Good (and Tiny) Things Come in Small Packages

VERY good things come in small packages. Especially when the packages contain beads. And most especially when they come from my Etsy friend Shannon.

I hadn't really begun this year with the intent to purchase beads. After all, I have millions of them. Seriously. Beads of just about every size imaginable, in every color imaginable. POUNDS of Delicas. And even more seed beads, all recently sorted into bins by color.

But that all changed when I was contacted by someone who asked me if I could create a very special bead crochet rope using size 15/0 beads (eegads!). Initially the request was for silver and black, but with the notoriously unstable finishes on most silver beads (even the real silver ones are susceptible to tarnish), I went on a quest to find some uncommon beads. Something beautiful. Something rich. Something awesome. And my very first place to look was in Shannon's shop, beadsandbabble. That's where I saw these drop-dead gorgeous 24k brushed gold size 15/0 charlottes (beads with a single facet). Don't they look delicious???



Well, I promptly sent the link to the potential customer to see what she thought, and apparently she also fell in love with them because she changed her mind about the silver and black rope and opted to have a rope made just from these. One loooooooooooong rope. Did I mention that these are size 15/0? That's small. Very small.

Since I don't like starting a custom order without having at least an inkling of what I'm about to tackle, I decided to take out some of the size 15/0 beads I have (remember that massive collection I mentioned?) and make a rope. You can see here how the size of this rope, which is made with hematite and metallic red, compares with ropes made from size 11/0 beads and size 8/0 beads (both of these ropes happen to also be made from beads I bought from Shannon's shop). These ropes are all crocheted with five beads around. What a difference! The rope made from the size 15/0 beads is only slightly more than 1/8" in diameter. Whew!

The next big dilemma was availability of the chosen beads. I contacted Shannon to see how many of the size 15/0 24k brushed gold beads she had on hand and also to see if she knew how many beads there are in a 5-gram package, and it turned out that I would need almost 50 grams of these little beauties for the rope length requested. Holy moly.

Now the awesome thing (well, one of them) about Shannon is that rather than just tell me she didn't have enough of the beads, she contacted her supplier and put in a special order so she could meet my needs. And in today's mail, I received a BIG package with a bunch of SMALL packages inside. Lots and lots of beady goodness, including the 50 grams of beads I need for the 24k gold rope. :-)

But first... I need to finish another project, a set of bead crochet ropes using [relatively huge] size 11/0 beads in a design I developed to coordinate with the pattern in a picture sent to me by the customer.

Best. Stick. Ever.

Seriously. Who comes back from a vacation on Hilton Head Island with a picture of a STICK?!?!

Me. That's who. Because this is the best stick ever.

This stick is so great it makes me wish I was going to Chicago to take NanC Meinhartd's Art Sticks workshop. I'm not sure what kind of wood this is, but I found this near the beach on Hilton Head Island. There's a serious lack of driftwood there (at least on the beaches we visited), but this is just cool.

Best. Stick. Ever.

Let's see... What else did we do on vacation? (Yes, Bev, it IS a vacation even if we're retired!) We ate lots of really really good seafood. Filet Oscar (filet mignon topped with crabmeat stuffing), roast oysters, clam chowder, seafood chowder, shrimp, crab cakes, mahi mahi, lobster. Yum.

We went driving around the island a bit. Saw lots of birds. A few turtles. Even an alligator and a dolphin (not at the same time).

What we didn't do a lot of was shopping. There's no shortage of places to shop, but we didn't want to spend all our time (or money) in the stores and shops.

We did find a place that had BEADS.

:-)

I picked up a few semi-precious rounds for a custom order, and I also bought a BUNCH of four-ply silk thread that I can use for bead crochet.

Isn't this gorgeous?

Yards and yards and yards of silk. I can crochet for years without fear of running out of thread.





Having never crocheted with silk thread before (I've used some heavy weight stuff whose name I don't know and nylon upholstery thread), I wasn't really sure how I'd like using silk. Turns out I like it. A lot.

I had a request to create a bead crochet rope using some vintage beads (sent to me by a very special customer), and I decided to try out the silk thread. It worked great! And now I have a brand new bracelet, created from a long length of bead crochet rope and then knotted in a very special way before doing an invisible join.



So now I know what I'm going to be doing with all that silk thread. I just have to figure out what to do with the stick. :-)

Work in progress - the Black and Khaki Caterpillar. I don't usually post pictures of works in progress. I'm not sure why I don't, but I just don't usually think of taking photos until everything's finished.

In this case, however, I thought I'd share this latest creation. This caterpillar bracelet is being done as a special request for Carly. I've made several of these little guys in the past, but it never occurred to me to use these colors for a caterpillar even though they're some of my favorites!

He's only about halfway finished, but I'm pretty happy with his looks so far. These are time consuming, but as with so many beadweaving projects there's something calming about the repetition. Each little fringe is made with seven beads, so by the time this is finished this caterpillar will consist of a few thousand of these tiny bits of glass!




The time investment so far? Enough to watch a movie ('Martian Child'), the last episode of 'Jericho', and four episodes of 'House.' Like I said... these are time consuming! :-)