My Wedding Necklace

Ever since I returned to the craft fair, sleeping became a waste of time. Tuesday and Friday are a very exhausting days and in the end of them, I find myself trying to remember when I had a few minutes of quite (very rare). The rest of the week, I am with my children which leave not enough time to writing. Because I am sure you are not here to read the boring schedule of bussy mother, I want to show you some progress in my work.

Finally after planning, taking a picture (one after one…), I am pleased with the result. I have a new necklace for my bib collection necklaces. This collection has only few items, but each one makes a statement. A very simple dress and one of these necklaces and you will have a dazzling appearance. I think the mother of pearl stones is an excellent combination with the goldfilled wire and the satin ribbon.

 

I love the mother of pearl.

 

 

Next time I want to intruduce you a friend of mine who does amazing work.

Orit

And the winner is….

It took me a while, but finally after my child was sick and my baby (it was hard) and participating twice a week in craft fair, I want to announce the winner in my giveaway. I wrote all the names on small notes and asked from my child to pick one from a glass ball. I am not sure he understood why his mother chased him with a glass ball, but he was happy to pick a note. So the winner is Monica from Impressions of a Princes.

You can contact me on orithaddad111@hotmail.com to claim  your prize.

 

Since I was very busy in the last month, I didn’t get the chance to see what is going on the blog-o-sphere and read what you have all have been up to, and commenting. I will get back to each and every one of you.

Next post will be published very soon (I am feeling I have to fill some gaps) and until then I will give you a glimpse. I am working on a new/old necklace. This necklace is white.

Thank you for being so patience,

Orit

Saying Thank You – My First Giveaway

It has been 5 months since I opened my blog and I think this is the time to say thank you to all those of you who are following my blog. In particular I want to mention Katherine from Pillows A-La-Mode. I have asked lately from her to write a review on my pdf’s tutorials and she agreed although crochet is not her specialty, she just started to learn it. Today she posted her review and I couldn’t be happier. Thank you, Katherine!!
And now as I promised in my last post this is my first giveaway. So if you want to win one of this earrings or pendants, any color from the Swarovski collection, please follow all 3 next steps:
(1) “Like” my Facebook page here.
(2) “Like” this post and leave a comment.
(3) Join me by following this blog (if you are already following me you can skip this step)
That’s all!!

This is one of my pendants, you can see more here.

And earrings from here.

A week from today, Tuesday, April 8, I’ll draw a name out of a hat and announce the winner right here.  The winner will receive the jewelry he/she selected.

Orit

I Need Some Help

Lately I was thinking to write another tutorial and add it to my PDF series. Because it takes a lot of time to write it, I found myself having doubts which item should be the next one.

The first one is for this ring:

This tutorial was massive project. I insisted to take a close up of every single stitch, this means 55 pictures!! Each picture was attached to comprehensive explanation not for knitting the correct stitch, but also the basic terms for crochet technique. I wanted to make the tutorial simple and easy to understand and follow so everyone could learn to make the ring. When I finally listed it, I was relieved and to my big surprise, I got good feedback.

When the good feedbacks continued, I was encouraged to write another one. This time I have decided that the crochet balls would be interesting item. Because you can make with them variety of earring and necklaces, it seems they are the perfect product.

The next item was wrapped earring. This tutorial is also focused on how to wrap with knitted wire.

I think that there is no need to write more on wrapping so I was wondering if the next tutorial should be on how to make this earring:

What do you think? Are this earrings suitable for my next PDF?

Orit

My Etsy Shop Celebrates 3 Years.

My Etsy Shop Celebrates 3 Years.

Looking back it seems like a long journey. I remember how I was surprise to find out that I can sell jewelry on the web with out been worn or touched. Etsy was a whole new world for me and pretty soon I have realized how much I enjoyed learning how to take a dissent photo for my items (very difficult at start and a lot of tears), how to describe an item and how to keep an excellent costumer service.

One of the first decisions I did back then was to chose my first items to be listed. This was not easy at all!! Because I couldn’t listed all my items at once, I had to pick few items from the variety of styles I have. The first necklace was from this collection.

