New Boro Beads....It's Been A While

Borosilicate glass, aka boro, is so different to work with compared to "soft" glass, or soda glass.  Most glass beads are made with glass from manufacturers like Effetre (Italian), Lauscha (German), or Bullseye (American).

Borosilicate, or Pyrex, glass, was developed by Corning and is the glass that "Corningware" used to be made from...it can go from cold (refrigerator) to hot (oven) without cracking.

Coloured borosilicate glass yields beautiful, ethereal hues and is a very different palette when compared to soda glass, where most of the time WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

Here are some new boro beads I have listed in my Etsy shop:

 Deep & Hazy Blue

 Dark Amber Purple & Hazy Violet

 After Midnight

Deep Purple & Hazy Blue

Boro beads are wonderful design elements in jewellery...here's a bracelet using shades of violet with copper.

Violet & Copper Bracelet

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!!!

Sunshine on a Clear Day...Handspun Yarn

I've just finished plying my new handspun yarn...I plied the single novelty yarn that I made on my blending board with a Saffron merino top. It's about 111 yards.

I have it measured and tied up, now to set the twist, let it dry and find a pattern that will show it off.

My New Fiber Blending Board & Inspiration From Art

I received my new fiber blending board last week and finally had some time yesterday to experiment with it.  For those of you who may not know a blending board is a piece of carding cloth with many, many "teeth" and it's used to blend different colours and fibres to make rolags which can then be spun into yarn.

I took my inspiration for my colour palette from a wonderful print that I recently purchased from Danny Phillips on Etsy...this picture just makes me smile!

So I went through my stash of fibre and came up with some wool roving, silk throwsters, and a novelty yarn that would match.

Below are a few pictures of how the blending board works and the yarn I'm spinning from the rolags.

...stay tuned....