Baaa!

The other day I was knitting and I was using my sheep stitch marker. He's the original sheep I made over a decade ago now.

The original 'Baaarney' bead

I decided that it was high time that I made a few more sheep so I set about reminding my hands how to make them.

My third attempt at Sheep Bead V2.0

I gave the sheep a little redesign around the head area in order to make my life a bit easier; the first ones I made used to have a tiny bit of 'fleece' on the top of their heads but it was always a faff to do and often resulted in ruined beads so I left it off these ones.

Sheep on mandrels

Obviously the sheep are handmade so no two are truly alike and just the slightest fraction of a millimetre difference in size or positioning of the eyes and ears changes the face of the sheep which gives each one their own little character.

As you can see, I've spent the last couple of days making sheep and this morning I added them to the shop.

They are available as...

Loose beads - £8.00 each

Pendants - £10.00 each

Stitch markers - £9.50 each

Stitch markers are made with your choice of fitting - lobster clasp, leverback clasp or ring - so they're suitable for both knitters and crocheters.

I'll be making more sheep this afternoon because they're selling quite well already. Big thanks to everyone who has bought some.

If you'd like to buy a sheep, the loose beads and pendants are here and the stitch markers can be found over here.

Have a good afternoon!

New jewellery

Remember the grey beads from my previous post? They're now a necklace.

This grey glass is so pretty. Swirls of transparent and opaque grey with a subtle pearly, shampoo-like gleam. I've strung the beads with plain round sterling silver beads.

The necklace measures about 22 inches long and it fastens with a lobster clasp.

I've also made a wintry bracelet.

The lampwork beads have cores of CiM Foam which I encased with Effetre Pale Aquamarine 038 and then coated in silver foil which I then burnt off, leaving behind tiny fine silver microspeckles. As a final step I etched the beads to a frosty finish. I used Dip 'n Etch as tumble-etching wouldn't have worked in this case.

The twinkly, frosty beads are strung with white opal Preciosa crystal beads and Japansee silver-lined clear seed beads. All findings are sterling silver.

The 'Mystic Grey' necklace and 'Twinklefrost' bracelet are currently for sale in my shop.

Ouch

First thing Monday morning, before I'd even lit the torch, I cut my finger on a glass rod. I caught the pointy end of it with my forefinger as I was switching on my workbench light and the resulting cut was like a deep cat scratch - not overly painful but really annoying and requiring a plaster. The cut was on my mandrel-twirling finger and the plaster was too much of a beadmaking hindrance so I abandoned shed.

Yesterday I swapped the plaster for a smaller, less padded one and I found that I could twirl a 1mm mandrel with minimal irk so I made a load of little plain roundish beads using Reichenbach 104 Mystic Grey. This is a part transparent, part opaque glass with a sort of pearly shampoo thing going on. Pretty.

Top right: injured mandrel twirling finger

Now I have a wodge of nice grey beads in slightly varying sizes. I think I'll sort them into size order and string them as a necklace. I do like the 1mm mandrels, though. I've only ever used them for making headpins but I might experiment with small-holed beads further.

I might have given up on the beadmaking on Monday but I got some jewellery made instead. The customer who purchased the Lemon Sorbet and Creamsicle beads upgraded them to bracelets.

The bracelets are quite summery which is very not like the current weather here. Loads of places seem to have had snow but it's just damp and quite cold in Cambridge.

I'm off to find another tiny plaster and see how the mandrel-twirling goes.

Have a good Wednesday!

Cloudburst

The colours of these beads remind me of thundery skies and stormy weather. They're made with two beautiful glasses that look lovely but are right glassholes to work with.

The grey-blue-green is CiM Little Boy Blue and it's quite a streaky glass, by which I mean that it gets dark striations in it the more you work it.

The grey-blue is Effetre Navy Blue 238. It's not navy blue as I, and probably you, think of it but seeing as the glass is Italian maybe at some point in time the Italian navy wore a uniform this colour? I don't know. Whatever, it's a very lovely shade of grey-blue but it does that copper thing that a lot of the Italian blues and turquoises do where it will sometimes fizz and it'll also get a grey sheen if it's slightly cooled and reheated. The fizzing can cause pitting which is bothersome if you're not wanting an 'organic' look. The grey sheen on the surface is nothing a short soak in Harpic toilet cleaner won't fix. However, when you want to encase it the greying can cause a haziness between the two layers. To counteract this I find you have to get the base core bead right first time in one go. You can't re-roll it, you can't add more glass and you can't faff with it. You make the core, gently reheat it once to smooth out the chill marks and then encase it while it's still hot but not hot enough that you'll smoosh the core all about. It's a tightrope.

The clear here is Effetre Super Clear 006 and the decoration is Effetre Pearl Grey 268.

The beads are in my shop and a bracelet upgrade is available for them.

Back on Facebook

In an effort to get some beads sold I've reactivated my Facebook page. I left Facebook in a huff back in 2020, in the midst of Covid when everything seemed unbearably insane. I've not got any intention of using Facebook in a personal capacity but my old bead page lives again. I'll be using it to let people know when I have new beads and jewellery for sale.

