Thursday, September 13, 2012

Different Sizes

I find it interesting how often I'm asked to change the length of a bracelet since they're not made of easy to lengthen chain elements. Many of the pieces I make are basic designs where I can simply add a repeat, but of course even that means that I can only change the design in set increments. There are others I've managed to change with a stitch count increase throughout the whole piece thus increasing the entire designs width and length, but again there are limits to how effective this can be. Every once in a while I even state in a listing that a length simple cannot be changed. That was the case with my newest, the strata bracelets. The design is so dense that any change in length would constitute an entire design change and that's just far too much effort. Since it's already longer than most of my pieces I figure it's in a pretty good place already.

Yesterday I had a custom request for a different color and size on my Forever Scrolling slave bracelet. The size difference needed was about an inch, far too small for any additional element to be added symmetrically, so I had to think about all my other methods for increasing size. An all over change would be too great as well, but I was sure I could do something. So I spent much of the morning guessing and doodling in the air to work out the issue. You might be asking why I just didn't test tat an idea out. Well, I just didn't want to. I wanted it right the first time. By the time I got to tatting I thought I had worked it out. I increased the number of scallops on the end scrolls and made each a bit larger as well. Doing this just on the wrist side of the design along with a couple of ring size changes as well seemed to give the desired result. The toughest part was waiting until the entire design was finished to see if it really had worked or not. The other tough part is anytime I make a piece that doesn't fit me, I can't try it on and make sure it sits right. All I could do was press it, measure it and pack it up to head to its' new owner and hope it works out perfect for them.

Once that was done for the day, it was back to the pile of pieces that need remaking. I'm feeling a bit frustrated because some of the pieces that sold are ones I had made two of and I feel like I want to keep that many available, but there are still pieces I don't have listed at all that I should get made. I guess I'm just conflicted about the order in which I should be working. I also want to get a few piles of spiders made up for the shop as well, but that task has landed at the bottom of the pile. As you can see, I still have plenty of tasks on hand for today and nothing interesting to show for it.

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