Egregious Use of "Quotes"

Saturday we went to the Pasadena Bead Show. This year I spent a lot less, and lot more selectively than I have on previous trips. Perhaps that's because my budget is limited. Perhaps it's because the one vendor I wanted to really visit, Out of Our Mines, wasn't attending the show this time.

Pity. I really wanted a shot at their wonderful cabochons. Although they have lots of items up on their website, there's just no substitute for fondling the stones in person.

Anyway, I had a good time, frugally speaking, and found some lovely old undyed coral branches, only $20 a strand!!  And also some wonderful raku porcelain beads and donuts by Amy Mealy of Xaz Beads.  These beads are gorgeous up close. The play of color is incredible, and the beads are light, since they're made of porcelain.  The price is also great.

I found some lovely coral rounds and turquoise teeny almost heishi strands for reasonable prices as well.  I picked up some ear wires, as I've been plunging into earrings lately. No silver, other than a pair of silver spiral earrings that I'll probably just keep for myself, since silver prices are going through the roof.

At a booth called Mineral Treasures, we found some Russian rockhounds who just love their rocks. They know every mineral intimately and are glad to share the details. In depth. They kindly dismantled a necklace when all I wanted to buy was the wire-wrapped dendritic quartz pendant. The rock is similar to the one pictured here.  They have kick-butt labradorite, too.  Great prices, as well.

And then there was the one, truly evil, item. Dichroic coated seed beads. Yipes! I won't say what I spent for them, but they come in tiny 1 gram vials just like crack cocaine. They're about as expensive, and just as addicting. I found the website for Dichro Beads, who makes them. Turns out the coating company she uses is right down the road in Orange, CA. Hmm. Wonder if I could get them to coat things for me? $8 per gram is steep. On the site, it says "use sparingly" but I guess that's just because using them in masses would break the bank, hey?  You need as little as 6 grams to spice up a necklace, they say...well, using my old-school math, that comes out to $48 just for accent beads. Yipes again!

Since dichroic material is so hard to photograph well, I suspect the sample pieces you see on the site are spectacular in person. The worked beaded beads I saw at Paula Radke's booth, where I purchased them, were quite lovely. I only bought two vials, and I'll report back on how using them turns out. A single gram has between 180 and 200 beads, so I will indeed have to use them sparingly.

What's this about quotes, you say? On our way home we saw this sign.  I sat there staring at it, still kind of stunned from the sensory overload of the bead show.  Then, slowly, something penetrated.  I scrambled for the camera before the red light changed.

"7"???  What did they mean, "7"?  Were they not open seven days a week? Did they think there were other days?  Did they want to emphasize the number 7 even more than just making it bigger and bolder than the rest of the text in the line? Did they not understand the use of quotes?

I'm still confused.  But I'm guessing so is the sign-writer.

More From Pasadena, Very Productive Weekend!

Several more vendors from the Pasadena Bead Show either caught my eye for future purchases, or had some really great stuff.

First was Out of Our Mines, which had really truly wonderful quality stones. They don't enhance, dye or heat-treat their stones, and have many unique cuts. Quite a selection and the prices are pretty good on the website. Unfortunately, like many other vendors we came across later in the show, we had no budget to buy anything by the time we came to their booth. See what comes of turning left instead of right?

Next was Kate's Treasure, a great collection of exotic beads. Many Tibetan silver/bone/gem combinations. We didn't get anything there, but had fun looking.

And last (for now) is Kochyan Valley, importers of very nice beads. They had a lot of Afghani lapis and other Afghani stones, such as a beautiful olive stone that turned out to be jade from the region. I purchased some lapis strands, both large (12mm) and very tiny heishi, at great prices. Wonderful quality stones, too. I may try out some kumihimo with thin wire to try to replicate a piece I saw at Santa Monica. I'm not too attracted by learning to do either wire crochet or Viking knit, but I love the look.

The weekend was very productive, after my search for findings. I got two necklaces finished, the second amber piece and the ammonite piece with bead embroidery. Both have clasps and are complete now.

Yesterday I was feeling a bit queasy for some reason, and I slept most of the morning. Feeling like I had to get something done, in the early evening I put together a whole necklace, from sea glass, quartz in several forms, African trade beads I found in Mendocino, and a gorgeous silver clasp from Clasp On, Clasp Off.

This one took about three hours, though I had collected and auditioned all the beads beforehand, and had done some tryouts on the order of the stringing. All that helped get it done faster.  Oh, and I tried my hand at wire-wrapping for the first time. I'm sure I did everything wrong, but the necklace itself looks really nice. I'm going to have to wear it a few times to test for wearability and comfort, because I don't want to sell anything that isn't comfortable and well-made.

And that brings me to the latest news. I have gotten my Etsy store registered! I haven't finalized the details of payment & such, nor have I actually listed anything. But the BeadEnCounter store is there! Yay!

A Few Nuggets from the Pasadena Bead Show

Yes I went. Yes, I tried to limit my spending. Yes, I failed. Though not miserably. Perhaps mildly crankily.

But I saw many many coooool things. Way cool. OooooOOoooh that's cool!  Nifty even.

Some I purchased. Some I merely yearned for. Others I marked for future session of bead-lust.  I think the part I liked best was talking to the folks. All were pleasant, many were complimentary of my amber necklace, which I was wearing (pictured in the previous post). It's always nice to have unsolicited comments. Everyone was willing to take time to socialize, imparting useful information, even if we weren't purchasing at the moment.

Most cool, I think was these clasps, designed by an engineer and an artist. They are very easy to unclasp, yet designed not to do so by accident. And they're beautiful. No gold ones, but they do come in bronze, so you can remove the patina to get a goldish color. The magnetic clasps are wonderful too.  I only got one clasp, as we found this booth late in the show and my budget was blown by then.

I'll be purchasing more as budget allows, though.

I got a few sweet lampworked beads from the ladies at The Glass Studio, and admired but didn't buy any of their cupcake beads. So cute! Their website is apparently not working yet, but they did say that they were opening a retail store, in Highland Park, CA, soon. So keep checking! Very worthwhile to seek out.

Next most favorite was the borosilicate glass in multitudes of shapes and sizes from Unicorne Beads. They must have some busy elves, because their selection is immense. I got a few teardrop beads, which have the colors in the depths, and then a magnifying cover of the clearest borosilicate glass imaginable. Nifty! My dear sweet husband was giving me mixed messages at this booth. He kept finding really cool things and shoving them under my nose and then saying "but don't spend too much!" The booth vendor tried to hire him, his sales technique was so good. 

Of course there were 300 vendors there, so I couldn't spend quality time with more than a fraction. In addition to bead vendors of every variety, there was also a plethora of fabric and wearable art vendors. In my beading frenzy, I only gave most of those a passing look. There was a great selection of finished pieces for inspiration too, of all levels. Several kit vendors. Some metallic clay and glasclay demos, which I wish I'd had more time to see. 

I collected quite a deck of vendor cards, so I'll review some more in another post. It was a quality show!