Beadcramé. A funny name for something old and something new.

Some of this description is found in the PDF document linked below, as well as the complete pattern to recreating the necklace.

http://beadencounter.com/private/SixteenNeedleBeadcrame.pdf

Beadcramé, what is it?

Starting the rectangle section

It's a combination of macramé and beadweaving, where a macramé-type arrangement of threads uses beads instead of knots at the intersection of each thread. The threads switch places with each row just like in some macramé.

Original neckband

This technique was new to me, and it came about when I was asked to repair a necklace for an acquaintance. It had worn and broken over many years. She said it came from her great-grandmother, who is long gone, and so it had great sentimental value to her.

Original pendant

I took it apart to salvage the beads, which make up about 95% of the reconstructed necklace. The construction method was confusing at first.I didn't know how this thing was put together, and asking online got me to something that looked similar, Ukrainian 3-bead netting as described by Maria Rypan. I found a pattern on the Bead & Button website and purchased it, but something was telling me that while close, this wasn't it. The rest of the story continues in the PDF....

FInished reconstruction

Long story short, this is a post so the Facebook group All About Beadweaving can find the PDF. Here's a picture of the finished necklace.

This is not a professional-quality pattern. It may contain errors. As for quantities of beads, which I forgot to include in the pattern, for size 9/0 beads as listed, about 6 grams of main-color beads and 2-3 grams of each of the other colors should suffice.

Bead in good health!

A gift for a treasured friend

I spent the early part of this year working on a wedding gift for a dear friend and his new wife. They've been married for several months and the wedding was lovely, but I couldn't come up with a gift that made sense to me right away. Jewelry would benefit only one of the couple. I toyed with a few ideas like beaded wine tags but that didn't seem personal enough.

Then I realized they took their honeymoon in Big Sur, and that is one of their favorite places to visit.

I had this photo I found online (sorry I've lost the attribution) to inspire me.  Bead embroidery called to me.

Gorgeous, isn't it?

I had this wonderful jasper cabochon, and some carnelian, and a little blue onyx and some apatite, some long tubes of tourmaline, so eventually, there was sea and sky, hills and trees. By paying attention to the lie of every line of beads, I was able to get a lot of texture and movement out of the seed beads.

Big Sur  approx 6" x 3" image © 2014 L Allen

The piece was built as a brooch, there are two pins in back, but honestly, it's pretty big to wear. So that both of the recipients could enjoy it, I found a lovely keepsake box at a frame store, and built my own mount out of stacked foamcore and some velcro, so the piece can be easily removed. The top of the box lifts up on a magnetic clasp so it's easily accessible.

My friends loved it, and I'm told it now resides on a table in their family room.

I hope that every time they see it, they will remember their honeymoon in Big Sur, and the good wishes I put into every bead and every stitch as I worked.

Really nifty paper beads to make yourself

I just ran across this paper bead post and thought the examples were so neat I had to drop in and post a link.

I'm still beading. I'll be posting some stuff soon. I promise.

Better Than TWO Sharp Sticks in the Eye, or Software Development for the Foolhardy

I've had several questions in the BeadEnCounter Forum, and on the Facebook page, about the future directions of my BeadEnCounter software. I decided to answer those questions here, and link back to each venue so everyone is informed.  Let me say upfront that I want to upgrade BeadEnCounter. I think it's the logical next step... well, read below. 

BeadEnCounter is designed to keep an inventory of craft components and to calculate costs for finished works. It first came on the market in August of 2011.

After 14 months of sales, I think I can pretty confidently say that without marketing, no product is sold. I think I can also say, that with marketing, your profit is small, if anything.

I've gone back over the sales figures and the costs involved and what I found out was very interesting.

When I started developing the software, I was first getting into beading, building my stash, and finding real difficulty keeping track of what I'd bought, what I'd paid for it, where it came from, and what it was made of.  Since I build databases for a living, it was quite easy for me to begin something for my own use. It grew and grew, and in talking to owners of bead stores and people I met there, it seemed like there was a real need for something basic in this market. There were a couple of competing products, but I thought I could build something with fewer features for less money.

