Demented Ramblings

A few weeks ago, I saw a very lovely bracelet in one of the fiber/spinning communities on facebook.  I loved it and thought that surely I could replicate it.  I watched a couple of videos on youtube about spinning fiber onto a wire core.  That was my project for the last Second Saturday Spin-In.  Spinning onto a wire core isn’t really as tough as I thought.  The only snag is getting the fiber to catch as you start spinning.  But once it’s started, it goes pretty easily.  I used a “demented batt” from my local yarn seller/dyer, Lunabud Knits.    It has lots of colors and sparkles in it so it makes for a crazy yarn.

Then, I went to my local bead shop, Dandelion Bead Connection, and asked the owner of the shop for some help on what to use as a core and how to attach my hardware.  He helped me out immensely.  I sat down on Sunday and attacked the project.  It was surprisingly simple!

For starters, I created my “core”.  The guy at the bead shop had given me a giant black rubber o-ring, like 8 mm diameter and 4 feet long.  I cut off enough to go around my wrist.  Then, I used the dremel to drill some tiny holes though the rubber about 1/4 inch from each end.  I secured my wire into these holes and created small rings on each end.  it didn’t matter that they were ugly, the fiber wire covers them up!  Once each end had a loop, I started wrapping the bracelet with the fiber covered wire.  This process is a bit tedious and gives me a cramp in my hand but isn’t difficult.  I just had to be sure to wrap it tightly.  As you can probably see, my “yarn” was a bit thicker in some spots than others.  That just adds to the beauty, I think.  Once the bracelet was wrapped, I put a wee bit of glue on each end just to keep it from unraveling.  Then I used split rings to attach a clasp.  I like the toggle clasps best for bracelets.  I find them easier to connect one handed than the others.

My only regret(?) about this bracelet is that the o-ring is a bit more rigid than I would like.  It is kind of stiff feeling on my wrist.  I think that once I’ve used up all of my o-ring supply (I have enough to make a half dozen or so bracelets) then I will try flexible tubing.

I enjoyed this project so much that I may make a handful of these in the coming weeks.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 21st, 2014 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Crafts, Projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.