The Elegance of the Beadcrafts

Been awhile since I have updated. I am reading Elegance of the Hedgehog. It's both witty and philosophical. Slow-going though, which is fine by me, since reading is the perfect activity on my trips to class four nights a week. (I know I should be reading my textbooks. I will start with that in earnest once exams begin to approach...)

I feel very happy in general. Not every minute, and certainly not without having worked for that balance. I have been working out a bit, playing with cats, doing schoolwork, pursuing some job leads, working on crafts, reading, watching tv, went to a corn maze last week with the boyfriend and had a blast, and socializing with actual humans a teeny tiny bit. Overall, feel pretty optimistic.

Here are my finished bead projects. Got the patterns from the same book I've been working out of. The stitching for all three is called peyote stitch and is pretty quick to do once you get the first few rows set up.

Strawberries: really fun to make! Lizard: took longer, may become a coaster or a wall hanging.

Beadwork project

Piano keys bracelet in work. New beading technique for me!

I am making a piano key bracelet with black and white seed beads (the really tiny kind). I am doing it with square stitch, which is a new technique I mastered last night with directions from a book of beading patterns and techniques I bought on sale at the Border's going out of business sale. The pattern for the piano keys is also straight out of the book.

This technique is an alternative to weaving on a bead loom, but it is much slower. Instead of adding a row at a time like on a loom, I have to sew on each individual bead. Having more trouble with knots in the bead thread (when it twists up on itself and makes a "fake knot" that you can only undo by loosening the twisted up threads before proceeding. (Not fun to do over and over, but it's the tradeoff I get for using such long threads.) I tethered the end of the string to a pedometer so it would have some stability, particularly when I started the first few rows.

This project is going to take awhile, but it's pretty enjoyable to do! I'll update when I have it mostly or fully complete in a few days!