Show time!

Q: Geneva, why haven't you been posting lately?
A: Because I've busy cranking out jewelry for the...

Thanks, Patti, for the customization of the sign!

Come on down to downtown Silver Spring this Saturday to sample not only the Fenton Street Market's wares but the Silver Spring Blues Festival, which has expanded to two stages this year. Part of the vendors' proceeds go to support the festival. The market will go until 5 p.m., to overlap with the blues festival.

Fairy Tale Bead Swap Blog Hop--the Reveal!

Catch of a Lifetime

My computer and/or mouse have been very temperamental this week, so I haven't been able to post the buildup to the reveal that I planned, and I will have to keep this entry short--but I couldn't miss the June 4 deadline for posting what I had done with the beads I had gotten from the lovely Lisa of alterityart .

This was my first time participating in the Bead Soup Party bead swap that is run by Lori of Pretty Things. She pairs up beader-bloggers, who swap beads with each other and then make a piece of jewelry on a designated theme and blog about it. This swap's theme was fairy tales, and Lisa sent me a haunting fable by the Brothers Grimm of a fisherman and his ambitious and greedy wife (who seems to have torn a page from the playbook of Lady Macbeth).

Here are the beads Lisa sent me, an assortment of mostly vintage beads in blues and greens with a few grays thrown in to represent the tempestuous sea, craggy rocks and roiling skies. There were some nubbly textured gold beads and two patina'd beads that suggested sunken treasure and diving bells to me. All of them with lots of character and history. She also included this amazing Vintaj brass fish focal.

This necklace was so much fun to make. It was my first attempt at freeform beadweaving, and I was inspired by Beverly Ash Gilbert's marvelous book Beaded Colorways. In fact, I had planned to write a whole blog entry just raving about this book, which I picked up by chance in my local Borders a couple of weeks ago. That will have to wait until I can get my keyboard working again--I simply can't type on the laptop keyboard and need my ergonomic one, which is flaking out on me.

Anyway, I have Lisa's aquaeous beads swimming around in a sea of seed beads in freeform netting that is meant to suggest waves and seaweed and perhaps a net ensnaring the magic talking fish.

If you'd like to see what Lisa did with the beads I sent her, hop on over to her blog--I'm dying to see myself! [8:30 a.m. update: I wrote the above on Friday and scheduled it to post on Saturday. But it's Saturday morning and I've peeked at Lisa's Titiana's Folly --the gorgeous charm bracelet she made with my "moon pearls," "magic seedpods" and spectra glass.]

And please check out the explosion of creativity from all the talented beaders who participated in the swap. The links are below--start hopping!

Fairy Tale/Spring Bead Swap Blog Hop

Lori Anderson, Pretty Things

Rebecca Anderson, Song Beads

Courtney Breul, Beads By Breul 

Loretta Carstensen, Designs by Loretta

Evelyn Hall, Dragon Lady Evelyn

Sandy Richardson, Sandy's Coloring Box

Dana James, Dana's Jewelry Design

Tara Plote, Newbie Beader

Christine Brandel, A Hot Piece of Glass

Lisa Sittniewski, Alterity Art

Joanna Matuszczyk, Filcowe

Jenni Connolly, Jenni Bead

Geneva Collins, Torque Story

Elisabeth Auld, Beads For Busy Gals

Sally Russick, Wireworked

Mary McGraw, MK's Creative Musings

Norma Turvey, Moonlit Fantaseas

Erin Prais-Hintz, Treasures Found 

Stephanie Haussler, Pixybug Designs

Shai Williams, Shaia's Ramblings

Johanna Rhodes, Fire Phoenix Creations

Sandi Lee James, Do Be Do Bead Do

Sweet Addy Designs

Valerie Norton, Hot Fused Glass

Next stop, Fenton Street

I learned recently that I've been accepted as a vendor at the Fenton Street Market in downtown Silver Spring. (The market is not, um, located at Fenton Street. Long story there. Check out the site for the explanation.) I'll be selling my jewelry (and, hopefully, demonstrating kumihimo) at the special June 18 market that's being held in conjunction with the Silver Spring Blues Festival.

I'm very excited--this is my first "real" crafts fair. The two others I've done were closed events with people who knew me. But never fear, my awesome friend Patti is going to be selling her gorgeous fused glass jewelry next to me (if our request to be placed together can be honored), and she's a pro!

