I have been quite busy over the last few months, assisting my mother with her duties as caregiver to grandma. Her passing has been a very emotional time for us all, and through that I fear that my inspiration has been lacking. Just last week I finally completed a piece. In it I used a chevron stitch on a ladder base for the neck strap. The clasp is the same as the focal, as can be seen in the photo. I have been having lots of fun making wagon wheels using a Tubular Peyote technique with different size beads. The toggle bar is also made using a  embellished peyote stitch. I have made a rope and a toggle clasp similar to this one for this year's Christmas piece. But seeing as it is not finished, you will have to wait till we get closer to Christmas in order to see that one.

There is nothing like a nice change of scenery to refresh the creative juices. Now I am just wishing that I had brought more than just kumihimo materials with me. For those of you who don't know, kumihimo is a japanese braiding technique where you use a special disk with knotches in it (or a unique wooden table if you are really old school) and draw the strings over each other in various patterns to form a braided rope with a special design on it. I have recently become very addicted to this technique. Probably because it is something I can do quickly and work up a bracelet in about a 20min time space. A necklace takes much longer, but can be equally as satisfying. At any rate, I had tried kumihimo once before a long time ago, but had never really done much with it besides make a simple rope. Then I saw my friends Michelle and Jeanine working with it using all kinds of different "fibers". I was intrigued by the eyelash yarn that jeanine had used for one of her pieces especially! I had been told that you can only kumihimo with C-Lon cord. Well for my collection, that made my color pallette very limited and therefore not to exciting. Once the concept of using anything that you could fit into the knotches came into play it was like I had a fire rekindled and I've been making them none stop for the past several days. Above I have pictured a few of my bracelets. I especially love that orange one! It is ideal for spring. If anyone would like a kumihimo bracelet of their very own, visit karitikreations.com and use the contact information to get ahold of me! Until then enjoy the journey!

As I was growing up, I always believed that there was something special for me, but while many people had their "thing" I had many things. I never really had that one thing that I was really good at. I always wanted to have that one thing that people would look at and say "yup, that's kariti's work". Around the time that I was like   20 years of age, and I should probably mention that I am a mere 23 years now, I got to a point in my life where I was jobless, essentially homeless(living with parents), and spending all my time in front of the tv. My mother decided one day that I should pick a craft and take some classes in it, get really good and then start selling. I chose beading/jewelry on a whim, and well just never stopped beading after the first class. It is strange that a girl who hated anything "girly" or "preppy" as I called it at the time, would choose jewelry but God does have a really unique sense of humor. At any rate, I have learned alot since then and in further posts on this blog I will let you join me in my journey as I continue to learn everything that I can about beading and jewelry design. Here's hoping that perhaps you too will find some inspiration and begin a journey of your own into a craft that can be so explainably satisfying you just never stop. I just thank God every day that my husband is such an understanding person when it comes to my beading, which less face it, has taken over my life and our bedroom.