February Bead Journal Project

Well, it's not February anymore, but I did finally finish my Bead Journal Piece for February, and I *might* have enough time to get March's completed by the end of the month now that I am finished with the package I have been working on since we got back. :)

Here is the February Bead Journal Project Piece:


This is supposed to be a protea flower. The King Protea is South Africa's national flower, but we didn't get to see any king proteas in bloom while we were there - too late in the season. But we did see a few other protea flowers, mostly pink and orange ones. They grow on very very large bushes, and they were all over Table Mountain in Cape Town and at the Cape of Good Hope nature reserve. It ended up being a lot harder to bead than I imagined (harder than last month's penguins, for sure!).

Here is the original sketch that I made, you can see the finished flower didn't come out quite as I had envisioned it. I hope it actually looks like a protea!


Project Notes:
Size 11 delica seed beads in opaque pearl butterscotch yellow, pastel pink, pink, hot pink, watermelon, limeaid, lime green, aloe green, and forest green
3mm swarovski crystals, XILION Bicone Palace Green Opal
4mm swarovski crystals, XILION Bicone Light Emerald
5mm swarovski crystals, XILION Bicone Fern Green
leftover quilter's cotton
size D Nymo thread with size 10 beading needles
backing: dark green ultrasuede


Eventually I am going to attach a pin back to this, but I didn't have a good-quality pin back on hand and wanted to finish this before too much later in March! I think I am going to give it to my mom, as she has a collection of pins (mostly antiques, but not all) and she loves protea.


I do have the beads for March's project as well as the sketches completed, so I will get straight to work! Hard to believe that in another week it will be time to order the beads for April! :D

Trip Tank

When we went on our trip, I of course had to take a knitting project along! Not only were we going to be spending hours on planes, and in airports, we were also going to be driving. I don't really do much knitting just to sit and knit, I have to be watching something on TV/DVD, listening (to a podcast, music, radio, anything!), or stuck somewhere with nothing else to do (riding in the car, sitting at the doctor's office, waiting in line...).

I actually bought a project and yarn specifically for the trip, because I wanted something that would take me several hours to knit but not take up a lot of space *or* take too much concentration (so lace was out). I thought about taking the final sleeve for the project that I wanted to wear on the trip but didn't get finished, but decided against it *just* in case something might happen to it - heck, I've spent so much time on the rest of it I don't want to ruin the whole project because I don't have backup yarn to knit the other sleeve! And I *do* still really want to finish it and be able to wear it...

I have been oogling Army Of Knitters' patterns for a while now, so I decided to buy the pattern for Erquy. I ordered yarn - a bamboo-cotton blend - from Elann. I did get most of the knitting done on the trip, but I didn't quite get it finished. I was really glad to have it along, though.



Back view:



I'll either end up wearing this over a white cami or my swimsuit, but alas, not for months and months as the weather here is still dreadful...

You can see the rest of my notes on Ravelry.