Hit the Squirel on the Nose

Hiya everyone and thanks for stopping by, I appreciate it.  I hope that you are all staying cool.  It is super hot and humid here in Arkansas, and the summer has yet to really kick in. Even though it is halfway thru July!  Can you believe it?  Where have the last 2 months gone?  If you find them let me know so I can get them back, lol.

Over at Every Inchie Monday the theme is Nose.  This one was an interesting theme.  I don't particularly like my nose; I don't know many who do though; lol.  I had to have surgery on my nose back in 2001 to straighten out the deviated septum.  The Dr swore to me that it would fix my breathing problems.  So along with this surgery he did some other bits and pieces to make the airways more open.  After 2 weeks of having my nose packed with gauze and being in so much pain the Dr took the packing out.  I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head from the suction.  Luckily, I still have both eyes, lol.  But the Dr gave me strict instructions to not touch my nose so it will heal.  Within a few hours my nose started inching and without thinking about it I rubbed my nose.  The sound of my septum breaking again was pretty awful.  Mostly because I was not going to go back to the Dr and have him do that to me again.  ARG! 

For those people who get "nose jobs" on purpose, I feel you might be a glutton for punishment.   Worse part is, the surgery was unnecessary.  I still have breathing issues and I still had to have a CPAP machine for my sleep apnea. 

But now for my inchie, I thought about doing a clown nose but, ya know, clowns!  Not everyone likes them and I knew that I was not going to get it to look like a clown in an inch so I went with my 2nd thought.  A Nose icon of sorts. Looking at the nose straight on.  I hope you like it. 

 

Also this week over at 2x2x2 the them is Squirrel.  I know that many people; my Mom included; hate squirrels.  My Mom loves her birds and hates that the squirrels eat the bird food.  But for me I will always love squirrels for the simple fact that when my daughter was a toddler she adored the squirrels in our yard. 

An elderly neighbor used to set corn cobs out in our yard on a tree for the squirrels so that he could watch them.  Fav loved seeing the squirrels run in the yard.  So much so that I started to set sunflower seeds on our porch so that they would come on there for her to see.  She would get so excited that she would bang on the screen door and scream "Quirleys!" 

Of course, the squirrels would run away in fear.  But not for long, they figured out that she was not a threat and they would set there and eat as she giggled and squealed at them.  It was so sweet to see her excitement. 

For this twinchie I used 11 colors of delicas and went with a grey squirrel eating an acorn. The acorn is a bit hard to see but I still like it.  Hope you like it as well.  

Also, I wanted to end this post with a beading tip.  Many times we do things in our crafting and don't think about them being a tip someone might be able to use.  This is one of them I believe.  Sometimes you have a pattern with alot of colors in it, like my squirrel.  Keeping track of all the colors and how much you need and when you really need them is always an issue.  The program that I use for my patterns is BeadTool.  This program tells you how many beads you will need, which is a very important thing.  But, knowing when you need them during the process of beading is something you have to figure out yourself.  I figured out a way to do that that helps me to know when to get beads out and ready to be used and when to put them away when I am done with that color.  Check this out.

This picture might be a bit hard to see but on one side of the pattern I have a "+" symbol.  The other side of the pattern I have a "-" symbol.  What this does is tell me when a color is starting to be used, ("+" side), and when I am done with that color ("-" side).  This is a good thing to know especially when there is alot of colors, and a small area to bead on.  Also if a color isn't going to be needed until later in the pattern there is not a need to put them out and possibly spilling them. 

I hope that made sense.  It was alot of words to explain a simple idea, lol. I hope this will help someone when they are working with many colors in a pattern (I have a pattern that has 65 colors in it so there can be alot to keep track of)

Lastly, don't forget to fly on over to EIM and 2x2x2 to check out all the great artwork over there, and have a blessed and beady day.