Meltdown at the end of Day One

Those 5 days (3 in tournament play) in Phoenix went quickly while playing the 23rd (?) annual Phoenix Scrabble tournament with co-directors Larry Rand and Barbara Van Alen.  Eighty opponents played one another in mostly good humored competition.

One quick story:

At the end of the first day of tournament play, a Division One player (top division) was frustrated when his opponent played a seven letter word and bingoed out, leaving him with a rack of tiles counting against him.  He slammed down his tile rack and stormed out of the tournament room and did not return to play the remainder of the tournament.

The word his opponent played against him was
 " M E L T D O W N " .

"Good News and Ah-Choos" by NPR - Health

The podcast showcased here is important to me because it deals with breast cancer and spina bifida, two health conditions with which I am much too well versed.

If either breast cancer and lymph node removal and/or spina bifida has touched your life, please go to this site and do a quick download and listen to the first ten minutes of  THIS PODCAST.

(photo shown at referenced NPR Health site)

You will be happy to know there is some good progress with research and surgeries going on with both conditions.

Make Custom Buttons the Easy Way

That clay you buy in hobby stores has so many uses that I completely forgot that it could be used to make buttons!!

It is an amazingly easy tool for creating beads.  A couple of years ago, I did a post on making beads for earrings, thusly:

(layering colored clay with gold leaf)

(rolled into a tube, cut into pieces, and then rolled again in the palm of hand for a bead)

There was a stash of clay still in my craft closet that had not seen the light of day since 2008.

Thanks to KnitDragonFlies and her recent blog post on making custom polymer clay buttons, she brought to light using polymer clay for making buttons.  So out came the Fimo from the box: a bit dry, but still pliable after exercising my hands with the stiff polymer.

It would be just the ticket to make one inch buttons to match my newly sewn Knitting Workshop Tribeca Shirt.

I mixed some blues and green Fimo together to create an aqua-ish color that matched the blouse fabric, then streaked it with purple straight from the package, layering them together and rolling this mixture into a tube.  Then the tube was cut into 1/4 inch circles and further rolled down to make a flatter circle.  The top of a pill bottle was used to cut out button circles, similar to cutting out biscuits from dough.

I also made some matching beads for earrings from the striped purple and aqua clay mixture.  Then the cookie sheet came out and the beads and buttons were baked for 30 minutes at 230 degrees F.

After cooling, I applied clear nail polish for a lacquer finish.   Here are the buttons pinned onto the fabric:

The aqua is not a perfect match to the fabric, but they will do.  And it was fun to create a one-of-a-kind accessory.