A good bead day

You know I said in my last post I was going through my bead archives? The photo above is from May 2014 and I looked at these petal beads for ages, trying to remember how I made them. They're not like my 'scales' beads which are just layers of stacked dots; these have more depth to them.

Yesterday I decided to try and let my hands remember how they were made, as opposed to my brain. Honestly, muscle memory never fails to amaze me. How can you make a few beads eleven years ago and think you've forgotten the method you used for them, yet your hands have remembered? As soon as the tiny little thing I thought I'd forgotten clicked into place, I was away.

Petals V2.0

I added an extra layer of small petals to make them a bit different and although these reminder beads are made in just three colours - clear, periwinkle blue and light violet - I can picture these in multiple colours within one bead. What is beyond me is why I opted for bands of seven petals. When it comes to placing dots on beads, four is easy, five is tricky but okay, six is typical, eight is pretty simple, but why did I choose seven for these? It's the same with my polka dots; those have bands of nine dots. When it comes to drawing geometric shapes with a compass and ruler (which I have done lots of) heptagons and nonagons are the bit-more-complex ones to execute. I seem to have an in-built need to make life complicated for myself.

But yes, what is important is that I'm making progress on the bead front. I really enjoyed my shed time yesterday. I hit play on my massive Weezer playlist and got totally lost in glass and music and I haven't felt that way for a long while. Here's hoping I'm starting to crawl out of my beady misery hole.

In sock news...

In the evenings I have a spare hour or so before getting the dinner ready in which I knit and watch telly. Last month I was doing the trawling-through-streaming-services thing, looking for a series I'd not seen before for my pre-dinner knitting television and I decided to try The X-Files. I never watched it in the 90s and it's always seemed like a lot of TV show to catch up with but I decided to dive in anyway and oh my word, I love it.

I am over thirty years late to this but goodness me, Fox Mulder is a huge bit of alright, isn't he? (Especially in his season one specs. And his season two sunglasses.) I'm surprised by how much some of the episodes have freaked me out (Tooms, possessed children, general aliens-coming-to-Earth stuff) but I am thoroughly enjoying it.

When I happened upon Charlotte Stone's The Truth is Out There socks pattern a couple of weeks ago I knew I had to knit them.

These were made with Opal Uni 4 Ply in shades 2619 Black and 2011 Neon Green.

And here are the socks I'm currently working on. These are Summer Lee's August Colorwork Cuff Club pattern. I think they're very fitting to post today seeing as it's the first day of spring. 

I adore this mossy green. The yarn is Drops Nord which is an alpaca and wool mix.

Right, shed. Let's see if I've got any more petal power in me...

See you later!

Sound the Klaxon of Ennui

What noise would the Klaxon of Ennui make? I reckon it'd be a big, long, loud sigh or maybe just the sound of someone going "Urgh" in a really mopey way.

I've wanged on so many times before about how my apparent 'maladaptive perfectionism' affects my beadmaking but it's reached crazy levels to the point where more often than not I think I'm actually sort of afraid to make anything. I think my brain is saying "What's the point in making beads when you won't be happy with any of them?" and I simply don't know how to overcome that feeling.

When I'm having a particularly naff time with beadmaking I look at photos of beads I made years ago in the hope that it'll spur me on but I usually just end up despondent at how past me made so many different beads in such quantities and I get quite doldrumsy again.

* S I G H *

Anyhow...

I dragged myself into the shed on Monday and decided to make lentil beads. Years ago I had a lentil press made for me that does 8, 10 and 12mm lentils but I asked for it to be made to take a 1.6mm mandrel and that is the exact size they made the mandrel groove which is no good when you've got a dipped 1.6mm mandrel in it because the bead release cracks when you press the bead, so the press has been sat there literally gathering dust for about nine years.

I've been a fan of tiny lentil beads ever since I bought a strand of eight of them about two decades ago. They were transparent ink blue and white ones made by Corina Tettinger and I turned them into a bracelet.

Bracelet made with Corina's beads

I was, and still am, wowed by how Corina decorated such small (about 11mm) lentils. These beads are not easy to get right, even though they're pressed. Too much glass and you'll get a lip around the edges and too little and you'll get a misshapen bead with sharp hole edges. When you're adding decoration that is melted flush with the bead's surface you have to take into account the extra glass that this will add, so all in all it's a beady tightrope walk. 