This was new collection beck than and I was not sure if I should list it first, the lava beads seemed to me too bold. To my big surprise, after few days I had a sale and guess which item it was:

From time to time, I get good feedbacks and this drives me to keep improve my shop.
I can tell you that every compliment still keeps me excited and fill me with new air.
This is the last feedback I got this week from Laura Moradi , one of Etsy sellers:

“I just wanted to let you know how beautiful I think your jewelry is. I’ve tried many times to use crochet in my work, and the results always seemed so sloppy, but yours are truly jewels – very fine, even, and obviously masterful – from someone who’s tried, Bravo!”

Hope for many good feedback for the next year.

Orit

My Valentine’s Heart

I have been trying to crochet heart shape pendant ever since I started to knit in wire, but the result was never good enough (as always…). Sometimes the shape was not fine enough for me and sometimes it was too flat. But I want a heart pendant and because I love knitting around a stone or crystal, I preferred to choose a heart shape stone and to knit around it. The result as you can see was pendant and ring.

The first one was with Swarovski crystal, but what about some red color?

So the second was Carnelian pendant.

The third was ring with mother of pearl

And here on my finger.

But I still was not happy and finally after many options (and many tears), I knitted this cute
heart which is a bit curved. Now I am happy.

What do you think?

New Year, New Collection

This year is almost over, so for the new year I want to write about my new necklace which is unusual to my previous collections. Hope to share with you the process of creating new collection.

Experiencing new material is exciting and challenging especially if it is unique for jewelry. Rubber is a very unique material when designing jewelry and usually it is used after it has been changed from the original form. But in my new collection I used it as it is. This new necklace is an excellent example how to reuse material without changing it.
The rubber I want to introduce this post was not designed to be used for jewelry.
In fact this rubber loops or rings which you can see in this photo were made for industrial purpose and I bought them in a factory rubber! (which in first look doesn’t seems like the place for inspiring jewelry…). Believe it or not they were manufactured for plumbing!!

I liked these rings so much I decided that no extra changes are needed to be done and because the rings are in such good quality they became the major element in my item. The black color which is so dominated inspired me to chic design and I decided to create a long necklace by adding a metal loops between each rubber loops.

And what about the knitted wire? How to combine it with the long necklace? I wanted to try some other technique which will look like integral part of the jewelry and knitting around the loops seemed like a good idea:

The knitted circles were another addition:

The result is long necklace which can be worn in at least 2 variations: long as it is and short.

The short version is worn by opening the necklace with claps. This makes it possible to surround it around the neck twice.

One other option is to wear as a belt!!!

This is my vision for the next year.

Hope to read your opinion about this new necklace.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

Orit

Flying Rockets while Giving Birth

Over a month has passed since I opened my new blog and still no new post was written. For this time I have a very good excuse.

This was a very challenging period since I wrote my first post. As my due date was getting close, I have become obsessed trying to finish as much missions as possible. So instead of resting, I have found my self extremely busy. Among my long list of missions, there was one about my second post which I intended to write on my new PDF. But reality has reminded me that man plans, God laughs.

On the morning of Nov 15th, I have realized that the small contractions I felt all night are here to stay. They become more intense, but because I planed a natural birth, there was no rush to get to the hospital. So instead of counting minutes (something which only increase tension), I have decided to start 2 orders I had from my Etsy shop!!!
This was a very funny scene. Every 10 minutes I had to stand up and do some circles with my pelvis. After the contraction has gone, I got back to my chair, wire and knitting (or in other words, my blog’s name….).

At noon my orders were ready, my son was in the kindergarten and I felt this is a very good timing to go to the hospital: speaking while contraction was very difficult and this was a good sign. So I finished packing everything (and I mean everything!!). Driving to the hospital was very uncomfortable as I had to sit on the back seat of the car, on my knees and had to band a bit my head. But the news I heard from the radio were even more uncomfortable: more and more rockets are hitting the southern of Israel. I was worried but at least the hospital and my son are not near the rockets zone. After arriving to the hospital I called my midwife, Alina, and hoped for good news. But it appears the sever contractions I felt were in fact only 2.5 cm dilated. I was very disappointed as I hoped to hear something between 5-6, but Alina had a good idea: go for a walk and come back in another hour.

