Peacock Feathers and Thread Baubles

The Caravan Beads website has a free pattern for their Loopicity Brick Stitch Earrings, and inspired by the "blue velvet" colorway I decided to make mine look like peacock feathers:

Can't wait to wear them!

Before I found this pattern, I'd been trying to design my own using some large, sparkly teardrops from Blueberry Cove Beads, but I realized quickly they'd be too big and heavy to wear:

In fact, I've been working on making the perfect peacock feather earring for decades. Here's a pair I made in law school:

While I really like how I ended the fringe with tiny little loops mimicking the eyes on a peacock's tail, all those gold beads (and pale ones at that) meant I rarely wore these. Maybe I'll put new ear wires on them and list them in my etsy store.

I also whipped up some bohemian hoop earrings, using inexpensive thread-wrapped beads from Michael's:

Fun to wear, if not really autumnal. But then, summer always lingers annoyingly here.

Rainy Day Tote

I'm in kind of a blogging slump -- still working my way through a dense, 1,000-word novel, stitching various things that are no where close to finished -- but I did make a little tote for Beadboy3. His school asked us to send in a bag with crayons, coloring books, and paper for days when they can't go outside for recess, and I was reluctant to send in one of my canvas bags or buy a new one. Rooting through a tub of fabric, I found a slipcase my mother made for the mattress of the cradle my father made (crafting runs in the family!). The cheery print was perfect for kindergarten, so I cut off the excess fabric, top stitched on felt initials, and added handles made from grosgrain ribbon:

Beadboy3 was so taken with it, he was quite sad he had to leave it at school the first day. "Can I take it home the last day of school?"

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

Batuman's first novel is as finely written and dryly funny as her collection of essays. Selin is a Turkish-American student in her first year at Harvard, a young woman who, despite her intelligence, struggles to understand the world around her -- American culture, adulthood, love, academic jargon, and especially language. Perhaps because she has an aptitude for the latter, she obsesses over the meaning of every word spoken to her, wondering if she can ever truly understand what another person is trying to say. In particular, the painfully awkward, often frustrating, sometimes wonderful exchanges she has with her crush are made worse by her inability to pick up romantic social cues (and his inability to not be a jerk).

It's not just Ivan; Selin doesn't quite fit in with any of the others in her orbit, be they her Turkish relatives, the privileged Americans at her school, her Yugoslavian best friend, the working class Bostonians she tutors, or the Hungarian villagers she spends the summer with. She is like a particularly endearing alien, trying to make sense of life on this planet. Batuman's distinctive writing style -- blunt, deceptively simple sentences -- perfectly conveys the distance Selin feels, aided by descriptions of other characters that rely almost exclusively on their words, rather than physical cues or other behavior that might help us see what Selin can't. Instead we become thoroughly enmeshed in Selin's worldview, sympathizing as she tries to figure out what it all means.