(Pssst, Patti, get that online storefront up so I can hyperlink your name!)

Time to start cranking out the merch! Oh, and I need to get a tent. And a banner. And real business cards. Oh, and class starts next week. Yikes.

The REAL Kumihimo 101

I am embarrassed that I titled a blogpost a few weeks ago "Kumihimo 101." In it I described a few basics about kumihimo and showed a beaded necklace I was making on a handheld foam disk. This post is the real kumihimo 101, because I just spent the weekend taking a two-day workshop on using a marudai with the fabulous ladies of the Blue Ridge Weavers Guild under the guidance of Rodrick Owen and Terry Flynn.

Rodrick is one of the world's leading authorities on kumihimo. He lives in Britain, so I was lucky that he was teaching a workshop less than an hour and a half away.

I can't remember if I mentioned it in my last post, but I have had a marudai since Christmas. After a year or so of using the disk, I felt ready to graduate to the "real" thing. I tried to teach myself how to use it using a book by Jacqui Carey, but just couldn't get the hang of it. I signed up for a workshop taught by Carol Franklin at the end of January, but it was canceled for lack of enrollment. This April one was the only other one I could find anywhere near me.

I had to get up way early on Saturday to get to Purcellville, Va., by 8:45 a.m. I was very warmly welcomed by workshop organizer Beth and all the other talented women who belong to the guild.

I have to confess I was a real klutz and much slower than the others to grasp how to wind the threads on the warping pegs, how to secure the warp threads to the leader threads on the tama (bobbins), and how to flip and twist the bobbins so that they would spool the thread naturally when set up on the marudai. Terry had the patience of a saint working with me, the non-weaver in the group.

Saturday was devoted to eight-strand braids, with the day broken up with an amazing potluck lunch. On Sunday, we ventured onto 16-strand braids (and another amazing potluck lunch). It was midway through tying on the 16 bobbins that I finally got the hang of it.

Once the setup was out of the way, I think I did all right with the actual braiding. I could follow most of the diagrams that I attempted from the handouts, anyway.

I don't have the greatest pics, but here are a few snapshots of the weekend:

Here's the group as a whole late Saturday, as we were winding down. (No pun intended. Really.)

The other pictures are from Sunday.

In the photo at left, Rodrick is demonstrating something important. (I don't remember what.) Laritza is clearly paying more attention that I am.

Karen, right, is demonstrating that twisty-hand thing you have to do sometimes. It's awkward to start the bobbin transfer, but your hands land right when you're done, which I suppose is better than starting untwisted and finishing twisted. That's Beth next to her, poring over the textbook (Rodrick's Braids book).

When you know what you're doing, kumi is a very serene, Zenlike, rhythmic art. The wooden tama make a gentle clacking sound as you braid, which is soothing in a wind chime-y kind of way. I know I'm going to like doing this.

I think the Blue Ridge guild will post a photo album on the workshop soon--Beth was snapping away both days--on its site soon, so be sure to check it out.

Rhapsody in Teal

Here is the finished necklace that I showed in progress on the kumihimo disk two posts ago. I am absolutely ecstatic over how it turned at, as immodest as that sounds. (You like it? If you live in the D.C. area, you can bid on it at the Blair High School silent auction Friday evening.)


It is actually a necklace in two parts. The first part is a spiral rope necklace about 22 inches long. It was woven on the disk using matte-finish size 8 teal beads on six of the threads (C-Lon Bead Cord) and two threads loaded with super-sparkly silver-lined teal beads.

When I started the necklace, I knew I would have to do something to jazz up the simple rope, but I wasn't sure what. I had some freshwater pearls died peacock blue that coordinated with the teal beads beautifully. At first I tried to make a beaded bead using the pearls, but that didn't come out well. I was flipping through my beading books for inspiration and came upon a crocheted rope by Rona Loomis in Creative Beading vol. 3. She had accented her necklace with 7-inch beaded ropes that had various fringe and dangle treatments on the end, and tied the way you see illustrated on my piece. I knew immediately that I wanted to borrow the technique.

Problem No. 1: I wasn't sure if I had enough beads left for another 7 inches of cord. I had plenty of the shiny beads, since the main rope was made up of mostly matte ones. I thought an all-shiny-bead rope would look garish, so I came upon this grandiose idea to change the proportions as I wove the braid. It required a great deal of math and counting, winding and unwinding the bobbins to switch the proportions of beads, measuring every inch, and more than a little angst as to whether I would have enough matte beads, but I wove it so that the first inch on both ends was all shiny beads, followed by another inch of half shiny, half matte, then the middle three inches was the same ratio as the main necklace--three parts matte and one part shiny.