At the time, we were very short of paying work (still are, to some extent). So I had time to work to create a commercial product, which is very different than producing a custom database for a business. I was the client as well as the programmer, and the knowledge expert as well! Turns out this all in one approach isn't the best.  A couple of hundred hours of design, refinement and more refinement went by....  I paid a designer for a logo and some look & feel design. 

Then I took the product into testing. I knew there were going to be plenty of things not working as designed, so I found a group of willing beaders who offered to test and to give me feedback. What I didn't realize was that the first round of feedback actually was going to lead to a major re-design of the interface and functioning of the product. Perhaps another hundred hours of my time managing the testing (four rounds) responding to bug reports and feature requests from the group by fixing or re-designing, and redistributing the fixed files. 

I couldn't have produced the product without those testers, who worked only for the reward of a free copy of the finished software. 

Then, there was the work of setting up the website (learning Rapidweaver to build it) and a new web host, and e-commerce (testing two failed products before settling on FastSpring), and getting marketing in order. I had built up some credit with a client who does marketing, so he invested the money he would have otherwise paid me in print ads in Bead & Button. Those ads cost around $1000 per month, and we could only afford four months. I did everything I could think of to publicize the software. Facebook, a dedicated forum, blogged about it, sought out online spots to place links or buy ads. I bought banner ads on Beading Daily, and newsletter ads from them. I got an article in Stringing Magazine, which was free, and actually helped quite a bit.

All this took more time, more research, more investment. 

Sales were never fabulous. Pricing software is always a question. After the print ads, and while the online ads were running, we experimented with the price point. Once the introductory sale was over, and we raised the price to the "regular" price, sales tanked. We dropped the price again, and sales resumed, but at a lower rate. Then the print ads aged out of the consciousness of the consumers, and slowly, the sales slowed.  I tried Google Adwords ads, for around $100 per month. I tried making and distributing about 150 sample CDs to my local S. California beading shops, with a discount coupon enclosed. Not ONE sale resulted from that, after the cost of the CDs, labels, and my time in burning them, labelling, and distributing them to a dozen stores. In the pre-Christmas flurry last year, I sold 10 units in one heady day... but mostly it was ones and twos, and this entire year of 2012 I've sold fewer than 80 units.

We discussed dropping the price further, but then realized that eventually, you can drop the price so far that it becomes a loss due to...  Support costs.... well support costs are only my time, and a few more gray hairs. But time is all we have, hey?  People who couldn't install, couldn't figure out the software, wanted to ask questions, etc. Some got refunds. Some got several hours of reading & responding to emails.  But those hours add up.

After marketing costs and all the incidental costs, my "profit" comes to about $2000. When I add up the time I spent on all the processes above, my per-hour rate is somewhere around $5 an hour.   Maybe $3. 

You know, I love BeadEnCounter software. I use it myself, all the time.  I know it seems to outsiders as if the makers of software products are rolling in dough, but the area of greatest profitability, it seems to me, is those marketing folks who took my dollars, and returned to me.... not as much in sales as the ads cost. Only one ad I took was directly profitable in numbers of sales attributable to it. 

I'm not whining about any of this. Like every other business owner, I have to do what I can to maximize profitability. No one can stay in business if they don't make money.  Could I sell more copies of BeadEnCounter if  I upgraded the feature set? Of course. But how many more, and how much would I clear on each one? I promised previous purchasers a steep discount for upgrade, so they wouldn't feel as if they were paying all over again. So I'd need a ton of new sales as well as re-sales to registered owners, which would probably be profit-neutral. For a ton of new sales, I'd need... you guessed it, marketing. And frankly, I don't have the capital right now to invest in a marketing campaign. I've used up my credit with clients, and our business, like so many others, is on the ragged edge of not making it. We haven't paid ourselves, as owners, a salary for more than the last year.   

Right now I certainly don't feel like working hard, for another few hundred hours, to make the marketing people happy and rich.  BeadEnCounter software will go on working indefinitely (or until your OS will no longer run it).  I'm going to keep using it myself.  I am going to plan the next upgrade from lists of requested features on the forum and from my testers. 

And things may turn around. If I come across a windfall of marketing money, or I have a long stretch of no paying work, I'll be back at. Because despite what it sounds like, it was a certain amount of fun to do. I learned a lot. And I feel good knowing that some people are using and enjoying a product I built. 

