, these have individual containers with lids.  Sort of like a pill container, but MUCH nicer.  They are made of a strong plastic, certainly nothing flimsy about them, and the lids LOCK tightly closed.  No bead spilling with these things.  They are actually labeled as Bead Cases and another amazing thing about their design is that the bottoms are slightly rounded in the corners, so it is effortless to pull out tiny beads or whatever with your fingertip.  They won't get lodged in the bottom corners.  Oh, and they stack.  All three sizes are the same dimensions.

(I feel like I'm writing a sales ad for these things, but I can't say enough about them.  Seriously, they are that awesome)

I initially bought a few, along with a plastic box that will fit a bunch of them neatly inside of it.

Since the first trip, I've returned and bought several more of these amazing little boxes.  (and I'll be buying MOAR for sure - I think they will be perfect for storing tiny tack-making hardware and so on, as well as beads)

I've been using the 4 slot ones as sorting trays...

Supervisor kitteh, asleep on the job.

the 6 slot boxes to hold some of the larger beads...

and the 10 slot boxes (my favorite!) to hold most of the sorted seed beads.

So pretty!

My grand plan is: once I have ALL the beads sorted, to then arrange them by color and size.  Then they should be ready to use on all sorts of projects.

I'm happy to report that the buyer's remorse is now gone and I'm really happy I added the bead haul to the floss haul.  There really are some gorgeous beads in here - lovely pearl and metallic colors, some multi-colored, and some really pretty vibrant shades - and I can't wait to use them.  I'm sure they will be spotted in model horse costumes or in my tatting.  As it turns out, the seed beads that are too large for costumes are a great size to use with tatting.  ;)

Floss Report

A couple of weeks ago, I made a great buy, acquiring a ton of embroidery floss and beads.

Giant tote bag stuffed with goodies!  Traditional Fighting stallion for scale.

For most of last week, I was sorting and winding the floss.

They'd been given to me stuffed into a few plastic grocery bags, inside the big tote.

Supervisor kitteh inspects the new arrival

She'd mentioned that she had tried to sort them by color.  There were a few dividers in the bags, made up of newspaper, and plastic sheets.

What did I do first?

This.

(is he fighting a giant floss monster?)

I couldn't help myself, I thought it'd be fun to see ALL of them, jumbled in a mix of pretty colors, before the great organization project got underway.

After making the "pile", I stuffed them all back into a bag and then had fun sorting them by color type.

Once that was done, I counted the contents of each container.

Because I apparently love numbers (I have an Accounting degree after all), I just had to know how many skeins of floss I'd ended up with.  The woman had said in her ad that it was "300+ skeins".  "Plus", indeed.  The grand total?  935 skeins.  Making them about 3 cents each.

Next up, was to figure out exactly how I was going to make my new floss hoard useable.

I decided to further sort each color group by number and wind one of each number onto bobbins.

That brings us to this: the results from a week of floss sorting, bobbin making, and floss winding.

Further in the number category (more useless information?) the whole lot of 935 ended up including 250 individual colors.  Some had only one skein, but most had at least two, some as many as a dozen or more.

Next up, I'll be integrating them into my current containers.  I use a few of the bead boxes pictured to the left of the above picture.

Me thinks I'll have to order at least a few more of these bead boxes... Sadly, they aren't available here.  At least not the same ones and I'd like to keep them all matching.

Next up will be going through the beads.  However this week I've been busy getting ready for the next vendor show here, which is this coming Saturday!!

Quick Post - Supply Score

I just couldn't wait to share this, though, alas, no pictures yet.

Tonight we had a couple of friends, Holly and John, over.  Right after they got here, Holly told me that someone on the local "Yard Sale" Facebook page was selling a bunch of beads.  I was somewhat interested, then she added that they were also selling a bunch of embroidery floss.  THAT got my attention.  Yes, yes, though I already have a lot of it, I'm always on the lookout for more.  I contacted the seller, the beads and floss were still available.  So Holly and I left Jeff and John to visit while we set out on a quick little expedition into town (we also stopped and picked up chips and dip and ice cream for the night).