It was a cool hombre effect, but frankly, I don't know that you'd ever notice it unless you stuck your nose right up to it. (Here, go ahead. Stick your nose right up to it:

Problem No. 2: how to embellish the ends? I envisioned using those peacock beads that didn't get turned into a beaded bead. I knew that pearls have tiny holes, so before I began weaving, I made sure that the C-Lon cord would fit through the bead holes. Hah! This is where I outsmarted myself. When I finished the seed bead part and tried to string on the pearls, they wouldn't fit. I had stiffened the cord ends with Fray-chek to string on the seed beads, but the pearls just wouldn't go. I struggled for more than an hour and managed to get only about three pearls on. Forcing the cord through the holes caused it to lose all its stiffness, so I would have had to re-dip every cord in Fray-Chek and let it dry after every bead.

Time for a plan B. I rummaged through my supplies. Luckily, teal and aqua are among my favorite colors, so I had options. I found these glass chips that coordinated nicely. I was a little afraid that they might make the fringe too heavy, but they don't at all. Success!

I also used glass chips to make coordinating post earrings: I like their simplicity.

(Ironically, I wound up having matte beads left over. I had been reluctant to use them all up in the braid because I figured I'd need some to stitch up into tubes for earrings.)

So yes, it was hours and hours of work for a necklace I'm giving away, but I hope its eventual owner will feel the good karma it's imbued with--it was a happy process to make it, and I'm happy to show it off as an example of my best work.

My new favorite color ...

... is Longhorn orange. Time to go shopping for a mug that says, "my daughter and my dollars go to Texas."

Kumihimo 101

My last post showed off the beginnings of a tubular peyote-stitched gold beaded necklace that I said would be for my daughter's high school's silent auction. After stitching a few more inches on it, I realized it would take forever to make the long rope I had imagined, so I set it aside for something that would materialize a bit faster. Behold my kumihimo-beaded rope.

For those not familiar with kumihimo (which is just about everybody, duh), it is an ancient Japanese braiding technique traditionally done on a wooden stand called a marudai. However, several years back, an ingenious Japanese artist (I can't recall her name, and I'm too tired to Google it), invented a handheld loom made of foam. That is what I'm holding in the photo. Kumihimo is normally used to make textile braids, but when you add beads to the thread or cord and drop a bead at every pass, it creates a beautifully textured beaded rope that looks a lot like beaded crochet.

Although it takes forever to load the beads onto the eight strands (I'm using size 8 beads in two finishes of teal; the stringing medium is C-lon cord), the braiding goes relatively fast--a lot faster than the peyote stitching, anyway. (Thanks to Adrienne Gaskell for giving me the tip to stiffen the beading cord using Fray-check. This allows you to thread beads onto thick cord without a needle. If you use a needle, you have to use much thinner cord in order for it to fit through the beads doubled up).

If you want to learn more, check out the works of Jacqui Carey and Rodrick Owen, whom I believe are considered the foremost authorities writing in English on the subject. However, I want to give a shout-out to a series of posts on the Stone Heart Beads blog I discovered that led me to want to learn more about this fascinating but obscure art. The four-part series led me to the book Braiding for Beaders by Anne Dilker of Moss Hollow Pottery. There is also a Yahoo group devoted to kumi.

Pretty in Purply Pink

My little fingers cannot weave beads fast enough to post a new finished work every week, so I'm going to have post some filler here, to feed the relentless maw that is the blog.

I never did show off my bounty from the Virginia craftsmen's show, so I'll do that here.

Everything except the old-man pin is from Lori Anderson of Pretty Things. I bought the lovely purple and pink lampwork-beaded necklace (which I have worn twice already) and the larimar earrings at the fair itself. The peachy-pink nautilus earrings I ordered from her a week later, after I realized I was still pining for them (she ships fast, too!). The pin is carved wood and I bought it from a craftsman named Tom Vosler. Although I will wear it as a pin, I was thinking mainly of using it as a funky backdrop for jewelry photographs. (I swear it looks like my first college creative writing professor, although I didn't think of that until I took the photos yesterday.)