I decided that Monday was the day to dust off my tiny lentil press and have another go. After recently working with and getting used to 1mm mandrels I decided to see if they'd cooperate with it. They do but blimey, remember all that stuff I just said about them being not easy to get right? Yeah. A whole day in the shed should not result in only a dozen correct beads but that was what I ended up with. The photo below shows my water jug at the end of the day. That's a lot of lentil failures.

Interesting fact: 'lentil' rhymes with 'mental'

And I can't fully blame my bead perfectionism for all of these rejects because some of the beads were just bad in that they had sharp holes or too much glass. Sharp bead holes are my number one pet bead peeve; if I see them for sale anywhere I get really annoyed. (My number two pet bead peeve is people describing random spots as polka dots but that's where we really are entering the realms of my pedantry and nobody wants to go to there.) What also didn't help is that I chose to use Effetre Light Red 428 for the lentils. Don't get me wrong, this is one of my favourite reds but it goes a bit streaky and you can end up with darker and lighter reds within one bead. This isn't a huge problem but sometimes it can look a bit jarring, especially as such a small and simple-looking bead, and because of this I rejected some of the beads after I'd cleaned them.

Pleasingly tiny lentils

Anyway, I turned the twelve 10mm red lentils into a bracelet. What I like about this shape is how comfy they are to wear. The beads sit nicely and not too high so you get a sleeker lampwork bracelet look than you do with round beads.

Can you see the light and dark red variation?

The smaller bead hole definitely makes for better-behaved beads when you're making jewellery too as the beads don't wobble about as much on your thread or wire.

I've got a few strands of smaller-holed beads for sale in my shop.

Blue 'Spots & Dots'

Black and yellow 'Spots & Dots'

'Light Sapphire' Spotties

These were all made on 1mm mandrels so with bead release and cleaning the holes end up at about 1.2mm.

I've still got more leaf beads to photograph but my eyes had enough of doing that yesterday. I got new glasses on Saturday so I'm trying to get used to a new prescription plus the fact that they're varifocals and it's not going well. To say I hate them is an understatement. I'm keeping going with them as they say it can take a couple of weeks for your eyes to get used to varifocals but I'm constantly seeing things as out of focus and I have to keep bobbing my head about like a pigeon to see properly. Things like washing up and chopping vegetables have suddenly become challenging tasks as my depth perception is out of whack. It's very tempting to go back to my old glasses but the one thing the varifocals do well is that they allow me to knit and see the telly at the same time. Before, I'd have to choose the glasses that would enable me to see the television clearly but that I'd have to peer under or over in order to see my knitting clearly, or to opt for my readers so that I could see my stitches but have to put up with the television picture as a blur. The varifocals do a great job of letting me do both so that's a win and it's why I'm persevering with them in the hope my eyes will soon adjust properly to everything else.

Talking of knitting, here are those finished Dear Björn socks I mentioned last time.

The pattern is by Nataliya Sinelshchikova and the yarn is Malabrigo Ultimate Sock in shade 214 Magenta. The pattern is in the 52 Weeks of Socks book and it's also available on Ravelry. The socks are a tricky knit but the results were worth the effing, jeffing and many instances of ripping back and re-knitting.

I've got another pair of socks finished but I'll save them for next time as I think I've droned on for quite long enough today.

Have a good Wednesday and I'll see you soon!

Leaf of absence

I can't believe I didn't blog for the entire month of February. How lax of me!

To be honest, I didn't really make many beads last month. The beads I did make were leaf-shaped. I'm not sure why I suddenly had the urge to make leaves but make them I did.

Leaves in Effetre Carnelian 536

There are a few pairs of earrings and a couple of other leafy bits still available in my shop.

'Golden Gleam' leaf earrings

'Leafy' shimmy necklace

Bead motivation has been a bit lacking these past few weeks. I don't know why - it just has been. I'll snap out of it like I always do. I have got some more leaves to photograph and list on my website.

I've been knitting socks, though. I finished off the magenta ones from my previous post and I need to photograph those, but I finished some colourwork socks on Friday.

I've made colourwork jumpers, hats and mittens in the past but I'd never applied stranded knitting to socks before these. I happened upon Stone Knits on Instagram the other week and was really taken with Charlotte's Tiptoe Through the Tulips socks. I ordered her Charming Colorwork Socks book and got to work on my own pair of tulip socks. 

