I was playing here at The Glass Studio with some solo vitrigraph and I have to say I was delighted with the experience! For those of you not familiar with vitrigraph please check out iglasssolutions.com and learn all about it. Larr Cunningham and Leigh Adams have worked together in creating the Turbo Top, which excellerates the heating of the glass, and the Turbo Light, which allows you to change the height of the kiln so you can re-seed the pot or if you need to work at different heights…with them I have witnessed or participated in pulling different shapes and squiggles and swirls and rings. Very cool stuff. You get shapes and colors that just aren’t available. But then when I was up at Bullseye last May a very controlled vitrigraph experience was witnessed. Nathan Sandberg, our instructor, used the vitrigraph kiln to make a wigwag. A wigwag cane twists in one direction, a bit is pulled and then the twisting direction is switched. This goes back and forth and the effect just makes me crazy. I’ve been meaning to do this here in my studio and today I did…and all by myself. I couldn’t have been happier and I have to say, I see so many of these in my future…in both Bullseye and Moretti. Come and get’em!!
Have you read?
How to Store Embroidery Needles
I have a complicated relationship with my embroidery needles. Which is a fancy way of saying I don’t really take care of my needles at all. Even though I know I have embroidery needles to use for cross stitch and sewing, needles that are certainly still in their packages, I can rarely find them when I need them.
So when I saw this post from Crewel Ghoul about how to store your embroidery needles, it hit close to home for me.
It doesn’t really say anything I didn’t already know, but it is good advice that might also serve as a reminder for you to take better care of your needles when you cross stitch or do other hand-sewing projects so that you’ll be able to find your needles again when you need them.
It would help me a lot if I had a dedicated place to keep needles I’m not using, including the needles that are still in their packages from when I bought them. You’d think I would keep them with my embroidery floss but apparently you would be mistaken about that.
Another good idea for me is to have a place to put needles I’ve been using when I am done with them. Because goodness knows I’m not going to put them back in the package. (Which may actually be a good thing because then I know which one I’ve been using and which ones are fresh. Not that I replace my needles regularly, but still.) I own pincushions but I don’t really use them for anything, which is silly.
Check out the post at Crewel Ghoul to see all the options available for storing your embroidery needles properly. I’d love to hear what you do, especially if you have a better system than I do (which, honestly, would be any system at all).
[Photo: Crewel Ghoul]