The Bead Spot

On Friday, as I was getting out of my car when I got home, I spied a string of herringbone beading on the ground in the driveway. I have a vague memory of losing it months ago as I was getting my daughter out of the car one night when I got home from work. Her car seat or her shoe or something had snagged on it, and it pulled completely out of my craft bag. It was dark, so I left it. By now, I figured some gust of wind must've carried it away, but nope. A good chunk of the string had been mashed down into the mud between the seams in the concrete. I've just tossed the whole thing into the trash. At the very least, it's been rained and snowed on while it languished in the drive way, so I figure it's probably not wise to wear it. However, finding it did give me a rather big boost back into beading mode. I have some ideas for making beaded figures , but that's something I've never attempted before. I am in the mood to try something new.

When I first became a beader, all of my supplies fit in a shoe box. Since then, it's grown to fill 10 drawers of varying sizes. My husband and I have been considering the space available within our tiny home lately as our daughter grows. He's been selling off some of his collection of comic books, and following his example, I've been thinking lately about selling some of my extra beads, too. Now that I've spent a little time working on my Etsy shop, I've been thinking some about listing some of the extra beads, findings and other stuff there, but I'm just not sure how I'd like to package them for sale. By color? By style? It would be nice to be able to compact my beading supplies into fewer drawers; I'm just not sure if I can part with enough to make a difference.

As I mentioned in Friday's post , quite a few ideas for future projects have come to me lately. I think it's because I've been working on things a lot more often lately. It's almost like a dam breaks sometimes. The hard thing now is figuring out what I work on next. Because I was in the middle of my green bracelet  when I started thinking of other projects, it's been hard to stay on course. I've started a second green bracelet already to try out one of the ideas I have, and I've been fighting the urge to start on a black one to see if my idea will work. I know I better enjoy the flood of ideas while it lasts. All too quickly, it passes and I'm left scrounging for ideas again.

My mother-in-law got me an Amazon gift card for my birthday, and I had decided to use it to get a subscription to Bead & Button for my Kindle. My Kindle has a black-and-white screen, so I wasn't too sure how the images would reproduce. Then I noticed that Amazon lets customers try out magazine subscription for two weeks, so I figured I had nothing to lose. However, I won't even be able to try it because this particular magazine subscription won't work with my Kindle. Bummer. It will work only with a Kindle Fire. I got the Kindle as a gift from my husband last Christmas, and one of the first things I did was buy a digital bead book. It's called, "Simple Seed Bead Rings You Can Make" by Janis Websdale. The book itself was fine. The pictures were pretty sharp considering they weren't in color, which is probably how they were intended to be viewed. But, it was pretty basic stuff. I have been making seed bead rings like the ones featured for about a decad...

I have a lot of beads in primary and secondary colors, but very few in shades such as pink and neon green, such as these (pink) and these  (green). I think shades such as these would appeal to children more so than the primary and secondary hues I have, and I'd really like to expand my variety of kids bracelet designs. Of course, this will be AFTER I complete the right-angle weave bracelet. (Side note: I worked on it again on my lunch break yesterday. I'm really enjoying using that time to do some beading. I love my little girl more than anything, but it's nice to have that time without having to worry about her knocking beads over. I don't know why it never occurred to me to do that before. The only bad thing: My lunch break is only an hour.)

One of my favorite bead books, The Art of Seed Beading , features a project that uses crochet and beading to create a necklace. I can crochet, and I can bead, but for some reason, this project intimidates me. Years ago, I bought the stuff to make the necklace, but I have yet to give it a whirl. I think it's because all of the beads have to be strung before any crocheting can begin. Plus, you have to make sure that the beads fall to the outside of your work. It's probably no where near as difficult as it sounds.

Ever try to do the brick stitch while you're wearing mittens? It doesn't work very well, but neither does trying to do beadwork when your fingers are stiff with cold. My fingers turn blue even in the warmest of Oklahoma winters, so this year has been extra tough. I figure I can't be the only person who has trouble when winter sets in, so I went to the Fire Mountain Gems Web site to see if there were some special gloves out there that are thin yet warm that I can use while beading. Sadly, I found none, but maybe someday ...

Ever accidentally dump one shade bead in with another that is only marginally different? I did. On size 11 Delicas, nonetheless. I don't know when or how, and I've been just working around it for a couple of years now, pulling out only the shade I want as I need it. However, I still wind up with the wrong shade in a beading project anyway. Why is it that I can see the difference best when fixing it requires undoing a lot of stitches? Well, a couple of months ago, I had my fill of trying to work around it, so I decided to try to sort them. After working on it for a couple of hours, both shades started to look the same. I don't know if I'm doing any good or not. Quite often, I will classify a bead as one color, then see it next to what I had thought was the same shade and realize I was wrong. But, when I move it to the other pile, it still doesn't look quite right. Perhaps I have three shades of red in that mess. I really should just forget about sorting them ...

Earlier this evening, I was sitting in my kitchen waiting on the turkey filets I had bought from Walmart to finish baking when I had an overwhelming urge to write something. So here I am, writing my first post in quite a few months. I had no idea it had been as long as it has since the last time I did this. Life, you know. Anyway, here is a quick update on what I've been working on. • First, there is this: This is the same gourd stitch bracelet I mentioned in previous posts, and yes, it's still a work in progress. I am only a handful of rows away from finishing it, but I noticed that it seems to bow a little across the top. I can't decide whether I want to pull another string through it to try to tighten it up that way or if I want to just pull out the stitches and begin again. Decisions, decisions. My husband says it's not noticeable. As a matter of fact, he says he can't see what I'm talking about. However, I think he is trying to spare me fro...