So, if you've made it this far, reading this novelette, thanks for asking the question. Thanks for purchasing BeadEnCounter. Thanks for your continued interest. Keep in touch. I'm always searching for a business case to do what I want to do, which is keep BeadEnCounter alive.

Funny, It Doesn't LOOK Like a Wildebeest...

Just because I haven't blogged in a while, I thought I'd get back into everyone's good graces with a picture of my cat, Meri. She's on what we call her "wildebeest," the back of a chair. She leaps upon it like a hungry lion on an unsuspecting wildebeest, digs in her claws and gives us her best ear-tilted, wild-eyed crazy look, right before she shoots down the hallway to the other end of the house. It's a long hallway so she can get up some considerable speed.

After a few minutes of ominous silence, she reappears from the hallway, running at top speed, leaps off the top step at the end of the hallway, and hits the ground with a solid thump. Sometimes she'll fetch up entirely across the living room (about 23 feet square) and bang her body into the door to the garage. Sometimes we'll hear her making a little "rrrrrr" noise under her breath as she runs, like a small boy making motor sounds as he pretends he's an airplane. 

Funniest cat I've ever had. She makes us laugh at least once a day, sometimes much more. 

That wildebeest never knew what hit it.  

Beading Time, eaten by the Black Hole of Facebook...

Okay, it's not so much the time on Facebook (no really, I can stop any time!) it's the following of tempting links posted by friends, acquaintances, friends of friends, and some people I have NO idea how they got on my newsfeed...

Links ramped up a couple of months ago, in tune with the coming Electoral Tornado of Ads, Venal Ads, Despicable Ads, and Dreadful Rhetoric. Oh, and I truly cannot help clicking on the cat & dog links. I'm going to have to un"like" those pages, honestly. 

Even then, I could probably get by just reading the articles the interesting headlines lead me to. But then I click into a blog or something, find an article of vital interest, and Dog help me, eleven-hundred-plus comments!  Something very strange in my head often doesn't let me skip them, though I know I should.

And then, there's this.  Go ahead. Click it, I dare you. I'll wait here. 

By Marsha Wiest-Hines
of Haute Ice Beadwork

Done? Lost a couple of hours, have you?  The Battle of the Beadsmiths is an extremely active FB page, with probably a couple of hundred new comments per day, up to a dozen new subject posts, and practically infinite pictures of competition-level beaded works. 

I didn't know what I was getting into when I liked that page, honestly. I can't really say I wish I hadn't seen all those gorgeous works of art, and been inspired by them. But they're sucking the hours out of my days and I've got to bead more or I'm going to go nuts.

And I have been working, slowly. I have a backlog of pictures to get up. 

I'm going to try limiting or eliminating to the extent I can my time on FB. Really. Just don't go there. 

Maybe if I took it off my Bookmarks bar that would help. If it wasn't Right There all the time.....

Back after a short hiatus

If you stopped by the blog yesterday, you would have seen a "placeholder" site from my hosting provider instead of the actual blog. That's because I changed the URL of the blog from the blogger address to beadencounterblog.com, and it took a few hours to let the change propagate through the nameservers of the Web.

So now we're back to an easy-to-remember URL. The old URL will still forward here, so you don't have to change your bookmarks if you have them. Just a little housekeeping, so we can market the blog more effectively. 

Thanks for your patience. 

"And the Hits Just Keep On Coming..."

Who decides when a song played on the radio is a 'hit'? Just simple number of airings can't be it, because that's decided by the playlist programmers. Used to be DJs, when DJs did their own programming, but not any more.  Do listener requests have anything to do with it?

(Note: There is no actual beading content in this post. It's a rant, because it's my blog and I can. Venting can sometimes be good.)

For that matter, in this age of downloads, are there any verifiable 'hits' anymore? Or are they 'heroic downloads?' 

What brought this aggravation on, you ask? I woke up from my nap this afternoon to the travesty that is "Hey, Mr. Big Stuff, Who Do You Think You Are?" by Jean Knight. This, on a radio station, KRTH, that alleges to be "all hits." Not even close. That song was banal and creepy when it was new. If it got airplay enough to qualify as a hit at that time, it was because all the musicians had collectively gone insane and stopped releasing real music. Must have been, because that song is not music. It's just meaningless noise.

