I worked on making another bookmark over the weekend, after i trudged into town to get some more tools on friday – some specialist parchment glue, a large ball embossing tool, a flower puncturing tool, a square puncturing tool and an arrow punturing tool as well. I also stocked up on plain parchment paper and bought some seriously cool black vellum as well, which works just the same as plain parchment paper except.. its.. well.. black. and you can’t see through it, which makes copying patterns a tad difficult, so i’ll have to come up with a way around that one. But just as an example, making the box out of black vellum would be seriously cool, as the markings and gold paint would show up really well.

However, i just got finished with the bookmark, and of course, wanted to show off my work. I think you’ll all agree that its a beautiful pattern – so intricate and pretty:

blue bookmark with fringe - apologies for the flash, its protected by a clear plastic and some kind of flash off that is almost inevitable.

The fringe is made from blue embroidery silks, which i simply threaded through holes made on the base of the bookmark, then knotted in a diamond net pattern, which i really liked and will probably do again in future. I’ve taken more photos in closeup, which are behind the cut as usual.

In other news, since its monday…. another two pounds off last week! I’m now on 215 pounds, or 15 stone 5 pounds. This is 19 pounds off what it was when i started at the beginning of January, and a whole 30 pounds what it was off my heaviest, in April ’08. I really don’t think this weight loss has anything to do with the diabetes (other than being the motivation) or my diabetes medication – Michiel followed the same diet last week, and he lost almost 3 pounds. I do understand why that’s the case (which i’m not going into here, that deserves a whole blog post of its own) … it just baffles me why the medical profession are so adamant that a low-carb diet is unhealthy and not the way to go…. either way, i’ll be keeping this up and i hope the weight loss continues too… If it does, at the same rate, then with a little luck, by the end of March, I’ll be 14 stone something… thats powerful motivation. i haven’t been 14 stone anything since.. well… i dunno how long. certainly more than 10 years!

(more…)