And here is a WIP. It is destined to be a necklace that is destined to be my donation to the Blair High School silent auction at the end of April. I love how it is turning out, but man oh man, working with these teeny size 11 beads means it is taking forever. On my other peyote spiral necklaces, I could weave about an inch an hour. But I've put more than five hours into this baby, and it is barely four inches long. (I added about an inch more after taking this photo yesterday afternoon.)

Back to the beads

My last several posts have veered off topic from what this blog is supposed to be about, so I'll post a couple of pics of two necklaces I talked about earlier as they were in progress. 

This one I call "Russian Gold" because it features the Russian spiral stitch. I like how the long rope is broken up by the large glass rondelles on either side. Note that neither of the two spiral rope columns pictured in my original post here were used to make this; I made three new ones that were all the same thickness. (And no, I never solved the mystery of why try #1 was fat and try #2 was skinny.) 

And lookie here at the necklace I first blogged about way back in January. 

I called it "Down and Dirty" at the time because that was the week's theme in the Year of Jewelry Project and earth tones were my inspiration. I actually finished the necklace within a week or so of that blogpost, but it took me several more weeks to get around to taking decent pictures of it. By then, the YOJP's theme was "Windswept," so that's what I called it when I posted a pic there. (I wrote that it evoked the swirling maelstrom that autumn leaves sometimes get caught up in.)

This was my first time doing double spiral rope stitch. I had seen the stitch before in several beadweaving books, and although it looked very easy, I was never tempted to make anything with it because I didn't like the finished effect. However, this design, by Alicia Shems (in the book Creative Beading vol. 5), features these ingenious graduated loops. I think the effect is stunning. If I remember correctly, I altered the pattern only slightly, using somewhat larger beads and longer loops. Check out Alicia Shems' amazing work at the link above!

I think I said in my last post that I would show off some of my bounty from the craftsmen's fair, but I haven't been able to take pictures of that, either. Yesterday morning I was shooting some pics of jewelry when my camera batteries died. I got some new batteries later in the day, but today I had to disassemble my light box to reorganize my space. I'm trying to establish a permanent setup so that I can take pictures day or night using appropriate artificial light (lamps outfitted with daylight spectrum bulbs.). Right now, I'm limited to shooting on Saturday and Sunday mornings and hoping that it's not a cloudy day.

I was hoping that restoring my lightbox setup would be my this-weekend project, but it may be turning into my next-weekend project.

Shopping trip!

I finally checked out the Craftsmen's Classic Arts & Crafts Show in Chantilly, Va., on Saturday. I've seen these advertised in the papers for years, but the Dulles Expo Center always seemed so far away. (Discloser: Everything in Virginia seems far away when you live in Maryland, even if you are traveling from a near-in suburb of D.C. to another near-in suburb of D.C., and it really only takes about 30 minutes to get there. Chantilly was a little over an hour's drive.)

I had read on Lori Anderson's blog Pretty Things that she would be selling there. She is the creator of the famous (among beaders, anyway) Bead Soup Blog Party. I have been reading her awesome blog for months and find it very inspirational. I have learned a lot from it about designing jewelry and doing booth shows from reading her blog, but probably the most important lesson I'm learning is how to create a delightfully charming and engaging blog presence. I felt that I knew her before I met her (in fact, I was a little worried about coming off as a stalker). I can assure you she is as gracious and kind in person as you would expect from reading her blog.

I think I embarrassed my daughter only a little by making her take this pic with my iPhone:

Unfortunately, my snaps of Lori at her booth came out way too dark, so I cannot show off her lovely merchandise. (But check out her most recent post, and you can see her display for yourself.)

I bought a hand-blown glass bead necklace and larimer earrings from her but haven't had time to take pics.

I also bought a hand-carved wooden brooch from this guy here, after my daughter came back showing off a necklace she had bought from him. I'm afraid he'll have to go nameless, since I didn't record either his name or the name of his company. So he'll be forever preserved as the Hand-Carved-Knife-Handle-and-Assorted-Odd-Tschotkes guy.

Meet full need

One of the advantages of having a blog that virtually no one reads is that you can write a post purely for the purpose of making a couple of friends do a spit-take! Above is a talented actor named Mark Jude Sullivan, who played Lord Byron in last night's staged reading of Camino Real. The event was part of Georgetown University's fantastic Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival. The fest runs through Sunday, with a John Waters show as the finale, I think. In addition to seeing this production, I also caught a fascinating conversation with Edward Albee the night before. (Did you know that the stars of the film version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf were originally going to be Bette Davis and James Mason?)

