When you can't bead...bean!

My hands continue to give me fits and I've not been beading as much as I'd like so, rather than blog about what I'm not doing, I've been treading water--literally--I spend the time I might otherwise be blogging in the deep end of the pool. I attribute the abatement of joint aches and pains to the treading time, although it's probably aggravated the cracking, pealing fingers thing...I'd likely be symptom free by now if I didn't forget to apply my plethora of magic potions when my digits don't hurt

Not to say that I've been totally beadfree for these last 10 weeks. I've managed to finish a few pieces, but not with my usual finger-flying abandon (I often have to resort to pliers to pull my needle through even mildly tight spots).

This week I discovered a painless "beading" technique. Dave has been harvesting basket after basket of green beans and I've been looking for different ways to preserve them. I googled upon an old-fashioned dehydrating method called "leather britches" and, with a tapestry needle and some crochet cotton, strung up a "beta" sample and hung it from the beam in our living room...if they don't mold from the humidity, they'll make a nice soup or stew in November.

The Heart of the Matter

Hearts were wild at both my bead guild and polymer clay guild meetings within the last month. Though I'm not at all partial to the heart motif and rarely include hearts in my work, I thoroughly enjoyed both meetings. The company of fellow bead and clay enthusiasts is more crucial to me then the specific project or program. I never leave a meeting uninspired.

Both groups welcome men but have large majorities of women. We span generations and have a variety of backgrounds. We are straight & gay, "red" & "blue", paper & plastic...but our obsession with beads and/or polymer clay surmounts our socio-economic dissimilarity in spite of the media desire to break us down into ever more specific demographics.

'Nuff said.

"New Shimmer is both a floor wax and a dessert topping!"

It's been too long since my last entry. These two pins took about twice as long as they should have because my hands were giving me fits...once I finished the purple one (the focal embellishments are a polymer clay experiment, a beach pebble and and abalone bead---the pink one sports a beach pebble, lake-smoothed pottery shard and vintage button) I decided to forego beads until my hands healed. It didn't quite work out that way...I just couldn't resist participating in the crystal heart project at bead guild on April 27th and this weekend I had to remake a beaded ring to take "step out" photos for a class I'm scheduled to teach.



Making the ring was fairly painless, so I was inspired to make a seed bead entry for the Beading Daily, Bead Star competition. That took most of Sunday. Funny, the object of the contest is simple straightforward stringing, but I found it more difficult to string seed beads then any off-loom needlework. I'm happy with the result and will post a picture later this week.


My hands are still peeling, but the warmer weather and the Badger balm I found at the local garden store seem to be helping. And, as luck would have it, the Badger balm conditions my thread while it soothes my skin.

Now and again my fingers still crack and bleed a bit, but my mood is a lot sunnier now that I've decided to bead through the pain.

From the Shores of Gitche Gumee's Little Sister

I've been working on this bead embroidered pin. It's a commissioned piece; a gift for a local civic event. I was told that the giftee loves Lake Ontario as much as I do, so the broach includes a pebble, shell shard and piece of beach glass from the stash of stuff I've been combing from her shores since 1969.

Although intrigued by the work of Sherri Serafini and Robin Atkins, I consciously avoided bead embroidery for the longest time. Which seems particularly silly because hand-embroidery was one of my earliest endeavors...in the 1960s I embroidered amazing (at least that's how I remember them) copies of Cat Stevens album covers on patches for my brother's jeans. His wonderful wife says she saved those patches somewhere, if they ever turn up I'll post pictures.

This past summer the Upstate New York Glass Bead and Jewelry Guild took on a bead quilt project and I--such a huge fan of seed beads--couldn't very well refuse to participate. My worse fears were realized...I love the process and am going now to get back to another pin in progress.

We Interrupt Our Regular Schedule

For the first time in many months, I beaded something just for the fun of it...not for a pending class or a commission or to fullfill a request of any kind, but simply because some beads spoke to me. I can't remember when I bought the garish faceted beads--just that they were a ridiculously inexpensive impulsive addition to a bead-feeding frenzy. They made a lot of noise at the time, but have barely whispered since I got them home. I stumbled across them this past weekend when I was under the influence a commercial for The Other Boleyn Girl and this vaguely (Pre)Elizabethan necklace was the result.