I've been grumpy for several days, in fact, about the tired, repetitive playlist on KRTH. It's the radio station on my alarm clock because I really like the morning drive-time team and their byplay. Formerly, I liked much of their playlist as well. But lately, not so much. 

Thursday, I was drowsing along...if I have nothing pressing I can fall right back asleep for quite a while if the music is conducive. A few extra minutes of snooze, without having to actually hit the snooze button. It's so comfortable and floaty, a fine way to wake up gradually. But along about 7:17, my ears were assaulted by, I hate to even type this, "Boogie Wonderland."  Raised me right up like I was levitating, going for the Off button before another 8 beats hit my brain.  The shot of adrenaline as my brain screamed "SAVE ME LYNN BEFORE I GO INSANE!!" didn't make for a gentle start to the day.

Now, some other mornings I have a similar reaction, particularly to awfulness like "It's a Brick, Huh, House" by the Commodores, or anything by War. And then I lie there wondering why in the world they never play any of the actual hits from those days. I never hear any good music from the day. Okay, I take that back. Just did a Google search for "hits of the 70s." Apparently there were no good songs released during that decade. 

Have to retreat to the 60s for good stuff. Moody blues. Jethro Tull. Creedence. Christopher Cross. Frank Zappa. When's the last time you heard Frank Zappa on the radio?  More Motown, dammit! Play the damn Beatles other than on Sunday. Where's the Phil Collins? Mamas & Papas? Beach Boys? James Taylor. Zombies, for cryin' out loud.

And then Friday, KRTH did the same thing, but at 7:02. Never mind any leisurely drift to the surface of waking..."Boogie Wonderland" holy crap. It's not bad enough they skip all the potential good music out there, their playlist isn't even 24 hours long! How many times do they repeat Boogie Wonderland every day? And why hasn't the lightning of the gods obliterated KRTH long before now?

That's it. I've either got to find another wakeup station or invest in an alarm clock that lets me pick my own music. KRTH morning team, I loved ya', but no more. One more run of "Boogie Wonderland" will do me in.

Oh, and for those who got an earworm of one of these awful songs, I apologize and recommend singing a few brisk measures from "Yesterday." That usually clears out the stuck songs in my head.

And if you made it this far, thank you for bearing with me. Feel free to list your own Most Despised Songs in the comments. 

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!

Weird, Cool, and Freaky, with a Tiny Bit of Beading

Yesterday we spent several hours with a friend at the Venice Beach Boardwalk. If you've never been to Venice Beach, it's a touristy LA thing you really shouldn't miss.  The Boardwalk is the natural home of every tacky pair of sunglasses ever made, weird outliers of the human species, and the ravening spirit of the predatory entrepreneur, buyer very much beware.

The people-watching is extraordinary, even on a gloomy, overcast and somewhat cool Saturday. The skinny old guy who wanders about wearing a very very VERY brief Speedo had goosebumps. Not that I looked, or anything.  Everywhere are vendors hawking their own CDs, very cheap jewelry, much of it made of feathers (to the point that you wonder where all the naked birds are), or Bob Marley/ganja/rasta goods.  Oh, and the per capita distribution of psychics (for people or pets), palm-readers and massage artists seems quite high.

Speaking of high, many of these folks seem like they washed up on the shores of the 1960s and never got back in the swim. There are medical marijuana clinics with sexy costumed "nurses" outside, trying to recruit passers-by like strip-show hawkers in Times Square. This, between the Freakshow barker and the Phoenix House addiction treatment center. Seems appropriate, somehow.   And scattered all through this, on the fringes of the crowd, are the homeless. They're mellow, most of them, Venice being one of the better places to be homeless for the winter.

And, of course, many of the vendors/artists are absolutely unique. There's a sand artist, and another shop filled with small to larger-than-life sculptures made entirely from hardware bits, most of them of movie-monsters like the Alien or Predator. Big hit with the guys.  There was a half-pipe skateboarding competition taking place while we were there, fantastic to watch. Of course, there are always the street performers, some of whom are amazing, funny, or both.  Or loud. The musicians are generally good, but every shop also pumps out music, so the few stretches of quiet along the boardwalk are welcome.