Field trip!

Last night my digital media class went to Google's Washington headquarters for a presentation by Peter Greenberger, one of the company's communications people. I am learning so much in that class. In fact I am flexing my nascent social media muscles by attempting to post on my blog remotely from my iPhone while I wait for a shuttle back to the office.

If you're reading this, it means I succeeded!

Never say never

We used to have the loveliest ornamental tree in our front yard. Someone told me once that she thought it was a species of blooming magnolia, but I never really knew for sure. It was a favorite climbing tree for our daughter and other neighborhood kids, because it was very Y-shaped, with these two strong branches coming off a short, stout trunk. Its blooms were a lovely harbinger of spring, arriving even before the cherry blossoms.

About six or seven years ago, it severed in two after a bad storm, and we paid to have it chopped up and toted away. But every year, a feisty little sprout shoots up from the flush stump and offers up a few blossoms. 

This year, I think it may have graduated to "shrub" status. Let's hear it for hanging in there!

Macaroni groggers

I had a blast at the IFFP Purim festival today. I sold my jewelry at a crafts table there, and had contributed a  pearl necklace and earrings set to the silent auction (see previous post).

"Macaroni groggers" refers to the boxes of pasta that people were asked to bring and shake. It is a tradition during Purim festivals to shake groggers, rattles and any other kind of noisemakers whenever the name "Haman"is said during the reading of the story of Esther. Once the pasta boxes had done their duty as noisemakers, they were collected for donation to a local soup kitchen.

The favorite part of my morning was meeting a young artist named Sarah, who was about 11 or 12, I think. She told me that she made jewelry and that her grandmother had taught her how. She also said she loved to paint. She chatted with me all during my setting up, admired several of my designs and bought a pair of iridescent blue teardrop earrings from me--my first sale of the day. Thanks, Sarah!

Do you like this necklace?

Well, it can be yours if you attend the IFFP Purim festival and silent auction in Silver Spring, Md., this Sunday. Five braided strands of bronze and cream freshwater pearls, interspersed with glass "pearls" and gold-plated spacer beads, the choker is my donation to this wonderful group and cause.


(I threw in matching earrings, too.)

Mistakes were made

I've been trying to crank out some pieces for a crafts fair I'll be participating in on March 20. It's for the Interfaith Families Project Purim Festival. I was an active member of IFFP for many years--it's a wonderful group for Christian-Jewish intermarried families. In addition to the crafts fair part--which I gather is pretty small (they tried this for the first time last year, and I think it was limited to a couple of teens selling jewelry)--there is a silent auction. I spent today making a necklace and earrings for the silent auction--I'll post a pic here when I can take some better shots.

The photo above is for a piece that's still in progress. I wanted to make a Russian spiral rope necklace. Instead of making one long rope, however, I envisioned making it in three segments, with some large beads interspersed in the breaks. I did one 7-inch segment, the one on the left, on Monday or Tuesday. The following evening, I started segment two, but for some reason it came out a lot skinner. I took it apart several times, but it still stayed skinny. I assumed that I had messed up on the set-up row. I finally gave up, and the following evening I started a new segment, taking extra care with the setup. It, too, came out skinny. Then I did two more, both skinny. I can't figure out why the first one is so much fatter than the others. I can only assume that I somehow added a bead after the set-up row, and I can't replicate my mistake. Either that, or it's simply a matter of tension. I know that with many tubular stitches, the first inch or so is always loose, but I can't account for this. I will save the fat one for another project and use the three skinny ones for my current design.

Frost on the Lilacs

My last post was about honeysuckle. This one will be about lilacs. It sounds like I'm pining for high summer. I finished a new necklace this morning: I had spring on my mind when dreaming up the color combination, so it is filled with soft hues of lilac, dusty pink and shimmery silver.

I spent last week making the three Cellini* beads that are the focus of the necklace. They are the kind of thing you can do while watching TV, as long as you're not watching anything with subtitles. I had experimented with making these beaded beads before, but could never figure out how to make them hang right on a necklace. Even if you do several decreases at both ends, you will still wind up with a fairly substantial hole, and the bead dangles off-center from the stringing wire.

