Out of the Studio Wednesday and a little Israel Shopping

Sometimes you just need a little push to get that energy moving.  That's what I got when I talked to my friend Ruth and told her I was thinking of making one of Christine Dumont's hollow beads yesterday.  I'd been experimenting with new lentil bead patterns and decided put that on hold so I could finally get around to making this hollow bead from Christine's tutorial.  I originally just grabbed some scrap clay to use but figured I better try a striped pattern to see if I could make the stripes go towards the center of the bead as they're supposed to.  Not the nicest looking bead, but a good start.  Lessons learned:  these cotton balls sometimes aren't always perfectly round.  If you notice the bead on the right - the upper left hand corner has a flat spot on it.  This was from using my knitting needle a little agressively.   As you can see, the rest of the bead didn't flatten like that section did.  Also, when making your pattern, it's really best to make the stripes really straight - no warping as in my pattern.  It turned out ok in the end, but not a great way to start.

 

As for my new pattern - here's a cabochon I made using gold, translucent and black.  

                     front                                                             back

     

When I went to Israel, the first day I got there, I literally dropped off my luggage at the hotel, hopped in a cab and met Triz in Tel Aviv for a shopping trip in the jewelry district.  It was so nice to meet this talented bead artist - finally.  It's crazy how today, people do so much communicating via the internet that sometimes you lose sight that the person you're dealing with is halfway around the world.  Needless to say, I would have never thought that one day I'd be shopping in Israel with her.  And it was really wonderful having her with me to shop seeing as my communication skills were a little lacking to say the least.  We had fun combing the bead aisles - what else is new?  Here's some cabs I purchased.

And I took a photo to commemorate the moment. Thank God for camera phones!

After that, she took me to the Carmel market which is a large outdoor market.  The fruits and vegetables were displayed beautifully and there were a lot of people getting their grocery shopping done.  But they don't just have food.  I was even able to find a pair of water shoes Lily needed for the Dead Sea.  They've got everything there!  One stop shopping.

 

From there. she took me shopping to one of the trendy areas in Tel Aviv.  Surprisingly, I saw numerous American stores.  Can you ever really get away?  If I had known then what I knew by the end of the trip, I would have stopped in every SINGLE store!  When you're on a tour, you really don't get much shopping time so in hindsight, I should have taken advantage of the opportunity!  And then sadly our time was up.  It was back to the hotel for dinner and some much needed rest after our long flight.