So, today I’m going to let you in on a little secret that I usually keep to myself: I’m crafty. No really, I am. As someone who grew up a serious tomboy, it almost pains me to say it, but, it’s really true. I spin, I knit and crochet, I weave, I even learned a historical netting technique called naalbinding, which until fairly recently was only the purview of a few Swedish grandmothers. 

This Christmas I finally had to accept it because a significant percentage of the gifts I gave were handmade. One of the gifts made me especially proud.

While the family was at my brother and sister-in-law’s for Thanksgiving, we drank some wine one night. It was typical family time, lots of up and down and laughing and cooking, so people were forgetting whose wine glass was whose. A solution was reached pretty quickly, which was dubbed, “The Redneck Wine Charm.” Jodi had a stash of bread ties, and each of us used a different color. (They suggested that I take this picture and blog about it, so here we are.)

Well, this simply would not do, so, I set out to make some wine charms. The day that I decided to start the project, Lime & Violet (a great knitting blog) offered a crocheted Christmas tree and ornaments as their pattern of the day.

I thought crocheted Christmas ornaments would work great for wine charms. So, I blithely downloaded the pattern, gathered some colorful yarn from my stash, reminded myself how to read a crochet pattern (and a foreign one at that) and started in on them.

They turned out pretty cute, but a little big for a wine charm.

So, I went back to the drawing board and to my bead stash.

For these you need:
* Several novelty beads (some of these I made myself)
* Memory wire (I got this at my local craft store)
* Memory wire tips (though you could put little turns in the wire instead)
* Some kind of quick-set glue
* Needle-nose pliers (perhaps a few kinds of pliers)
* Wire-cutter of some sort

Cut memory wire so that that it overlaps a little more than halfway around its circle. Add a tip to one end using quick-set glue (or turn back on itself to create end). String beads in attractive groups. Add another tip using quick-set glue (carefully, to avoid gluing yourself to the charm). And, voila, wine glass charms.

You could get really funky with these, using any beads that you have around or that you can find. I’ve seen everything from crowns to letters to leaves to dogs at craft stores. I think my sister-in-law was happy to have them. We haven’t had an occasion to use them … yet.

Also, a quick update on my “not-to-do list“: My inbox currently has zero unread items in it, I haven’t been to a fast-food restaurant in the evening once (let alone 2-3 times/week) since I made that resolution, and, well, I’m going to be here at least another hour, so this isn’t really the end of the day.

Published on Feb 2, 2009

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