I came up with what I thought was an ingenious solution: I had some rubber tubing that I snipped off to a length slightly shorter than each beaded bead, and I glued a bead cord end (the kind of thing you might put on the end of a braid; it has a hole in the center) on each end of the tubing segment. Let's call this segment a "tubette." Then I stuffed the tubette into each Cellini bead and threaded them onto the beading wire with the other beads. The wire was now perfectly centered inside the bead, and the tubette was not visible at all.

When I was making the beads, I envisioned combining them with some large clear crystal rounds and pearls. But when I was rummaging through my supplies, I didn't have the large white-white pearls I envisioned. I tried making the necklace with the Cellini beads and some 18 mm crystal rounds alone. The necklace looked gorgeous, but it was so heavy I though someone might shy away from buying it. I mixed in some silver-painted wooden beads I had. The crystals/painted beads pairing didn't work, so out came the crystals altogether. The final touch was to add two lampworked beads (from Fire Mountain Gems) of a dusty pink with purple swirls to the combination.

There was one last bit of ingenuity required. I had planned to put decorative bead caps on each end of the Cellini beads, to finish them off nicely and hide the tubettes inside completely. I have a fair number of bead caps of various designs, but all were too small. I found some domed filigree bead caps made for a, say, 8-10 mm bead. I thought, what the heck, these don't cost much, so if I ruin one experimenting, who cares? I took a pair of pliers and gently started flattening it, working round and round the bead cap. Within a few minutes, voila! I had a perfectly flat disk that looked like a daisy and fit the end of the Cellini beads perfectly.

I call the necklace Frost on the Lilacs because of the pale purple and silver combo, although I suspect getting actual frost on actual lilacs would require rather freakish weather conditions.

Here's a closeup of the Cellini bead and one of the lampworked ones. In real life, it does not look this grape-y; it really is a soft lilac. But it's a dismal rainy day here and I couldn't get good natural lighting. You can just make out the flattened disks on each end--can you believe they started out semispherical?

*Cellini bead--a bead made from a peyote stitch called Cellini spiral. 

The pattern uses beads of graduated sizes in a way that causes an undulating, 

thick-and-thin spiral. Mine uses five kinds of beads, from size 11 to size 6.

I had two more of the pink lampworked beads after using two in this, so I made simple matching earrings with them.  My apologies that this pic is a little blurry.

Honeysuckle huh?

I finished the "Down and Dirty" necklace a few weeks ago--in time for the YOJP deadline even--but I haven't had time to take good photos of it, so that will have to wait. So I'll post about something else today, something that's been puzzling me for weeks.

Every year, Pantone releases its color forecast of what shades will be hot--in clothes, decor, even cars. The 2011 color of the year is this:

Now I think this is a perfectly lovely color. I love pink, especially deep rosy shades like this. What I object to is the name. Honeysuckle? I grew up in a place where honeysuckle grew wild and rampant in alleys, covering backyard fences and suffocating backwoods lots. As kids, we would pluck the ripe blossoms, pull out the stamen (or pistil or whatever it's called) and catch the drop of nectar that gives the plant its name on our tongues.

Even in the Washington suburbs I have some honeysuckle growing in the divide between my front yard and my neighbors'. But to me, honeysuckle looks like this:

Do you see any pink there?

Obviously, some pink cultivars do exist--they come up on Google image searches--but I've never seen one in real life. IMHO [does it date me to use that abbreviation?], calling Pantone shade No. 18-2120 "honeysuckle" is like saying catchup is green, just because such a thing exists.

Trying to get down and dirty

I've had very little incentive to post lately, as my sole known reader has been in Costa Rica. (Welcome back, Patti! [waves]).

But I did spend the weekend working on the Year of Jewelry Project challenge for the week, the theme of which was Down and Dirty. I was trying really hard to get it done, but I have an inch or so more to go, and the last episode of Downton Abbey calls at 9 p.m. I'll take better pics of this gorgeous thing when I get it done--I think it's the most beautiful piece I've made to date. The pattern was created by Alicia Shems and appears in Creative Beading vol. 5

What I did over MLK Weekend

I have photos of only one of my projects. For the Year of Jewelry Project, this week's theme was "eclipse." I attempted two wildly elaborate beadwork designs that did not pan out. (I photographed the attempts, but the photographs--trying to capture natural light from a fading afternoon sky--also did not turn out.) But I did finish a pair of earrings that I dubbed L'il Sputniks and posted to the site.

Although the glass pearls appear greenish on my monitor, they are a lovely pale blue. I called these "L'il Sputniks" because the jet bicone dangles reminded me of a rocket's fiery tail.