I am SO excited with what I ended up buying!  The woman handed me a big, heavy tote bag, crammed full of other bags, containers, etc.  When we got back to the house, I did a quick investigation of most of the contents.  She'd said there were over 300 skeins of floss and I don't doubt it.  We're talking bags and bags of the stuff.  I really, reeeally wanted to start sorting it all, but didn't want to cover the kitchen table in the middle of our little get together this evening.  Tomorrow I think I'll dig into it all.  (yay!)

The beads are nice too; there are all sorts of sizes and shapes, also a lot of beading wire and string, some tools, jewelry findings, etc, etc!

I plan to share some pictures soon.  Maybe tomorrow.  ;)  I usually try not to do picture-less posts, but I couldn't wait to share!  :D

So Excited!... Now What?

Well, after wanting to for a long, long time, I finally took the plunge, or rather dipped my toe in, and bought a small container of mold builder and casting resin.

Unfortunately the resin did not come with the catalyst, so I have to see if I can find that here.

It's also a clear resin, not quite what I might want (?), but I noticed that it can be dyed.  It will all be experimental anyway - despite researching this for almost forever, I haven't actually ever done it.

So now...  I can try to make a mold and (hopefully soon if I find the catalyst) cast something!!

But... what?

I don't think I have enough here to do a horse (maybe micro minis?) but there are other things I've wished that I could duplicate lately.  Saddle trees?  Wings for customizing?  Or really get brave and try to sculpt a medallion??

I think I'm heading off to the mall today with a friend.  There is a small, nice, craft store there and I had noticed they have quite a bit of supplies for casting resin jewelry - such as: silicone molds and resin pigment.  I'm wondering if I can find the catalyst there.  If not hopefully I can mail order it.

A Few of My (New) Favorite Things

I was born in Colorado and though I've traveled around and lived in several different places since leaving there, I've spent most all of my life landlocked.  Aside from a few visits to the ocean over the years, I've never spent much time near it.  The ocean... scares me a little.  It's so big, mysterious, and unfamiliar to me.  I do think it is beautiful and fascinating, but I was uneasy about living as close as we are to it now.  It's about 3 miles from our house to the Pacific, as the crow flies.

Here's a sign that we spotted our first time at the beach.  That didn't help me!

Jeff and I have made several trips to the Pacific side and walked along the beach.  During the day and also at night.  It was creepy for me at first, but I started to get used to the crashing waves and the sight of the endless water.  (though we went out in the dark once after a typhoon had passed by and the height and violence of the waves scared both of us, on "our" beach that we'd come to know and recognize in normal conditions).

Our biggest reason for returning to the beach was to look for the glass fishing floats that we'd learned about.  We did end up finding 5 of them in one trip, after a storm had gone by.

Since then, Jeff has found one of the big glass floats.

It has been interesting, finding treasures from the sea on our beach trips.  However, the real reason for this post was to share a few of my new favorite things:

Sea glass, driftwood, and rocks.

The above picture is part of my "haul" from a trip to the beach last week.

While we were at the beach, I was telling my friends here that I've always wanted a rock tumbler, but here I don't need one!  Not with so many beautiful rocks already perfectly tumbled and polished by the ocean and deposited on the beach that we went to.

I've been collecting small pieces of driftwood with the idea of using them as bases for custom model horses in the future.  I think it would be really neat to make a series of horses that are standing on pieces of driftwood from Japan!

(imagine a beautiful custom horse instead of this OF - haha)

The newest of the favorite things is sea glass.  I think it is beautiful.  I don't have any set ideas for it yet, but right now I'm just collecting as much as I can.  I've seen tons of beautiful ideas for using it in crafts, home decor, and so on.  Of course the idea of recycling/upcycling what is basically "trash" is highly appealing to me.

With the possibility of finding some more of my new favorite crafting materials, I find that I'm actually looking forward to going to the beach now.