The pendant is another take on the Ukrainian Gerdany I've been so crazy about since Irene shared the technique at last October's "Beads On Sunday". It seemed like the pendant designed itself, then demanded a simple necklace that could be worn long or short (because I saw somewhere that long necklaces with bold pendants are all the rage this season, but just about everyone I know prefers a shorter necklace that won't get caught in a desk or kitchen drawer). The final product is over 40" long which gave me plenty of practice incorporating straight-line beading into an overall right-angle weave. I may even remember what I did the next time.

I'm pleased with the piece and refreshed and ready to get back to a project already in progress.

Catching Some Waves

Oddly enough, I've been busily beading since last I blogged. First it was a slew of variations on netting for a class at Studio 34 -- We did the Wavy Bracelet (the blue one) in the class and I created the other pieces as examples of what could be done with some tweaking of the technique. I hadn't worked in netting for a while and had forgotten what a wonderful, versatile stitch it is.

Melinda, one of my favorite beadfellows, was playing with the peachy piece and came up with the idea of a butterfly broach...I think I'll follow her vision and see what metamorphs. Watch this space...a butterfly may emerge by spring.

I was sent home from Studio 34 with a batch of light pink pearls that I've been stringing into necklace and earring sets for the Fairy Godmother project. There's nothing like the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from doing what you love for a good cause.

Yet Bruce Willis Vanquished the Bad Guys with Feet Full of Glass

I'm not getting anything accomplished. I've managed to avoid my usual bleeding chapped lips and full-body dried skin this winter, instead I've been plagued with tiny cuts at the tips of most of my fingers. Ray says the Misty-Cat has been nibbling on them while I sleep, but I blame the icy keyboard in my day job cubicle.

Wherever the cuts are coming from, they are just painful enough to take the joy from beadwork, crochet, typing, and holding paws with Rufus.

Sigh.

The Saturn gets over thirty MPG

Ray and I commute 65 miles (each way) 4 days a week.

He drives.

I listen to NPR, marvel at amazing sunrises (and look forward to the day when I never have to see another one), nap, watch the seasons change, make phonecalls, or bead. For a time I balanced a lap desk between my knees and the lip of the glovebox and did a lot of off-loom work. I was fairly adept, but--though I was careful to pour out only a few beads at a time--potholes and squirrels often instigated bead emergencies and the balancing act caused some nasty leg cramps.

Two years ago I went to Bead & Button and took a bead crochet class from Linda Lehman...and discovered the perfect portable beading technique.

In the comfort of my living room, I prestring a few hundred beads and work a half inch or so of the pattern then clip a stitch holder to the loop. I tuck the whole "ball 'o beads", crochet hook (don't forget the crochet hook), and a seam ripper (comes in handy, trust me) into a small plastic freezer bag and toss it in my purse.

Since late October, most of our commute has been downright dark...but the days are getting longer and now that I've started this blog to chart my creative progress I thought it time to stop staring out the car window and get back to beading.

This is what I accomplished today.

Grumbly Beads??

Early this month, during his concert in Troy, NY; John Prine told a story about listening to his transistor radio (remember transistor radios? They were the size of a standard iPod but three times as thick and, thanks to the required 9-volt battery, ten times as heavy). He spoke of a Fats Domino song with a lyric he heard as "grumbly beads" until he read the sheet music and discovered that the actual words were "promise me". Prine went on to tell of a fan miss-hearing the "half an inch of water" lyric from his That's the Way That the World Goes 'Round as "a happy enchilada"...but that's off the subject.

When I heard the words Grumbly Beads all I could see were my countless tubes, boxes, bags and strings of beads urging me to get to it and make some of the projects that swirl in my head...this reminded me that I had resolved to start a beading blog in 2008 because (and I do realize this is a ridiculous leap of logic) a blog would force me to be more productive.

We'll see how it goes. So far, all it's done is given me yet another project idea--polymer clay grumbly beads.

Here are some preliminary sketches.