Yom Hashoah - Holocaust Remembrance

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6,000,000

NEVER FORGET

Never Again

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My necklace from Ixela

I just managed to take a photo of my gorgeous necklace that I received yesterday from Ixela and here it is... still love it!!!! :-) I wore it yesterday and got so many compliments on it... but i'm not surprised because it is just G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S!!!! :-) I'm so lucky to own it!!!

Go check out her shop: http://www.ixela.etsy.com

and her blog: http://www.ixela-thoughts.blogspot.com/

My first birthday present!!!!! alomost glad to be a year older :-)

I took my son to day-care this morning, after 10 whole days at home... we are both still alive :-) am not sure who got on whose nerves more the last few days... the poor little chap, I'm not easy to live with :-) so was already over the moon to have a day to myself... the sun was shining, the birds were chirping and I was almost floating on air... Finally I could start exercising again, which I haven't done for so many months I'm ashamed to count them.... but the weight has piled on and sitting at my beading table or the computer does not burn too many calories, so I did my 85 minutes on the treadmill... feeling great... decided that this week i'm going to attempt to finish all the projects that need finishing and promised myself that I would not start anything new until at least 3 are completed. Well that was the plan... reality set in after a few hours of beading that 1) my legs and my not-so-little-bottom were killing me ,2) exercising on only 4 hours sleep after such a long break was probably not the smartest thing to do and 3) if I didn't go and take a break I would probably collapse from exhaustion... so I went to my room to catch up on some tv and rest... and just as I was about to relax.. .the door bell rang, the dog went nuts... I run to the door and am greeted by the postman who after all these years hasn't yet worked out that my Hebrew is terrible and I really don't understand a word he is saying, but he hands me a package and it's from my friend in Italy Alessandra of Ixela.... I open it curiously and.... the amazing person that she is has sent me one of her beautiful jewelry pieces. How absolutley thoughtful and gorgeous of her. Not only she sent me one of her gorgeous jewelry pieces but she actually sent me one of my favourites!!!!


Check this out!!!! this isn't the actual necklace, but the light is not good enough to take photos now. My necklace is very similar except that the gold chain has large pearls every 3 links... I can't begin to tell you how beautiful it is!!!! the picture does not do it justice. The large vintage crystal is so beautiful... I actually got terribly emotional and cried... like a soppy cow :-)

Thank you so, so, so much Ale!!!!! so nice of you and so unnecessary, but I absolutely love it!!!!!

In February I ordered one of her necklaces for my baby sis (I say baby because she's the youngest, however she is 35 :-D and has 2 babies of her own) and she loved it!!!!

So if you are thinking of surprising anyone or spoiling yourself, go and check out her shop. Her jewelry is classical with a twist. She even has some pieces with teddy bears and fish. I love it!!!!!

Go and pay her a visit at www.ixela.etsy.com or go and visit her blog where she features different artists every week www.ixela-thoughts.blogspot.com.

I must mention this.... One thing that has come out of me opening my Etsy shop is that I met the most generous and amazing people, from all over the world, and Alessandra is one of them.

So again, and I'm sure she is going to get sick of hearing this.... but.... thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! You have made my day and probably my year!!! :-)

My birthday is not for another couple of days, and I'm sure by then my happy cheerful self will have completly vanished and in its place will be my usual I-hate-birthdays person... thankfully that person also vanishes within a few days after the dreaded day, when reality kicks in and I once again become thankful to just be, regardless of how old I'm getting :-)

Tomorrow... less excercise, maybe only 45 minutes, if I can acutally walk, and I can tell you, it does not look so good now.... lots of beading and hopefully I will be able to post my new pieces soonish :-)

In the mean time... wishing anyone who is celebrating their birthday a very happy one :-) and happy beading to the rest of you!!! :-)

Completely Off Topic - a day at the safari

I don't usually post about anything that is not somehow related to my beadwork or beading in general, but I'm braking the rules today.

This week is Pesach (Passover), all schools and government offices are closed. Most other businesses are running at a very minimum with reduced hours. The country is, if not actually on holiday, running under this feeling of relaxation and fun... that is until you are unfortunate enough to hit one of the main roads where you realise that it is no fun to have to deal with irate Israeli drivers and traffic. Luckily we left relatively early this morning, although my sister was about half an hour late :-) so we missed the worse of it. My sister and I had planned to take the kids, or at least most of them (one of them is a football crazy kid, 14, and missed a trip to the safari for football practice, in his defence, he really wanted to come, but cannot miss practice, and i'm sure one day we will see him playing professionally).

