Beads, or Rocks? Or Beads Rock!

My grandmother's second husband was an unassuming man named Sidney, from England. He met my grandmother when they both worked for "The Railroad" as she always put it, and you bet you could hear the capital letters. 

Anyway, Sidney lived in America for many years, and then at one point he and my grandmother decided that it was time for a visit to his former home, in a small country village. This was sometime in the late 1950s or early 60s, as they traveled on the Queen Elizabeth II, in style.

My grandmother told me that as he walked down the main street for the first time in 35 years, an old codger taking his cane for a walk looked up at her husband (a fairly tall man) and said, in a quavery voice, "Is that you, Sidney? Have you been away?"

In somewhat the same fashion, I've Been Away from my blog. Life piled up and I kept meaning to Get To It, yet never did. So, in an abrupt jump-cut familiar to movie-goers where you don't have to watch all the boring stuff between the exciting parts, I'm back! 

I'm on vacation, for the first time in nearly two years, visiting my beloved Mendocino again. Usually I take the opportunity of a trip like this to hit every bead store I can. This trip, not so much. I have a huge stash at home. Acquiring simply to acquire has lost it's luster, at least for the moment. I've gone into bead stores, and come out with next to nothing.   Well, I did buy a mini-kumihimo disk, which is great treat. I love it as it's easier and more efficient to use compared to the big disks.

But no real bead acquisitions. Instead, I've been visiting rock shops. Searching for unique cabochons or specimens I can incorporate in my work. Next week I'll probably drive three hours north (one way) to the biggest, best rock shop I know, south of Eureka. Oh, and I'll get to see redwoods on the way, so it's all good. 

Today is my husband's birthday. Last night we had a spectacular thunderstorm. Big booms of thunder that echoed off the cliffs in ways I hadn't heard before. Southern California is truly deficient on thunderstorms, so a good one is a treat. Flashes up in the hills, and lots of winds. So the surf we're seeing this morning in the bright sun is wonderful. Some of the larger splashes look like they're nearly as high as the 90 ft cliffs.

Earlier I looked up from my beading, with the view above, and found the window filled with pelicans drifting along the cliff thermals. About 30 of them, lying relaxed on the lift beneath their wings, cruising for seafood.

Sometimes, life is really really good. It's important to acknowledge and grasp those moments, and store them in vivid memory. 

The Value of Perseverence, or Persistence, or...

One of those "per" words.

I just startled my husband out of his chair by bellowing "I AM TRIUMPHANT!!!" after many hours of silent work at my beading.

Yesterday and today, perhaps 5 hours or more in various sessions, I've been determined that this time, tubular bead crochet would not defeat me yet again. Earlier I spoke with my dad on the phone, and at that time, I told him, "It's whipping my ass."  I've tried this, reading along with various internet tutorials, watching different YouTube videos of people making it look ridiculously easy, at least 4 times before this weekend. I failed miserably each time, giving up, putting it aside.

So what did I learn today?  Besides that I'm irretrievably stubborn?

I learned that the right size crochet hook makes it possible, instead of impossible. Too big and it's clumsy, difficult to maneuver, and you can't get the darn thing through the loops. Too small and the thread slides off wayyy too easily and you're hunting for the lost, critical loop, which happens far too often even under the best of circumstances.  Just right, and working is slick and much easier.

This time I used size 3/o heavy metal seed beads. They're nearly spherical, and slippery, and I'm not sure yet if those qualities are good or bad. I used Wildfire 6lb thread, and a 1.25mm crochet hook. Perhaps I should have used S-lon thread or something heavier, but I wanted to learn how to work the smaller thread so I can use smaller beads, eventually.

I also learned that those first two rounds are real #*(&@# buggers. Eventually I resorted to using seven different colored beads for the first round, so I could clearly delineate where round one ended and round two began. I pulled out, and re-started, the first and second rows, at least 20 times. Eventually the casting on, the connection of the seventh bead to the first, and the transition into the second row became easier.

Half the times I restarted was because my hook slipped out of the working loop and I had to chase it all the way back to the beginning. After getting the right-size hook, it was easier to capture that loop before it unravelled all the way, even if I lost a bead or two to a slip.  That was something else I learned, locating the working loop in the mass of thread inside the rope as it grew.