Pick your spot, and you can get quite good, or very very bad food. We had a decent lunch at Figtree, though the menu was surprising in that it didn't have any red meat on it at all. Semi-vegetarian, kinda.  I tried the bread pudding at Shultzies, but found it somewhat disappointing. To me, proper bread pudding is custardy, and with some texture of the bread or pastry used still present. The raspberry pudding I tried was just...wet. Dense, served cold, and with no egg flavor at all, it was more like refrigerated milk-soaked bread than pudding.  I can make better myself.

So how is this related to beading? Certainly the acres of $2 bracelets from China or India or whatever are dreadful and offer nothing to the real beader. Some of the vendors have interesting (or weird, depending on your viewpoint) goods such as insects, scorpions, or sea-life embedded in resin, or cut stones.  So I found one vendor with a bunch of unmounted cabochons for sale, and bought three of them. The good thing about buying here is that the dealers are amenable to drastic bargaining over the price. You do have to be really careful of the quality. But I got three agate cabs for not much money, so they'll be joining the stash.

The creative beader can find materials anywhere!

Carnage on the Concrete

Have I mentioned how much I hate to rework things? Whether it's a database design that needs changing, or the client asks me to remove the programming they insisted I install, or ripping out a beaded section that just doesn't work artistically, I hate re-doing what I've already done once.

Now imagine how much I hate re-doing work when it's my own stupid mistake that makes it necessary.

Original brooch

I found out something new in the course of making the mistake, though. Semi-precious stone, which sounds so sturdy because of the "stone" part of the name, is surprisingly fragile. Especially when you knock it onto a concrete floor from a height of 3 feet or more.  

I've always known that drop-shaped beads in stones like amethyst or citrine can be split open at the drilled hole by trying to force a too-large needle through. What I didn't realize was that turquoise is very breakable, particularly when formed into pointy-ended shapes and then drilled through that point. Very little structural strength remains, and when dropped... Well.  Kaplooey. Or some sound like that.

The Carnage

So I've got this piece I'm so proud of. May be the best designed piece I've done so far. I entered it in the October challenge (as noted in the previous post) for the Etsy BeadWeavers Team.  It's listed for sale. I might have to ship it to a buyer at any moment! Not that I generally need to worry. I've never had one sale from my Etsy shop. Not one. 

And I dropped it. Smack onto the concrete floor of my living room.  Carnage ensued. I'm just lucky I didn't drop it face down and break a cabochon. I only broke five out of the seven turquoise drops.

The Replacements

I said some very bad, unprintable words. My husband helped me gather the bits and I realized I'd have to completely re-string the longer fringe.

Luckily I'd purchased an entire strand of the drops, and had plenty of material to choose from to match the former beads.  Took me a bit but I finally found the close matches I needed.

I cut out the existing fringe and stripped off the beads on to my workmat.  Then I started to reweave the fringe. And, of course, did the first one wrong, even after consulting my photos. I hate doing things twice. Doing them three times makes me say even worse words.

Good as new?

But finally, I had it done again. Looks good, perhaps even better than the first time, since they're a bit more consistent.  I will be a bit more aware of where I'm putting it, so as not to drop it again. In fact, it would probably be a good idea not to knock it against anything hard. Ever. Don't want to do it again!

How Lucky Can One Girl Get?

I've got jury duty AND a root canal, all in one week. How's that for lucky?  Still, it could be worse. I can afford the root canal, and the agony before the doc relieved the abscess made me realize how amazing modern dentistry (and medicine) is. I've never had an abscessed tooth before, and now I know why people used to just yank bad teeth out, even without anesthesia. Wow that was bad.

Sometimes life gets in the way of beading. I especially regret that now as I'm really starting to get back the flow of ideas that sort of dried up before when I was so overwhelmed by the needs of getting the software out to market.  One project after another leaps out of me, and I've got far too many to try even if I could bead for hours each day.

Our Etsy Beadweavers Team has a monthly challenge, with each entry being a listing in our Etsy stores.  This is my entry for October. The original title was supposed to be "Gifts of the Earth" because of all the semi-precious stones used in it.   The theme of the October challenge is "Inspired by Picasso" so I retitled it and related it to the theme as required.