This was a walk from hell; every 5 minutes a long contraction has caused me to shout to my husband, so he will come and put his hands on my suffering back. After 1 hour I felt that I need worm water on my back, so I limped back to the hospital. My husband felt that it will take some time, and because a rocket hit a very close city near our house (!!!), something which was much unexpected, we decided it is more important he will be with my son (and I will be alone). After he left, Alina checked once again and this time the result was 3. Not enough but my mind was focus on how to reduce the pain so I couldn’t care less. I rushed to the shower, throwing my cloths and hoped the warm water will be my rescue. But as the time passed on I realized how much giving birth is very painful, this was the longest hour of my life!!!

In the mean time I felt that I need Alina next to me. She came and took me out from the shower. In this point my state of mind was very different, but still in focus. She wanted to check once again, to my big surprise this time the answer was that the baby is very close and if I want I can push. In the mean time she helped me climb to the bead. I stood on my knees, my back was straight and my hands lay down on the head of the bead. This was an excellent position and after few pushing, the baby came out.
The moment after she came out was amazing and because I can’t describe this in words, I am adding a photo:

Her name is Adi. In Hebrew Adi means big necklace and I am very proud to be her mother!

As you can see in this photo, she is covered with crochet blanket which was knitted by my mother in low who passed away a year ago. She was master in knitting and I am dedicateing this post to her.

And from knitting in thread to knitting in wire and this time another birth to announce – my new PDF. I got some requests to write instructions for earring and I decided to make them for this earring:

And because Hanukkah and Christmas are very close you can all enjoy 20% off for this PDF on my Etsy shop:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/orithadad?ref=si_shop

Hope to write my next post more quickly than this one,

Thank you,

Orit

New Blog

Ever since I wrote my first PDF, instructions to create my crochet ring, I got a lot of feedbacks to create my own blog. This was a big surprise for me. Apparently the photos with the explanations were good enough to make a well organized PDF that it seems to some of you, like a good platform to make also a blog of creation

So finally after lots of debates with my inner “me” and my growing belly (I am 8th month pregnant ), I have decided that blog would be the place for me to share my ideas and creations – finished and non finished (which are a lot….). Because “me” is not just “creation” and “inspiration”, I think this would be a bit about me, aka ‘Orit’,
a lot about what I am doing, aka knitting. But this blog would be also about getting up in the morning (very difficult for me with all the extra weight…), or in short – life.

So who am I??? I don’t believe in long introduction so I will start with only a few words. The rest will come as I hope to write more post, hopefully you will like this one.

So this is me:
I look just like my logo (you have to believe me now; I will add a photo so you will able to compare).

I am a mother to 4 years old boy – very energetic and another baby girl in November.

I am crazy about knitting, crochet and textile techniques.

I love to create, I love handmade and I love design – scrapbooking is my new hobby.

With all this passion, I have decided to start my own business and create jewelry which is made entire on knitted wire. This was 6 years ago and since then I also opened my Etsy shop:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/orithadad

After the introduction, I had to decide what this post would be about.
Again this decision was very challenging for me and eventually I got to conclusion that I want to share with you my next necklace. This necklace was not listed on Etsy yet and I didn’t even show it on my stand in the Nahalat Binyamin Fair in Tel Aviv. It is so new that when I wrote this post, it was still on my desk, waiting to be listed.

So this is it, or in fact part of it:

This is an amazing leather which I found and I just couldn’t resist making something which will be combined with knitting. As you can see this piece was cut few an few times before I could decide on the shape.

So after some cutting and piercing, I got this shape:

And this is it in full size:

I would love to read your opinion on the result, so if you like you can leave a comment.

Now I have to think about my next post and if you like to read it, you can subscribe (at the bottom of this page) to my blog  and receive an email notification when a new post is made.

Thank you for reading this,

Orit