Bracelet upgrades

As I was sat making one of my bead quintets (five decorated beads plus coordinating spacers) for a bracelet, it struck me that if I came up with a standard, simple bracelet design incorporating a quintet then I could offer it as an upgrade to a strand of beads. So if someone likes a set of beads but they don't make jewellery, I can make the beads wearable for them.

I've made a couple of bracelets as examples, one in lavender rose, which is the set I was working on when I hatched this plan, and the other with the Mulled Wine beads from a few weeks ago. They haven't sold so I thought I'd make them into something.

The beads are strung with coordinating glass seed beads and sterling silver beads. All findings are sterling silver and the bracelets have an extender chain so they can be adjusted from a six and three quarter inch inner circumference to just under eight inches.

The bracelet upgrade is £15.00 on top of the price of the beads. I've added it to the three quintets that are currently in my shop - Maple Syrup, Lemon Sorbet and Milk Bottle - and I'll add it as an option for all future quintets.

The Lavender Rose and Mulled Wine bracelets are both available to buy in my shop.

In other news, I'm struggling with plantar fasciitis in my left foot. It came from nowhere a couple of weeks ago. No injury, no footwear change. The pain is so bad in the morning that I can barely walk. I'm pretty sure it's some hormonal nonsense. Did you know that diminishing estrogen levels can mess with your feet? No, nor did I. What a complete thrill ride this time of life is. So now I own two pairs of Crocs, one for the garden and shed, and one for around the house because apparently walking barefoot is a no-no for plantar fasciitis and even though Crocs are some of the fugliest footwear ever created, they do have good arch support. I'm also doing foot and calf exercises and stretches that actually do kind of help.

I'm going for a walk every day so that I exercise my foot but I have to go careful not to anger it too much. This is annoying because autumn and winter walks are one of my favourite things and I'm having to limit them but some walking through the fallen leaves is better than none, I suppose. Hopefully the plantar fasciitis will eff off as quickly as it arrived. It'd better do.

In knitting news I'm just coming up to two thirds of the way through the cabled yoke of the jumper I'm working on.

The pattern is Sculpt by Unwind Knitwear and I'm knitting it in a 4ply wool and alpaca mix in a porridge colour. Tiny needles, complex cables, nice and soft. I'm thoroughly enjoying it, even if I have had to rip it back several times. I'm using lifelines, though, so it's not been too bad. A lifeline is where you thread a strand of yarn through all your stitches every few rows so that if you have to unravel you can do so all the way back to your lifeline and it'll be holding all your stitches from that row in place ready for you to pick them up and try again. It's like the knitting version of a Windows system restore point.