Early on I realized that trying to transition from round two to round three was not going to happen if the piece was flopping about loose. It was totally impossible for me to determine which bead was next when none of them lined up properly.  So I learned that after connecting the first round into a circle, the best thing to do was to shove a pencil up the middle and work around it. It held the orientation of the beads for me, and let me clearly identify The Next Bead. It still took me about 15 more tries to get past round 4.  I missed a bead here or there, noticed the gap several rows later, and had to unravel and work back over it.

I learned that Tension Matters in crochet. I knew this from previous yarn crochet experience. One time I crocheted a popcorn-stitch scarf, which due to tension problems and persistently missing stitches, had 21 popcorn bumps at one end, and 10 at the other, and yet maintained the same width the whole way. Very strange-looking item, though it was functional and warm. Just strange. Tension is even more important with beads. Once again, you strive for Just Right.

And, like many other techniques, I learned that once you're well into the piece, and you're doing it correctly, the Next Bead becomes obvious, the thread and the working bead fall into place, and once integrated, they slide into the correct orientation smoothly, verifying that you got it right.

So finally, after all those starts, mis-starts, restarts, and retreats, I have a properly built crocheted silver tube about 20 rounds long, about 2.5 inches.  It has seven gold beads on the starting end, which I suppose I could remove, if I weren't afraid to touch it.  It only took me about 12 hours in all (counting all the previous, unsuccessful learning sessions). It has been the most difficult technique I've ever tried to master. I can't wait until I try to add pattern to this whole deal. That ought to be fun.

Thus, the bellow. I'm really glad I kept trying. It didn't, in the end, whip my ass.  Next, I learn to use my new microwave kiln. A bit scattered? Moi?

Japanese Beading Thread, Who Knew?

Click to see item for sale

Okay, why didn't I know about this before? I was looking for a small item to fill out an Amazon gift certificate, and thought, why not?

I got it and tried it out for the first time, and holy cow! No wonder Japanese beaders can make such amazing pieces, if they use this thread. It's downright obedient! Previously the only thing I've tried when I needed lighter thread than Wildfire or Fireline was Nymo. As anyone who has used it knows, Nymo frays, twists, knots, tangles and splits all over the place.

With the KO, I found I was beading much faster since I wasn't spending any time fighting the freakin' thread! I was able to use longer working lengths, since it doesn't fray. Between the nature of the thread and Thread Heaven, it also didn't knot or misbehave in other ways. Glorious!  I have to be careful because it maintains a much tighter tension than Nymo will, I can see it becoming too tight with a bit of encouragement.

I'm going to have to get many more colors of this stuff. I encourage anyone who hasn't tried it to check it out!! I wanted to share because I've spent way too long struggling with Nymo, and hope I can help someone else out.

Why I Haven't Posted Recently, or Now is the Winter of Our Discontent

Creativity is a harsh mistress, at times. Sometimes it all flows smoothly, sometimes work is barely finished before a new idea springs forth. Indeed, often there is a jostling lineup of new "ooooh, I could do this with that" in my head and ideas fall by the wayside as they're superseded by more better bigger WOW stuff pushing up inside.

Then, there are fallow periods. Periods when not only do I not have ideas, I don't particularly fret about not having them. I used to worry about these times, thinking I'd lost my creative impulse, and that I'd never have another good idea again, but I've learned that I need a resting phase every once in awhile. Then when the urges get working, I'm more energized than if I'd tried to force something to come.

But I've rarely experienced what I'm going through now. A long stretch of really really BAD ideas. They all seem great when I start, of course. "Hey, that's neat, let's do that!" Then, either after a few stitches, or more regrettably, a good way toward a finished piece, I realize it's all gone pear-shaped. (A lovely Britishism, isn't it?)

And then I realize that not only does this thing not look good, it's not ever going to look good, no matter what I do to it. The latest lipstick-on-a-pig effort was some barrel-shaped hematite beads I tried to kumihimo, thinking "what if I used larger beads than normal", interspersed with some leopard jasper rounds in a spiral pattern. I mean, it seemed like a good idea at the time. But what I ended up with is a huge grey-black lump of magnetized hematite, the general shape and size of a year-old boa constrictor, only not so attractive.

It seems like everything I start lately goes this way. I've only finished one item, a fast and easy bracelet I've listed on Etsy, but as of now, it only has two views. Two! Sigh.  And I don't even like that one so much.

