on my mind

wham on my mind, so beautiful and its just beads

    I have a really annoying component to my personality that comes out when I am trying to make a good impression on a group of people. Today it came out in Bead Journal Project when I posted a lovely picture of beads. Just beads in a pile and it had a raw natural beaty that went WHAM on my mind. So I instantly posted it to Bead Journal Project and then thought. "That wasn't right. I probably should have posted it to my blog."  Sure enough, I got the reprimand I expected and a suggestion to start a photo journal. Well I tried and promptly posted three pictures I had already posted before, so instead of making something private, I flooded the feed.
   Save me from myself. I have already alienated three groups of people. Don't let me alienate more.I'm so delighted with these people because personalities are second to the work done. Not that work wasn't important with all those groups, because they all had some purpose. Perhaps it's that this time around I am doing the work, for love of it and I am interested in other people's work and in their techniques too.
    There's good news too. Lori Anderson has announced the first round of partners, it was the seed beaders and I didn't get chosen in that group. That means I'm in the regular group, which is that much more challenging for me.  Lucky I got some new clasps and pendants. I'm going to need them.

Accomplishments

Over the course of two weeks I have made a half dozen bracelets on patterns from Kate McKinnons "Geomatric Beadwork" These are amazing bracelets, truly great bracelets, each one different and unique and I can hardly believe it but I;m getting better. What seemed daunting at first is now doable. I proceeded from the  Tri-ring to various geometric bangles to a tiny-horn band and now I'm ready to try a horned melon. A week ago I couldn't even understand the structure of a horned melon!
    Kate has done a really good job of leading me along the beading path with steps that are ambitious and rewarding and I end up with bracelets so dazzling I can hardly believe I am making them. I did some changing of the instructions to make it easier for me to learn, for example I used size 10 instead of size 11 beads so I could follow and understand the structure, but it doesn't matter, because each size bead produces a stunning bracelet. Now I have done the culmination of this round of learning to bead. I produced a bracelet with no mistakes!

nothings wrong with my bracelets

its my picture taking thats bad!

oh happy day

     Finally. I have accomplished one of the goals I set myself when I started teaching myself beading. I have made a geometric  bangle after the style of Geometric Beadwork. Its not perfect, its got mistakes, inside and out, but it is finished and it looks surprisingly good and it cand be worn!
    Technical details; for my first piece I used size 8 beads in translucent white; black, and turquoise with red triangle beads for the increases. If it had a name it would be;   Angels and Devils both have wings.
   I'm not the only person who names my beadwork.  So may pieces in the  Bead Journal Project have names. Occasionally the piece speaks its' name.  Other times, ass I bead the name comes, word by word, as the piece grows, bead by bead.
 Other people name their beadwork and sometimes the name is more elaborate, and even better than the work itself. A lot of work goes into a piece of  beadwork and it becomes very personal. As I did this piece , I would think of a woman I know and her trouble with men: she is abused very badly by them, yet still she seeks their comfort, and support, false promises in her case) She is afraid to be alone and be strong just for herself.I thought about how I was different from her and then wondered if I really was so different.

sign of chaos

the sign of chaos from wikipedia

    The bead -doodle is becoming more a mental object than a physical object. My skill does not equal my desire to create. The simple childlike sun has morphed into the signpost to everywhere. I remember how  the sign of chaos is portrayed as a circle with eight arrows coming out signifying chaos' infinate  creative possibilities. I  think if I am very careful and use the sun in the bead doodle as a guide I can make a beady chaos sign. Will that be my project for February. There is a lot of room for this to morph. Thursday I work on my chaos sign. I spend a lot of time measuring and counting only to realize with a three bead start a simple count of three will produce  eight rays.

not quite a chaos sign

Above is my first attempt at a chaos sign.My bead-doodle has lovely yellow rays but I wasn't making it for rays. The red circle didn't come out even as well as the bead-doodle did.

the road sign to everywhere

the fox spirit

    I'm trying to make a triangle dimensional. I'm also working with delicas; small precise beads that are made by Miyuke of Japan. I bought out quantities of them on Ebay and then, as with the corned beef in my last post, I was too scared to use them. They are so small. I am right on the edge of my range of sight. Thank Goodness for reading glasses. Now I have to learn to use them if I want to build the kind precise pieces I see in the book( Geometric Beadwork by Kate McKinnon). There are so many illustrations of the finished work produced by all the different people from all over the world. These delicas seem to be one of the keys to producing this kind of work. They fit together so precisely.
    Now I need to try making a triangle with a 6 bead start but instead I am trying to enlarge my triangle into a Puff.
    Last night I had an important dream. I dreamed I was at a convention and I took a beading workshop. The workshop was taught by a woman, an experienced beader who was referred to by her last name. She say us down and handed out little pictures of a profiled face, as in a cameo. We were to copy this face onto a paper and use it as a base for our bead embroidery. I coped the face and started adding all these swirls and scrolls beneath it. When she asked me what I was thinking of as I drew, I replied Knossos.  This surprised me. I was intending to use red for my color but she said Knossos reminded her of sea blue and I should cut the design into strips and use it for a necklace.. I had no beads with me, so I hitched a ride to the local beadshop, where I searched for blue beads but could find very little in that color. I think this is a significant dream. I remember it so clearly, but the meaning is not obvious yet. I am getting advice from someone, gratis. Do I make the necklace? That is so obvious. Do I search for better beads? Yesterday I also googled a website that had marked down Miyuki and delicas at amazing prices. Its not an obvious site and I came across it by googling Fox Spirit, because I am trying to make a fox spirit bracelet. Did the fox spirit lead me to this remarkable site?
    Yesterday I went to Jewelry class and with the help of my teacher April, I turned the fox triangles into a lovely necklace.

