Wirey -- cubes balls and cords

Recent warm weather knitting has been mostly more wire.

The first cube measured just under 3 inches.

While it holds its shape reasonably well, it also can be manipulated or toyed with. It is easily brought back into shape so it makes a nice "executive" toy which is another way of saying a physical doodle device. You know, the sort of stress relieving and or poke at while trying to focus/remember.

The second cube is about an inch and a half and has a not insignificant bead suspended inside of it. That bead wasn't part of the original design vision and as a result, I wasn't entirely happy with the way it sits in there.

My thinking was that if I positioned a bead into the cube earlier in the knitting I'd have more control and more wiggle room to work with the wire and the bead. That's where the third cube's experiment came into play.

It is about 2 inches and has beads plus a bit of wire wrap happening. I mixed some 22 gauge green enamel coated copper wire into this piece and I'm not all that thrilled with the result.

Enamel coated copper wire is sold by a number of different companies and more of then then not they call it permanently coloured. That's a bit of a misnomer as the enamel coating can and will chip/flake off when it is manipulated. That's exactly what happened to this stuff.

I finished the third cube off while Czech bead shopping on the weekend. and I started on a fourth before starting the walk home.

I have been leaning toward putting a knitted ball inside of it although that idea could morph into a round peg depending upon my mood.

One of these (or still another) cubes is bound to be a gift. Which one is TBD as is whether I or recipient will ultimately decide which one.

The knitted balls are semi-mindless and like most semi-mindless knitting easy to get wrong as you find yourself lulled into a false sense of security and end up with a mishapen ball for all your efforts.

I solved that problem through the cunning use of beads to mark the end of each knitted segment. If the bead placement isn't in line with the other beads you've gone wrong and either missed a short row turning or done too many. I used red kynar wire for each of these and the one with the beads on top looks for all the world like a clever little lantern.

Something about putting things inside of other things while working with wire cubes and seeing how nice the kynar wire icord was got me thinking about doing beaded icord jewelry.

I think I mentioned the idea of simply knitting icord instead of Viking knitting and pull plates for jewelry in a prior posting and so far I'm really liking what I'm seeing with this experiment in blue icord and double knitting.

In my stash of wire and beads I came upon a length of blue kynar wire that I'd threaded very small (what was I thinking?) beads onto in preparation for a long forgotten project.

I'm not sure whether that wire came from Radio Shack or one of the electronics supply places in the mesas (Kearny/Clairemont) but I was a bit surprised to discover that it was a much different blue than the spool I just bought at Fry's. The photo doesn't show the colour difference adequately.

I toyed briefly with the idea of creating beaded icord using the prestranded light blue wire but abandoned it quickly as the idea of suspending beads in icord took hold as a in fishing floats suspended in knitting.

The rest of the What was I thinking tiny beads are housed in a small metal tin that seems to have its lid stuck.

Every now and again I give it a tentative twist hoping that some shift in atmospheric humidity will unstick it without having to use the sort of force that would, in all likelihood not only unstick it but set hundreds of tiny beads free to fly into the air and on/into the carpeting.

The suspended beads are just cheap Mardi Gras style beads I actually found during a weekend ramble. I think a lighter colour would offer more contrast and I'm still thinking about knitting up some of the lighter blue wire into icord and braiding/plaiting the lot into a bracelet

And yes, I did walk to the Whistlestop on Sunday. I did have a cone of bamboo and the nylon twine for the breast cancer water bottle cosy so you gotta know who was a no-show.