I had another project underway, a very long lariat with mixed green beads intended as the base for a wonderful tagua nut iguana bead I bought several years ago. Oddly, that one has evolved away from what I originally thought I might do, to the point where I don't even think the main focal will be used on it!  Usually when I work, I go with serendipitous urges to add or modify as I work, but lately all these urges seem to go astray and make things much worse instead of better.

And so everything seems to go these days. Bad ideas mutate into even worse ones. Good ideas stagnate or mutate out of recognition. I'll work through this, I know I will. I just hope it's soon. I'm getting tired of my choices being bad ones.

I am turning out a decent ornament cover for a gift, But even that took three failed tries to get it moderately right.  Maybe it's just winter, for such values of winter as we have here in Southern California.  I need some inspiration. Maybe a picture of a sea slug will cheer us all.

BeadEnCounter Gets Ink!

We've hit the bigtime, relatively speaking. An article about the software (and me!) appears in the Winter edition of Stringing Magazine.

Sales have picked up in the last few days, and I've been wondering why. I bet this is the reason. It's so great that the email interview I gave turned out so well. I have to give the editorial staff much credit for the quality of the article. The quotes were edited really well, very true to my interview answers, and the graphic staff made my amateur pictures look professional!

I'm very very very happy about this! 

Posting to Blogger is easy!

Blogger is more flexible in email submissions than Facebook, in that
you have both post title and text you can edit before you send. The
email is easy to edit, and you can add as much text as you'd like.

Fatuous Twits and the Internet

I've been hitting the "Next Blog" button on Blogger here, just for the yucks. That button sends you to a supposedly "similar" themed blog from the one you start on. If you click it repeatedly, the theme wanders and warps depending on the content of each blog you land on.  Once you get too far afield you have to start over from your original source or a new one.  Sometimes you'll end up on a blog that isn't public (really? the programmers couldn't prevent that?) and you have to start over anyway.

When I start from another bead artist's blog, I get to interesting art sites, generally. The path, however degenerates eventually. If you hit a blog in Swedish, you're going Swedish all the way from then on.

If you wander into music blogs or Urban Vegan Warrior blogs, you'll have to decide if that's where you really want to spend your online life.

What really frosts my flakes, though, is that when I start from this blog, I end up landing on an endless series of, well. Fatuous twit blogs.

I'm sure you've seen them. The profile starts something like "I'm X, and I'm so blessed to be married to my best friend, Y, and we have (fill in the blank) amazing wonderful children, and this is the story of our lives together...."

Then we have endless blather regarding nothing much at all, or really fake crap about how wonderful little Z is this week. I've had a kid too, dear. I know that the corner of the living room is piled hip deep in Tyco and knee-deep in LEGOs, there are Cheerios stuck to the bottom of your sock, and you haven't showered in 2 days. Like on TV, I guess on the internet everyone's house is clean and tidy, (and decorated!), and they've always got something tasty in the crockpot and fresh flowers on the table. Yeah, right.  Kids are wonderful perhaps 10% of the time. The rest of the time they're hard work, emotional turmoil, and an inconceivable expense.

Watch America's Funniest Home Videos sometime. Check out the background of almost any shot. That's how people really live!

Back to the Fatuous Twits, though. They're all so damn serious about telling the universe how great everything is....with absolutely no self-awareness at all that their blog is identical in nearly every detail with literally millions of others. (please note, appropriate use of the word "literally")  Right down to the "married to my best friend" crap. If you're married to someone who isn't your best friend, you've chosen unwisely, or you're on the way out. No sense of the ridiculous, these people, nor a sense of proportion. 

Now, I will admit to an occasional fatuous blather myself, but at least I try to spice it up with humor, self-deprecation, and a bit of original observation. I am not convinced the Universe cares the least about my concerns, nor do I need it to. I understand that if I'm not talking about cool stuff, readers will stop showing up. 

Perhaps what I ought to do is complain to Blogger. Yeah, that'll get some action! "Yo, Blogger! Connect my blog to "Next Blogs" that are about art, not some ditsy suburban mom who posted seven times when her kid was still taking naps and then quit 3 years ago when life got busy."  They really need a filter on that random jump thing not to take you to blogs where the last post has been ripening since 2009. 

Monday morning, the week before Thanksgiving. I need to go do some beading. Unreasonably cranky, I am. Go, bead! Commit some art!  You know who I'm talking to!