cooking away

I'm so happy. When I pre-ordered my copies of Geometric Beadwork by Kate McKinnon I got access to a digital copy. Guess what  I have to do now. Make more geometric shapes for practice. So all my hard work with Diane FitzGerald's book is paying off and I am happily making more triangles. I'm also working on a little piece of beadwork using techniques from the book that I've picked up so faar without reading the book, just an experiment to see what turns out. Tommorrow is the big blog hop sign up and I think I've narrowed down my focal piece to one of two peices of work on /ebay, both unique, instead of something from Etsy. I saw many good things on Etsy but these two pendants appealled to me first and last. For a clasp I will probably use a sterling silver button I found at Artbeads. I've been looking at clasps on Etsy and while there were a lot of re-purposed ones I'm not sure how well they would work on a new necklace.
    My blog just disapeared in the midst of frenzied typing. I doubt I can summon back the enthusiasm I had  for the old Universal grinder we found in the pantry. But what a lovely machine. Unfortunately it's missing crucial parts. I'm not sure if we should buy a new(vintage ha!) one or if we will ever make

universal grinder

antique chopper with bowl

road sign to everywhere

enough corned -beef hash to justify the new one. I also have an old two bladed chopper my mother-in -law gave me. She had me make the gefilte fish from scratch so I could qualify as a proper Jewish daughter-in-law, even though I'm not Jewish. My son ended up grating the corned beef which did produce a diner quality hash.
     Lately I've been thinking more about food and cooking it. For a long time I did'nt want to cook at all. Occasionally the passion to cook something will overwhelm me and I will find myself making some elaborate concoction. Right now I'm reading about Rome. The main character is always cooking spaghetti carbonara. I can make a mean spaghetti carbonara.(Its much easier than it looks.)

the finished corn beef hash

the bead doodle

  

                       Today I tried to do so many things and ended up making a bead doodle.

 

I've been doing the many two dimensional shapes from Diane Fitzgeralds book and in the process
I've gotten much better at peyote stitch. I keep getting better and yet I feel like I'm getting nowhere. This bead doodle added to my fustration.  Children start by drawing very simple things like trees and the sun so I decided to make a bead sun in winter colors, like white and the light yellows, like the weak sunlight that the sun produces in the winter. I would make a round yellow sun and surround it with simple rays made from a triangle and a strip of peyote

Diane Fitzgerald's SHAPED BEADWORK

    I also tried to join the  2014 BEAD JOURNAL PROJECT.  Haven't heard back from them yet. It might be too late to join.
What is this project?
(This "Bead Journal Project" group is for anyone who makes a commitment to create one piece per month for a year.

Each piece must have at least a few beads. Each piece should be a "visual journal" of something important to you during the month. It helps to keep the size of your pieces consistent throughout the year.

Please post pictures of your finished pieces, links to your own blog, and (if you wish) pictures of your pieces as they are in progress.)
 
    Since January is over I tried to do a quick seed bead project.
. And so I laboured all day to produce a bead doodle.
     Another day full of snow. Unfortunately it's filmed with exhaustion. I am falling asleep at the strangest times, like right after I get up in the morning and after I drink a hot coffee at the Biscuit. I fall asleep on the bus, I even fall asleep standing up and these things are starting to worry me enough to consider getting a sleep study done .
    Let me say bit about the! Biscuit!, just the best coffeeshop ever, with super-smooth coffee and enormous biscotti and muffins and scones and baked goods unique to the Biscuit,as well as salads and sndwiches , friendly servers who know right away what you want (is it telepathy?) and an eclectic mix of chairs and tables to sit on, free wi-fi of course, at Savory_square and inside it's always bakery warm and smells like sugar and cinnamon.
    It's snowing here in Cambridge, first with a

the bead doodle goes forward

light powdery snow that didn't hinder our morning jaunt but by an afternoon excursion to the supermarket in Mark's Suburu, we were able to appreciated  the four wheeled drive as he skidded around corners without stopping. Mark is a big dude and he needed a poncho so he could go shoveling driveways in the sleet and snow. In the meantime I got my driveway shoveled by the many trips of the Suburu which climbed up the snowbanks and evened the snow all out.

So very very bad and so very good

rectangle

diamond bead

pile of components waiting to become bracelet

I'm sitting here, beading, of course and I'm not happy with the beads I'm using. They are cheap beads
and they are different sizes and very uneven. I bought these beads because I read that Czeck were the best beads. I think there might be different grades of check beads. The colors are fine. Something must account for the unevenness of my beads, some mysterious factor I will discover in time. In the meantime I think the best piece of advice I can give someone who has just started beading;  use Toho beads,  they are the best.
I've been making the two dimensional shapes in orange and blue so I can give some jewelry to a freind. She wanted the orange and blue combination so I've been working with it. I discovered I really don't like the color orange with the blue.
Later; What an amazing day it's turned out to be. I was sitting and beading, feeling disgruntled about my not so perfect beads.I checked some other hanks of check beads and they seem more regular, maybe I just got a bad package of beads. BAD Beads!, being unsatisfied and I thought, if I put a bead here and here and bead off these beads I  could make three dimensional; peyote, kind of like three dimensional right angle weave. I tried it.... and it worked. Glorious. The picture is below. Its hard to see but the little piece has wings

my firset three dimensional peyote bit

8th BEAD SOUP BLOG PARTY

this is it !! The BeadSoup Blog Hop Party this blog was made specially so I could join it.Bead JBead Journal Project 2014 Participantournal Project 2014 Participant www.BeadSoupBlogParty.com