From October 9 until October 15, you can visit the EBW blog and vote for your favorite entry. Every month there are some amazing entries, you'll be sure to get an eye-full, and find a favorite!

I've also been inspired by the November challenge theme, on Spirals, and have started a project I hope will develop into something worthy of entry.

Meanwhile, I'm learning to bead crochet, and trying to earn a living.

Notice where that last falls on the priority list.

Taken in Trade

Trading with other artists can be fun and profitable. As I promised in the previous post, here's the trade I made with Ruth Wood of mack-glass.com.  The largest cab is about 1.5 inches long.

My bracelet

Ruth's cabochons

Ruth loved the bracelet when I delivered it. I took along a bunch of my work, and she and her friend and sister-in-law all modeled a bunch of it. They were good for my ego, admiring and all. I may join Ruth at her farmer's market booth to try to sell some of my stuff. It would be good to have someone along for the ride my first time doing retail. 

Pretty cool trade, huh? I've got a lot of of projects in mind for these bits and bobs. I'll keep you posted.  It's also nudging me toward getting a small microwave kiln, as that is what Ruth uses for the small cabs. No 24-hour heating cycles, no worrying about a big kiln. One hour, in and out. I already have a ton of glass, including about 3 pounds of dichroic scraps I picked up several years ago.  

There's always something new to learn, new to try, new to do. 

Beading Returns to Life, and How to Get Great Art Stuff for Almost Nothing

Things have slowed down a bit with the software, so I have been able to feel a bit of creativity creeping back into my life.

I've also found a way to acquire more artistic fuel (beads & materials) without spending money...trade!  I think this is a terrific way for fellow artists to support one another and to spread the creativity around.

Original bracelet

Several weeks ago, at a local farmer's market, Ruth Wood saw me wearing my new tutti-frooti bracelet. (Tootie-frutti? There are a dozen ways to spell this, all of which my spell-checker rejects.)  Ruth does wonderful fused glass cabochon work, and after I let her try on the bracelet I happened to be wearing, we worked out a deal to trade a similar bracelet made to fit her for some of her cabs.

Ruth's bracelet

This is her bracelet, to be delivered this Sunday at the market.  I'll post some pictures of the cabs next week.  I also made some earrings to go with, so we'll see what happens with them!

We each worked out what we would sell our pieces for, retail. We agreed that trading retail values was fair, as this included the labor (and profit) as well as materials. Tiny bits of glass for fused cabs cost nearly nothing, its the work and expertise that make them valuable. The same, or nearly the same goes for the beads. Material costs are small, but those hours creating fringe add up!

Earrings to go with

Of course, the IRS wants you to declare the value of traded goods and pay taxes on them, unless you have a resale license. Both Ruth & I do, so consult with your tax expert on your own situation. Don't Mess the IRS is our policy around here. Those people are scarier than Homeland Security!

In other beady news, I built a peyote bracelet with some 4mm cube beads in a very elusive color. I don't know exactly what to call it. The description on the tube was "jade" but it's got a lot of bronze, yellow, and opalescent notes in it. These pictures actually represent it pretty well. What would you call it?

"Jade?"

The edge beads are hematite rounds, 4mm, which fit exactly with the cubes.  They give the whole bracelet a solid heft that the light cubes do not. I like it, actually. I think when I list it on Etsy, I'll do some research and tout the spiritual values of hematite. 

What color is it, really?

The newest issue of Bead & Button magazine came out with a project done in spiral herringbone (as well as an ad for, ahem, BeadEnCounter software). It's basically a herringbone rope done with varying sizes of beads, from 15/0 to 8/0 and drop beads at the outer edge. Like peyote spirals, these varying sizes of beads make the rope bend as you work. 

Spiral herringbone

Well, the project is supposed to make a long spiral that is then interconnected with some strung segments. Very cute, but once I got the spiral going, I realized that it would be very easy to turn into a circle. And I didn't have the patience at that moment to continue on. So here are the earrings I created with my test pieces. Very very easy to do, and quick to work up. I think the second one only took me half an hour or so. 

At some point I may return to the technique and do the actual spiral. Herringbone isn't my favorite but I'm getting to know it better.  

Right now, though, I'm scheming to find other artists to trade with. Who will love my work enough to trade with me?