A Second Look

Up late again. You see the kitties who normal rouse me from slumber around 4:30 or so have a new toy. Their grandma bought them a new scratching tree and rather than bother me awake in the morning, they play on that in our bedroom so I sleep away like a normal person. Problem is, I have things that need doing early in the morning before the children rise and I hope they get over the new toy smell soon so I can get back to my routine.

I didn't get a thing remade yesterday like I had hoped, nor did I play with the rings I was so desperate to find. Instead I worked on a one off whose initial design came to be in the morning as I was waking. I got this resin piece on clearance and after much design tweaking, I managed to get the tatting to lay behind it like a piece of filigree. I really had no preconceived notion of the rest of the piece, so I just grabbed some more clearance bits and started piecing them together. Since I wasn't in the mood for a photo shoot yesterday all you get is this blurry camera photo for now.

Speaking of not taking the time to take photos, since I didn't do that I took a second look at a necklace that was expiring. I couldn't decide whether to keep it on in it's current form or disassemble it and give it a new life. It was one of my first grab bag pieces that I wasn't entirely pleased with. The lace didn't hang right and honestly I shouldn't have settled, but I wanted it to be finished and so I listed it.  I liked what it was supposed to be so after asking twitter opinions, I went ahead and took the piece apart, cutting through lace with wild abandon as I redesigned the piece in my head.

So, this is what I came up with. Again, no real pictures of course, but I think this is much better. I adjusted the original pattern to give it more of a curve and tatted around the filigree piece. Then using just the same bits from the original necklace, I reconstructed the necklace. I decreased the length, added stabilizing chains from the left over chain and it hangs so much better. The lines are cleaner and basically the lesson here is that you never *have* to be done designing something. If you want to take a second look, do it, even if other people have praised you work. You know what you want it to be and don't settle for less. Sure it took me almost a year to get it right, but I am quite pleased.

Hopefully today I can stay on task and get some things remade because as soon as that special order thread gets here, I'll be busy on that order for days I think. I would hate for anything to be distracting me at that point.