I also made a necklace and coordinating earrings from some lovely red and gold beads my daughter bought me for my birthday. I will snap a photo of them at my next photography session.

What I did over summer vacation

I was delaying posting because I was hoping to have pics of a finished pair of earrings to show off, but they are still UFOs at the moment. I signed up for the Year of Jewelry Project 2011 with the hopes that it would motivate me to finish at least one piece a week, and the weekly themes would provide inspiration. Since Monday I have made three separate attempts to create earrings that fit the Week 2 "eclipse" theme. I'm still hoping to make Saturday's deadline with attempt No. 3.

Meanwhile, the photo above is the bracelet I made at family camp back in August. This is the bracelet I believe I referred to in my very first post. I made sure to snap a picture of it last week when I was photographing jewelry for my ArtFire shop (although this will not be for sale). It is a simple tubular peyote-stitch bangle, but it makes me outrageously happy whenever I wear it.

Why? I love the seawater colors. I love the mix of textures: matte and colored glass-lined size 6's, with that sparkly jolt of chartreuse size 10 or 11s. (I'm not even sure what the real sizes of the beads are--I'm just guessing.) I love the way I was able to size it to fit me precisely--most bangles are too large for my small hands. But mostly, I love how I was able to figure out how to make it while sitting at the crafts table at a camp in the Adirondacks.

I had attempted tubular peyote a few times before but hadn't been pleased with how loose my tension was. I didn't have an instruction manual or anything. I just grabbed some beads from jars in the supply closet and started playing. It felt like the beginning of Something.

Confucius meets King James

Last week I had lunch at a Chinese restaurant. I snapped my fortune with my iPhone. In case you can't read all of it, it says, "The joyfulness of a man prolongeth his days."

I am not a superstitious person, but I'm betting that I'm like most people in that I always pay at least a microsecond of attention to a fortune-cookie fortune--whether or not it's trying to tell me something, or whether I believe the sentiment expressed. (The only fortune I ever saved long-term was one I got right before leaving for Africa for the Peace Corps. It read, "You are about to go on a long journey.")

I decided, after that microsecond, OK, this is something I believe. But what I gave much more thought to was the "prolongeth." Why the heck is a Chinese fortune trying to sound like the King James edition? When I got back home, I Googled the phrase. It does not appear to be a Bible verse, although I got bogged down trying to determine how an ancient text called "Eccesiasticus" is different from the Biblical book of Ecclesiastes. Several Internet sources cited verse numbers for the phrase, but when I fact-checked using online Bible sources, none proved correct. After a half-hour I decided I didn't care enough about the source to keep researching.

But I am proud of the fact that I thought to snap the photo. When I came upon the "prolongeth," I thought: I'm gonna blog about this.

Hello, Blogosphere; Goodbye, 2010

I have been thinking seriously of starting a blog for six months, ever since I got seriously into beading over the past year or so. I envisioned my first post as "What I did over summer vacation,"accompanied by a photo of a peyote stitch beadwork bracelet I made while at family camp in the Adirondacks. I still don't have a photo of the bracelet, so that post will have to wait.

The fall passed in a blur of vague ambitions as I continued to weave more beads into jewelry and thought about trying to sell the pieces but made no concrete plans. In mid-December, my office had an arts and crafts show, where some people displayed handiwork (knitting, photography) and others sold items. I made a number of sales--my first experience at selling my jewelry--and was ecstatic. On that rush of artistic validation, I started making ambitious plans for my week off between Christmas and New Year's. Launch an ArtFire store. Start that blog. Take some of my finished jewelry pieces to a local arts cooperative to see if they would be interested in selling them. Oh, and the biggie: Clean up my home office so that it can operate as a beading studio.

Any one of these projects would have been ambitious on its own, especially since all were competing with the vet appointments and other errands I'd also planned for this week off. Thus, it's not surprising that all are in a state of half-doneness. But I was determined to get the blog up and running before the calendar turned to 2011 so that this would not wind up looking like a New Year's resolution. I set up the Blogger account yesterday and could have posted something then, but New Year's Eve seemed appropriately celebratory. The blog design is just a barren template at this point, void of photos, gadgets, widgets, buttons and other gewgaws, but those will come in time.

So with less than 12 hours left in 2010, I get to check one item off my to-do list, as I hit the "publish" button and launch Torque Story--for now,  my own private blog party.