<img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4094/4867205016_266a4446c0.jpg".

This was for a commission to create a bead with three octopi holding tentacles.

They're so tentacularly cute, I just can't stand it!

I'd been threatening to make these for years, and the new apartment was just the push I needed to make it happen. These are from a now defunct card catalog from Columbia University, as delivered to me a few years back by my friend Virgil, who carried them to Brooklyn in two huge bags full of a multitude of charmingly gift-wrapped bundles of cards.

These two cowls are made by sewing yarn instead of knitting or crocheting it. I really love the way it preserves all the texture of the yarn, and the way I can hook strands over my ears directly to keep them warm!

The top one is made of my handspun yarn, and the bottom was my prototype with storebought yarn.

Instructions: I wound the yarn into a good cowl circumference, then basically spread out point of it between layers of tissue paper. Pinned it down, sewed a long line perpendicular to the yarn. One more on the other side. Tore off the tissue paper. Done!

Cat asked me to spin a me-and-her yarn for her, and this was my attempt. If you know us, it's pretty easy to see where I was going with this. Her long, gorgeous, silky black hair mixed with my wild and erratic curls, icy beads to accent thread-plied in, and wrapped with red thread to bind us together as in her latest novel, Palimpsest.

64ish yards of superwash merino, unknown curly locks, commercial thread and tiny beads.

"Princes Perhaps Charming, But Not So Successful"
<font size=-3>(paper, glue, yarn)</font>

<font size=-1>”Like prayers tucked into a barbed wire Wailing Wall, or the tiny, short, sad stories of princes who struggled through the thorns to reach Sleeping Beauty.”</font>

"When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk."
<font size=-3>(ivory linen card stock, sepia ink, chain)</font>

<font size=-1>Text from Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente. I gave this piece to Patti Digh of 37 Days when she came to New York.</font>

"When I see three oranges, I juggle; when I see two towers, I walk."
<font size=-3>(ivory linen card stock, sepia ink, chain)</font>

<font size=-1>Text by Philippe Petit, from when he explained why he walked that tightrope between the Twin Towers.</font>