Ursula's Candy Animals

The matriarch of 100 Years of Solitude is a formidable woman: she finds a route from Macondo to the rest of the world, horsewhips her grandson when he turns into a petty tyrant, and spends decades keeping her family and her home from falling apart.  She also starts a successful business making milk candy animals, and I had the perfect plastic charms to illustrate that:

For the curious, here is an interesting post and recipe for milk candy, or canillitas de leche, and here are a couple other recipes.

Why Be Subtle?

The Bohemian box of beads I got from Blueberry Cove Beads had some very large brass filigree pendants that I didn't really know what do with -- they were far too big to fit on the necklace, and weren't really my style, anyway.  But their Facebook page shared an image from L'annexe de Marie, who has absolutely gorgeous fiber art and jewelry, including stunning pieces made of brass findings sewn onto felt and embellished with beads and embroidery.  Now I knew what to do with those pendants!

I love them -- enormous and colorful and fun to wear. Kind of like Easter eggs for the ears!

After making two pairs of earrings from the brass filigrees that came with the box of beads, I hunted through my stash until I found two matching brass findings to make a smaller, more sedate pair. The big ones with a coral background are for me; the other two are for sale in my etsy store.

My Valentines

Wool Heart Valentine by Robin Kingsley:

I made the first one back in 2005, when it appeared in American Patchwork & Quilts, but my mom forced me to give it to her -- I offered her the pattern so she could make one herself, and then I offered to make a second one for her, but she insisted that she had to have the one I made.  Last month I finally got around to making another one for myself.

Flamingo Toes's Felt and Fabric Heart:

A tiny crocheted heart that's totally as neat and elegant as the original:

A button heart, made from a bag of pink buttons I couldn't resist at the craft store:

Too bad the sun washed out the color in the photo

I was more productive than I thought in the last month!

Book Round-Up

Someone is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe by Nan and Ivan Lyons:I heard about the 1978 movie version first, which I inexplicably thought came out in 2012 or so; once I realized it would never show up in my Netflix queue I sought out the book.  It is a great premise, and the motive for the killings is extremely clever, but that motive (and the killer's identity) is revealed very early on, sapping the narrative of any suspense.  Moreover, the late 70s sexual and racial politics are dreadful.

The Countess by Lynsay Sands:Again the premise is what interested me -- Christiana is quite thrilled when her abusive husband dies, but then learns that the man she married was an imposter, determined to steal his twin brother's inheritance.  That twin, long thought dead, comes back, and you can guess what happens next.  It was a fun read despite some implausibilities, the most glaring of which is that not only was the marriage to the bad twin unconsummated, Christiana had no idea it was unconsummated.  The insistence on heroines always being virgins (but never the heroes, of course) is especially ludicrous when said heroine is a widow.  On the other hand, Sands gains points by poking fun at the idea of heroes whose cruelty is really a mask for the horrible pain they suffer, a mask only a sufficiently patient heroine can see through.

The Wood Wife by Terri Windling:My dear friend lent me this book, and I adored it.  Windling takes the idea of fairies -- utterly inhuman creatures with their own rules and a world outside our own -- and sets it in the Sonora Desert amongst a tiny group of artists.  The beauty of the land and the role of art in understanding the mythical world are wonderfully described.

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher:A short, pithy academic satire told entirely through the letters of recommendation a beleaguered English professor writes over the course of a year.  As you might expect, the letters reveal every hope, disappointment, petty thought, and passive-aggressive tendency the narrator has.  But unlike many other satires I've read, this middle-aged, white, male academic is a genuinely decent human being who cares about his work, his students, his colleagues, and the state of humanities studies.  The novel has a poignant end that hints at a cyclical structure, leaving us and the narrator with a glimmer of hope.

Storm Jewelry

Mr. Beadgirl gave me the Boho box of beads from Blueberry Cove Beads, and I took the recent blizzard as an opportunity to play.  First up was a bohemian necklace:

I used the burgundy waxed cord and strung all the painted wooden beads, tying two knots (one wasn't big enough) between each bead.  I then used the brass, wooden, and ceramic beads and charms to make a bunch of dangles, attached with a jump ring on one side or another of the knots.  In the process I also added some of my own charms, and some brass spacers and seed beads for accent.

Next up was a pair of chandelier earrings, using the lovely silvertone findings in the box and a strand of deep red lustre faceted glass beads I had been saving for a suitable project:

While I was rooting around my stash looking for brass spacers, I found the fancy vermeil Bali beads I bought ages ago, intending to eventually make a choker.  I never did get enough beads to make a full necklace, so I strung them on beading wire and attached some gold-plated chain to each end:

I don't know how well the inexpensive chain will hold up compared to the beads, but it would be easy to swap out if I need to.

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Anansi Boysis a sequel of sorts to Gaiman's American Gods; it is set in the same world and follows the adventures of the sons of Mr. Nancy, a secondary character from the previous novel, and both are essentially Hero's Journeys, but there the similarities end.  While American Gods was grand in tone, dealing with matters of colonization, mortality, faith, and sacrifice, Anansi Boys is much lighter in nature, even farcical at times -- as befitting a novel centering on the offspring of a trickster god.

Fat Charlie Nancy has a perfectly ordinary life with an ordinary job and an ordinary fiance, but the death of his father and his reacquaintance with his long-lost brother, Spider, turns his world upside down.  To regain control of his life, Charlie must come to terms with both his heritage and his powers.  This is an old story, and so in terms of its plot it is completely predictable.  The originality of the story lies in the voices of the characters (it becomes gradually apparent that Charlie and Spider, so different at first, have more in common than either would have expected) and in the interweaving of British and Caribbean cultures (in a neat touch, the race of the Black characters is taken for granted, and it is the white people who are identified as such).  And, of course, it would not be a Gaiman novel if it were not stuffed with mythological and folkloric references.  While this book wasn't as satisfying or thought-provoking as American Gods, it was fun and enjoyable.

Immaculate Heart

This was in the Quilting Arts Holiday 2015 magazine, but I don't actually consider it very Christmasy, it's more of an all-purpose ornament:

The original pattern, "Milagro Heart," is by Jane LaFazio.  Milagros are usually metal charms used as votive offerings, and the heart with the flame on top is meant to be either the Sacred Heart of Jesus or the Immaculate Heart of Mary.  I added a strip of metal roses to make mine an Immaculate Heart; I also tweaked the pattern pieces a bit.  And, it turns out, I was supposed to enlarge said pattern pieces by 200%, so my heart is smaller than it's supposed to be.  I like mine quite a bit, but it pales in comparison to LaFazio's hearts.