We now return to our regular scheduled programming

After a fun jaunt into the realm of movie reviewing (which is one of my numerous hobbies), I'm back to what you expect from me -- talking about beads and beading.

Today Chris and I went over to the 2-story Barnes and Noble across town. I picked up the latest Beadwork magazine, which has some great techniques in it. I'm glad that they've had more innovative beadweaving in there recently. Don't get me wrong, I love spiral rope, but there's only so many variations I can see published before I'm tired of it.

I also picked up a cool Gothy crafting book that I'll post about in more detail after I've read it. It was a total impulse buy. If I was going to buy any sort of how-to, it probably should have been "Sewing For Dummies" or that new Zulu beadwork book that I've had my eye on, but oh well. Chris talked me into buying that instead.

Chris picked up "The Deep" which is a huge coffee-table type photography book of creepy deep sea critters. He spied it back before his birthday and hinted about wanting it, but I bought him other presents instead. So today I told him he should buy it for himself (in addition to the usual science nerd books that he was picking up). He's sitting there reading it now, and telling me about the various freakish jellyfish contained therein... thus further convincing me that I should stay on the land.

I've been working on some spiral rope bracelets for the Etsy shop. Not sure what I'll put on the website tomorrow. We'll see what I feel like making when I get up.

About those fish.

Here's Swimmingly! which was posted on my website yesterday. For some reason, I started collecting fish beads. I think it was because I liked lampworked ones (glass makes such pretty fins), and from there I just picked up lots of others. The Green Girl bead is just one of the many that I've purchased at various shows and shops around the country.

As I may have mentioned in the past, I don't really watch TV. However, when we were in CA for the holidays, we were at the hotel on Christmas night, no internet, The Difference Engine was boring me, and I'd finished all my beading projects. So we found a marathon of Blue Planet and we watched a few episodes. They kept showing all these shoals of fish. Just like flocks of birds, it's fascinating to watch an entire group of animals move as one. It's also amazing to see a whale come by and eat the entire lot of them in one big gulp! Yikes!

This is why I have a love-hate relationship with the ocean. There's so many cool, beautiful, and unusual creatures. There's also a whole lot of creepy, scary, unbelievable creatures. I'm still going to stay on land, but I love to watch specials about underwater life. I think the coolest part, though, was watching these seabirds that could dive deep, deep into the water in search of fish. Seriously, what is weirder than watching a flock of birds under the water?

So yeah, Blue Planet was pretty cool. Dad was watching the same marathon, so the next day we kept saying "Did you see...?" "Wasn't... awesome!?" It's pretty obvious where I got my fascination for marine life :)

Fashionable Friday -- On The Beach

Ahhh, Summer. Kids are out of school, the weather is warming up, and many peoples' thoughts turn towards the beach. Now, personally I avoid the beach, due to the fact that I burn if I even look at the sun, and I'm pretty sure that the ocean's denizens are going to rise up and wipe out mankind any moment now -- no need to let them start with me. But I still love tranquil, aquatic hues and depictions of fish. I'm a very conflicted person.

If I was going to go to the beach, or the swimming pool, I'd be very tempted to wear this little number. The newsprint fabric really appeals to me, and of course, I always like black. I'd probably also want something to cover up with. A lot of people like sarongs, but I can never get them to stay up. I think that these Thai fisherman pants would be great to wear over a swimsuit! To carry all my beach gear, I'd like a bag like this, cute, colorful, but also practical.

But if you're like me and you won't be going to the beach this Summer, you might just want to settle for things that will remind you of it (but without the annoyance of hot sand in your sandals). You could hang this Ponies on the Beach print on your wall. They're just so cute! Or you could knit and felt some adorable sea critters.

Alternately, you can adorn yourself with beach-y jewelry. I like this Seaglass Charm Bracelet, which is extra cool because the artist used found objects from the beach. These Sea Glass Barrettes are really cute, too. I'd wear them in a heartbeat. I'd also wear an Ocean Rider Fairy pendant, but you probably already knew that. For an elegant touch, I like Where the Ocean meets the Beach.

Of course I have numerous oceanic pieces on my site; I can't seem to stop working in aqua lately. One of my favorites is the piece pictured above, The Ocean's Treasures. I love how the seashell pendant frames the dangling beads. I'm also fond of Ocean Jewels, which features lampworked beads by Joan Eckard. Carribean Spirit boasts a beautiful lampwork focal by Elaine Green, in lovely beach glass hues. And Undine has soft water shades, for a subtler statement. You can find many other perfect beach jewels linked off of these items.

I made an octopus!

True story: Once upon a time, my parents had a pet octopus. His name was Fred. This might seem a little weird to you, after all, the Addams Family had a pet octopus, but no other popular TV family did. But you have to understand that my parents had numerous aquariums and all sorts of ocean-dwellers as pets. Fred was just the tip of the iceburg. Although I never knew Fred, I grew up dealing with aquatic creatures which ranged from feeder goldfish to sea anemones.

Of my two parents, my father is really much more in to the whole ocean and aquarium thing. I've been buying him gifts related to various sea creatures for years, and so this year I decided "Hey, I'll make Dad an octopus!" Christi Friesen's new book had instructions and they looked easy. I decided I'd even get fancy and put said octopus on an Altoids tin, so he'd be functional as well as nifty.

Armed with this confidence, I set off to Wikipedia where I researched octopus, because I really didn't know what color they should be. It turns out that octopus can be any number of colors due to their natural camoflage capabilities. I also learned that octopus are darned scary. They have no bones. They have three hearts. They're scarily intelligent. If they lived for more than a few years, they'd probably have taken over the world by now.

I decided I would make a red octopus, because that would be pretty striking and within the realm of natural cephalopod hues. But then I remembered that because I'm not a huge fan of the color red, I don't actually own any red clay. Drat. So what the heck, I decided I'd go for broke and make the Blue-Ringed Octopus. The funny thing is that I knew exactly how I would make an accurate depiction of those rings in lampwork. Too bad I'm not a lampworker.

I could go on at length about the difficulties I encountered while making this octopus. I could complain about the brittle translucent clay, the way the suckers kept falling off, or the fact that the best way I could come up with to make the rings was to make a tiny ball of blue pearl clay, flatten it out, and then poke a hole in with a sharp little tool (with the dot resting on my fingertip, which also often got poked) and then wiggle the tool around to enlarge the hole. I could even mention the fact that the octopus developed a few cracks when I baked him.

But you know what? The important thing is that my Dad opened his present and loved it, started talking about how cool octopus in general were and how beautiful blue-ringed octopus were. It was a good feeling, just like being a kid again and having either one of my parents say nice things about the drawing I did, or the little chunk of loomed beadwork, or the short, short stories I used to write.

So there you have it, my tale of octopus creation. I might make another one someday, for Chris who also loves octopus, but I'll be using a different clay blend which will hopefully behave better. I also had an idea this week for how to make a nautilus, so I might try that soon.

I'm going to go ahead and end this post now, before I decide to go off on a rant about my personal life, so I'm going to leave you with today's Cool Thing, which is the Vampire Squid. All this research on Wikipedia, by the way, has convinced me that the vast majority of what lives in the ocean is creepy. I'm never going to the beach again!