My son and I had so much fun there!!! we walked around in the blazing heat for hours!!! I love the safari park.... it always amazes me that it exists right in the middle of one of our concrete, quite industrialized cities. If you ever come this way, you should definitely pay a visit. I'm not really into zoos and caged animals, but this is different, they have conservation projects, breeding projects educational projects, I'm a huge fan... you can read more about the work they do on: http://www.safari.co.il/content.php?id=3 (sadly the english pages are too few, but you can get an idea)

So armed with lots of water, some cucumbers, apples (for us not the animals) and 4 kids we braved Israeli society and joined the crowds... and survived!!! :-) I say survived, because although I have lived here for about 18 years, I tend to keep to myself as I really don't like crowds... but venture we did, and here are some of the things we witnessed today that really drive me nuts:

Feeding the animals when there are signs everywhere asking not to do so!!!! why do people think they know better than the carers of these beautiful animals????

Arguing with the carer when told not to feed the animals!!! because of course they (the public) know better!!! :-) they probably have a pet snail at home or something so they must be expert!!! :-) but by far my favourite aggravation is watching idiotic parents hanging their children (usually under the age of 2) from their car windows to get them close to: ostriches, rhinos, and whichever other animal happens to cross their paths!!! what planet do these people live on??? do they think that the signs saying don't open your windows are there just for fun?!?!? having said that, none of it is as bad as watching some of these people entering the lion enclosure with their kids hanging from sunroofs and windows... again what planet are they on???

so once you get past the culture shock and you try to stop wondering which species actually belongs in the cages/enclosures, the rest is just a lot of fun.... but my advise, especially if you are not a native... is avoid high holidays at all cost!!!! :-)

here are some more picts of our wonderful day!!!

can you believe this is in the middle of Ramat Gan!!!

who is in the enclosure? who actually belongs there? :-)

The smallest one is my little monkey :-) the other 3 are my sister's

feeding time at the zoo :-)

and jus in case my dad sees this... it's not real bread, it's kosher for pesach bread... I can't even tell you if it tastes like bread, because I didn't even want to try it... it had the texture of plastic, but he loved it!!! which is just as well because he hasn't eaten anything but matza in the last few days....

Cousin love! :-) our 2 youngests :-)

The end of a hot tiring day!!! :-)



you should see how the 2 mommies looked... but you won't!!! :-)

Purple Flower - Part 2

All going well :-) finished beading it (# 1), cut it and attached it to the ultrasuede (# 2)... all good... :-) I start beadweaving a band to make the loop to attach the flower to the crocheted rope.... and again!!! confusion and uncertainty!!! I actually quite like the effect the beadwoven band (# 3) has against the flower... so now I don't know what to do!!! :-) and that is how my next project started :-) so I'm going to sleep on it for a couple of nights before I make a decision and of course whichever I decide will then only create the next dilemma... to fringe or not to fringe? :-)

1. 2. 3.


Ok, so if any of you feel like giving me your tuppence worth on wether you prefer the white crochet rope or the lilac-ish beadwoven band, please feel free to do so by leaving me a comment... I will take all suggestions into consideration, because truthfully I like them both, but really, REALLY don't feel like making two of them :-) so help me decide!!! :-)


If you missed the first part of Purple Flowers please go to Part 1


I'm not sure how much beading and blogging I will be able to do this next week as my son is home from kindergarten all week!!! :-) It's Pesach (Passover) starting Saturday night. Most people hate this festival, mainly because of the dietary laws during this week (no bread, no pasta, no rice, no yummy food basically) but I actually love it (except of the food problems). I love it because it's spring and Israel just looks, smells and feels amazing. The weather is perfect, bright skies, lots of sunshine, longer days, no humidity, warm but not hot.... but most of all I love it because I was born on the 7th day of Pesach, so it's my Jewish birthday, and although I decided (last year) that I would no longer celebrate my birthdays, in an effort to forget how old I am and therefore not care (I'll let you know how that works out in a few years ;-D), I still really like the feeling of this festival. I'll be going to my sister for Seder night, so am looking forward to a nice relaxed evening with her, her husband and my gorgeous nephews and niece!!! :-) My parents flew to Italy, so it's weird becasue I think this is the first time ever that I haven't seen them around pesach and I'm jealous I want to go to Italy!!! :-) and my other sister is staying put in London with her hubby and her 2 little girls. I miss them!!! :-) I haven't even seen my latest niece, who is only a few months old... hopefully I'll be able to go to London after the summer... I hope so, would like to see my nieces before they go off to university :-) + my son is driving me nuts because he wants to see grandma and grandpa and wants to go on the aeroplane again :-) and then wants to take the train to Paris to see Nonna (my grandma who is 96!!!).... I think he thinks of all transport as the car... just another way to get somewhere :-) my little jet-setting almost 4 year old :-)


Ok so I rambled a bit.... I told you... I'm not the mood to bead :-(


Wishing everyone who celebrates Pesach, a peaceful, happy and kosher one!!! :-)

Updates + preview

I'm not feeling my best today, and am finding it difficult to concentrate on the beading for long periods of time, so I bead a bit, I catch up with my blog reading, then I bead some more... but am just not feeling it and I really, really like the new project I started yesterday afternoon, so I want to enjoy it, not force it :-) So decided to write an early post today, why not? maybe I'll feel like beading later.