The socks are knitted with Drops Nord in shades 01, 10 and 11. The yarn is a wool and alpaca mix so they're very soft and comfy.

I need to decide which sock pattern of Charlotte's I'm going to make next but right now I'm going down to the shed. Will it be leaves or non-leaves? We shall see...

Tendrils

Since I planted my first one in the garden a couple of years ago I've got a bit into ferns. I feel like one of those Victorian women who got caught up in the pteridomania of the 1800s. The fern craze saw people grow them, study them, draw them, paint them, and fern motifs were used a lot on ceramics, glass, jewellery, decorative furnishings and in architecture. Also, custard creams. That scrolly pattern on my all-time favourite biscuit is a Victorian one and it was inspired by ferns.

I've been trying to figure out how to do something ferny with my beads for a while now. When I noodle with a bead idea I tend to do so over a long period of time, just having a faff around every now and then until something works. That's how this 'tendril' design happened. I'd been looking at a fern book, particularly at pictures of the fiddleheads of furled fern fronds (a lot of 'f's there) and I drew out a really stylised and simplified interpretation of some. It's in the same sort of vein as the custard cream fern design; it's not instantly recognisable as ferns but it was very much inspired by them.

I'm used to adding scrolls to beads but it took me a while to get this new idea down in glass because the simplicity of it makes it tricky to get it just right. The stringerwork is essentially a wiggly line with a scroll at each end, applied around the belly of the bead, then it has several scrolls that branch off that initial wiggly line. However, the line can't wiggle too much but it can't be too un-undulating either. You don't want too many scrolls branching off it and those scrolls need to be evenly spaced and not too close to each other, so there's a lot of things to remember and get just-so on a 12mm diameter bead.

This strand of eight black and white tendril beads are the first fern-inspired beads that I'm happy with. The design is consistent, I can replicate it and it's pleasing to my eye. This basic set is a good foundation upon which I can experiment and refine the design further.

If you'd like to buy this strand, they're available in my shop.

In knitting news...

I did cast on for some socks. The pattern is called Dear Björn (which sounds like an ABBA tribute act) and its from the Laine 52 Weeks of Socks book.

The wool is Malabrigo Ultimate Sock in 214 Magenta.

I think that's all the blog I've got for today. Have a good Wednesday!

When a Whirly-Go-Round becomes a Vortex

These beads are what were once my Whirly-Go-Round beads but with so much more twist they no longer qualify as Whirly-Go-Rounds and are now 'Vortex' beads instead.

These blueberry-coloured ones are made with Effetre Blue 220, Lavender Blue/Pastel Ink Blue 247, Light Violet 041 and Super Clear 006. The beads have a nice depth to them which is hard to catch in a photo.

Earrings with French earwires

Pendant

I've turned the Vortex beads into earrings and pendants. The earrings come with French earwires but if you prefer more secure leverback fittings I can add those for an extra £2.00 per pair.

Earrings with leverback earwires

All of these can be purchased in my shop.

In other news...

I walked up to the Impington mill yesterday.

I like to wander past it every now and then and whenever I do I vow to attend the next open day so I can have a proper look inside and around it, but I've still never been. Maybe this year will be the year?

I've been doing a lot of walking this month. My foot has finally got better after that bout of plantar fasciitis and I've been enjoying my daily walks. I normally do about three miles and I do a longer one on a Saturday or Sunday. Granted, the January weather doesn't make for what most people would consider ideal walking conditions, but I like it. I love being out in the cold air and even when it's raining. Of all the weathers wind annoys me the most but when you're out walking in it it can be really invigorating. On my walk back from the mill yesterday I was walking into quite a strong wind so I had to put more effort in and I arrived home rosy-cheeked with my hair all over the place, looking like Neanderthal woman.

I've been reading a lovely book called Trees in Winter by Richard Shimell.

Richard is a printmaker and I've followed him on Instagram for a while now. He makes the most beautiful linocut prints of trees. The book is part about his craft and part memoir and it's full of Richard's wonderful tree images. His accounts of walking and just taking in nature, particularly the trees, really chime with me. You can see Richard's work on his website, his Instagram, and his book is available on Amazon.

I'm off down to the shed now. I've got an idea that I want to try out but as with many of my bead ideas it may well end up fizzling away to a nothingness so we shall see.

Have a good Monday and I'll see you soon.