My desk looks like.... I would like to say like a bomb hit it, but with everything that is going around the world and especially here, I feel like it's a bit inappropriate... it looks like a bloody tip!!! My tidy-up lasted... not very long, as you can all see :-) but at least I have a good excuse... hmmm, I meant reason ;-) I'm currently actively working on 3 projects and that makes for a bit of a mess, both on the desk and in my head :-)

Sometimes it happens... when I'm not 100% sure where I'm going with a piece, I start getting loads of ideas in my head, and the ones that get discarded are the ones that inspire new pieces.... and in my attempt not to forget these ideas, I need to start them off. So that is how I get to have 3 almost completed but far from finished project on my beading table in the space of a couple of days!!! :-)

So here are the updates:

Water - no progress yet, lots of ideas flying around in my head, but nothing concrete yet - Water progress - part 1

Purple flowers - some progress, am at a crossroad regarding which way to carry on, will post progress later on, see Purple Flower progress - part 1 and check in later for part 2.

here are 2 previous bead-embroidered pieces that have been on hold for a while, I really like both of them, I just don't know what to do with them YET! :-)

ok so in the midst of all this chaos.... and in between deciding the last few steps for the Purple Flower, I started a new piece, also purple/lilacish and white, also flowers and also I don't know what I'm going to do with it :-) I have NO idea what on earth is going on with me lately... I'm so undecided and unsure.... not my usual self... well, I'll just go with the flow for now, and hopefully I WILL snap out of it soon... and just think of it this way, all of a sudden I will have (hopefully) 5 new pieces all at once!!!! :-) and then everyone that hasn't been following my ramblings :-) will think I'm a super-fast beader!!! :-)

Here is a preview of the new flowery piece... yes, I know more flowers!!! what can I say, I'm sorry... I love flowers, I even worked in a flower shop for a year, which I LOVED immensely!!!

I have 3 flowery tattoos, although arguably not pretty flowers and mostly chosen to balance the more intense tattoos I have spread around all over the place :-) If I could afford to, I would buy fresh flowers every week and have them all over the flat.... as I said, I really love flowers!!! :-)

come back later to see more on the purple flower progress

Congratulations Wolf!!!

The winner of the EtsyBeadweavers Fire and Flowers Challenge is Wolf of DantesSpirit.

Beautiful piece!!! I cannot even imagine the hours that must have gone into it!!!

and a HUGE thank you to all of you who voted for my piece Blazing Flowers

It came in 2nd!!!!! yeah :-) THANK YOU!!!

To see see the rest of the result please visit http://www.etsy-beadweavers.blogspot.com/

Water Progress - none / NEW Purple Flower - Work in Progress - part 1

OK.... I just can't come up with anything for the Water piece and I really like it, so I don't want to mess it up by rushing it... it has now joined 2 previous bead embroidered pieces that I like but have not figured out what to do with yet.... so rather than pull my hair out, I decided to leave it and start something else.

In my efforts to advance with this piece I started playing around with making different chains in turquoise and white.... and one of them, a white crocheted one I really liked but not for the Water piece, so it inspired me to start a new piece using shades of purple/lilac beads and white, which I rarely use but summer is coming and what better than crisp white clothes!!! I have to mention that yesterday it was about 37-38 degrees Centigrade here, so crispy white is all I could think of to mentally try and stay cool :-)

1. 2. 3.

By now it was getting really late at night... I managed to keep my eyes open long enough to glue all the components down... and then went to bed exhausted but exited for the morning to come so that I can start beading on this piece :-)

4. 5. 6.

Morning has come and I like it!!! a lot!!! :-) which makes it an excellent morning :-)

Then I start beading round the petals.... mental note to myself: I hate the repetitiveness of beading the same thing over and over again.... next time reduce number of petals :-)

7. 8. 9.

Come back in a few days and hopefully :-) this will be finished :-) no, I mean it!!! it will be finished!!!! :-)

Happy beading everyone! :-)

Water - work in progress - Part 2

It was all smooth sailing... I was really enjoying the progression and the way the design was developing.... but then.... I realised, after having beaded around the whole motif, that I placed one of the large beads in the wrong place!!!!! probably less than 1 cm, but that one cm makes all the difference to the rest of the pattern working. So after a LOT of hmming and phuuffing, and trying really hard not to cry :-) I realised that I had 2 choices... scrap the whole thing and start afresh, or cut the offending bead and its surrounding, re-stitch it in the right place and strengthen all the beads around the area to make sure that none would fall out. # 2 shows the problem and the arrow points to where it should have been. # 3 shows the newly placed corrected bead, the red dot marks where it was.

1. 2. 3.

I have to say, the thought of giving up came across my mind at least every five minutes... I wasn't sure how to carry on, what colour, what bead, what stitch, what pattern. I kept on taking breaks, I kept on looking through all my bead books for inspiration, still nothing!.... the only thing I was 100 % sure about was that I really liked the colour, so I decided to carry on with the turquoise seed beads, but I wanted to give it a lot of texture to contrast the bugles and the other lines, so I tried a new method (see # 5) and I individually stitched each bead, rather than in rows, I stitched them in all directions filling in the spaces as I went along. I'm very glad I did this I think it works really well.

4. 5. 6.

Now comes the hard part.... I'm really, REALLY stuck!!!!! The piece outgrew my original plan, up to now it measures c. 4" x 4", so now am not sure what to do with it!!! should I make it bigger, should I fringe it, should i scrap it? I honestly don't know... for now I'm leaving it and carrying on with other small projects, but I do want to finish it!!! I love how it looks! I just don't know what to do with it!!! arghhhh!!! :-)

Come back soon to see how it all ends :-) and if you missed part 1, here is the link: Water - work in progress - Part 1

And in case you haven't yet you can still go and vote for this month's EtsyBeadweavers' Fire and Flowers challenge. Go vote for your favourite!
http://www.etsy-beadweavers.blogspot.com/

Water - work in progress - Part 1

I cleaned up my beading table.... I rearranged all my beads.... and as I said, new colour combinations have entered my thoughts.... I guess it's a logical progression from the Fire and Flowers challenge (voting currently taking place http://www.etsy-beadweavers.blogspot.com/)... the exact opposite... in colour, in temperature, in mood.... it extinguishes fire but provides life to flowers :-)

Here is my progress so far.... yet to be named, as I'm still unsure where it's going....

1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

This morning I went to the post office to pick up a package of cabochons that I ordered from JadeDogBeads. Within the package I received were these lovely Vintage Glass Pointed Oval Cabochons and they were the beginning of my colour selection.

Blue is one of my favourite colours and especially turquoise... I love turquoise!!!! and as summer approaches, you will see just how much I love turquoise.... there is always a period just before summer that all I can think is turquoise, so I usually end up making everything with some turquoise inside... in an almost obsessive way :-)

I started playing around with the white cabochons... and all I could think of is fish swimming around, so I angled the cabochons... just to try something a bit different.... we'll see how it develops...

Come back in a few days to see this piece progressing and of course the finished piece :-)

again, a quick reminder: voting is taking place at http://www.etsy-beadweavers.blogspot.com/. Don't put it off less than 6 days left! vote for your favourite!

Wall Flowers

Last post for today... Here are 2 pieces inspired by my entry (Blazing Flowers) for the EtsyBeadweavers' April challenge Fire And Flowers. Voting started a few hours ago... Go check out the wonderful entries and VOTE for your favourite :-) http://www.etsy-beadweavers.blogspot.com/

In the meantime here are my Wall Flowers, made over the week-end on my bed :-) for more details on them please go and check out my shop http://www.triz.etsy.com/

Wall Flower Choker

Wall Flower Bracelet

What I did today :-)

This has been a long time coming.... and today, I decided, after having spent the last few days beading on my bed... not too comfortable... to finally do a proper clear up of my beading table... and the truth is, I couldn't do that without rearranging all my bead boxes.... I can't believe I acutally did this but I actually took all my beads out of the containers, layed them on my dining table and colour co-ordinated them all back into the containers... and I'm glad I did, because there were so many beads I forgotten about and others I never used simply because they were placed next to a less than complementary colour, rather than one that shows it off.... colours change so much just by placing them next to other colours... so I discovered these new (for me) colour combinations that I wouldn't have necessarily thought of putting together.... but ultimately I'm so happy to have my table back... I'm so happy to be able to see the table top... but most of all I'm so happy I now know where all my beads are :-) I'm so looking forward to sitting down at my table tomorrow morning and start something new and fresh.... no clutter, just endless possibilities :-)

just look how lovely it looks now!!! :-)

even after I've put all my stuff back on the table :-)

I'm so proud!!! :-) Can't wait to start beading first thing tomorrow morning!!! :-D