Here's a link: www.facebook.com/beadsbylaura.co.uk

And here's a bracelet I made on Thursday.

I had the beads for this knocking about in a yoghurt pot for weeks and I finally got round to making them wearable.

I've kept the bracelet really simple, as is my wont, and the beads are strung with matt black seed beads and sterling silver.

The bracelet is available in my shop.

Yeah, more quintets

I'm stuck on making quintets. I know it must be boring but it's just where I'm at right now. I'm not bored. I keep thinking of new colour combinations and I have to try them out. The beads are stacking up in my shop and I'm kind of feeling like I'm wasting my time but can you be wasting time when you've got something to show for the time you've 'wasted'? I guess it's problematic if nobody wants the thing you've made but I keep shoving that thought to the back of my brain and hoping people will suddenly want the beads because if they don't I'm going to need to reconsider things.

Yeah, actually, thinking about it, spending hours making beads that you under-price but that only a couple of people want is indeed wasting time. And time is the most precious thing we have, isn't it? 

We've got plans to get a new shed next year, a proper large one that Chris and I can share, so I think I need to decide if that's going to be worth it or not. There's no point in building a space I might not need. I hate making big life decisions. I just want to make beads but when the beadmaking seems pointless it suddenly all feels a bit shit.

Anyway, that's enough moaning from me. I'll scoop all my bead angst back into its bottle and let it gnaw away at the back of my mind.

Here are some photos of shiny new beads along with details of the glass I used for them:

Creamsicle: CiM Foam encased with Effetre Super Clear 006 with decoration and spacers in CiM Creamsicle

Sepia: CiM Toto encased with CiM Sepia, decorated with CiM Toto with spacers in CiM Sepia

Mint & Lavender: Effetre Copper Green 219 encased with Effetre Pale Emerald Green 031 with decoration and spacers in Effetre Pastel Ink Blue/Lavender Blue 247

These beads are for sale in my shop and a bracelet upgrade is available for all three sets.

I'm off to make a few bits of jewellery now.

Thanks for listening to me whinge and I hope you have a good rest-of-Thursday.

Maraschino

The beads in this bracelet are made with CiM Maraschino which is the most perfectly-named glass. The red is the exact colour of cocktail cherries. This glass is semi-opaque and for these beads I layered it thinly over a base of clear. The beads might look opaque at first glance but if you hold them up to the light you'll see the translucency of them. The beads are decorated with Effetre White 204.

I've strung the beads with red Preciosa crystal beads which sparkle beautifully, white Japanese seed beads and plain sterling silver round beads. The bracelet is adjustable by way of its lobster clasp and extender chain.

The Maraschino bracelet is available in my shop.

Also in the shop are these rosy pink beads. They shift from a pink hue to a more bluish one depending on the light. I can tumble-etch these ones if you'd like and there's also a bracelet upgrade available for them.

These are CiM Foam encased with Effetre Dark Rosato/Lavender Blue 083 with decoration in Effetre White 204.

In knitting news, I've finished the cabled yoke of my jumper.

Now it's time for swathes of stocking stitch but I like that. I can knit stocking stitch in the round without looking which means I can switch from my reading glasses to my further-away-than-arm's-length specs and actually see the telly while I knit.

I'm six seasons through my annual Mad Men rewatch (I think this is my fifth go round and it only gets better with every repeat viewing) and it'll be nice for everyone to not be a blur. I've got to get some varifocals. Switching between two pairs of glasses all the time is so irritating.

New beads and a podcast recommendation

It's getting proper chilly down the shed and I've had to put the little heater on in there first thing in the mornings. I'm not moaning; I love this time of year and I'd rather be cold than hot. 

I've made three more quintets and they're all currently for sale in my shop. A bracelet upgrade is available for all three sets.

Bead recipes are as follows...

Violet: CiM Foam encased with Effetre transparent Light Violet 041, with decoration and spacers in Effetre Lavender Blue/Pastel Ink Blue 247

Teal Green: CiM Foam encased with Effetre Light Teal 026 with decoration in Effetre Light Turquoise 232 and spacers in CiM Kryptonite

Dark Rose: CiM Gellys Sty encased with Effetre Medium Amethyst 042 with decoration in Effetre White 204 and spacers in Reichenbach 104 Pink Lady

While I was making these beads I listened to a brilliant podcast about a 'shaman' called Juliette D'Souza who about two decades ago conned people in Hampstead out of millions of pounds.

It's a shocking tale and also very sad. The podcast is called Filthy Ritual and it's available in all the usual podcast places.

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 some mornings 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.

Better late than never

This post was supposed to happen yesterday or this morning but it's now mid-afternoon. I'm in the world's most irritable mood right now and every task I undertake seems to be taking me three times as long as it should to complete.

The new beads are finally all sorted. Glass used is as follows...

'Rose Lemonade': CiM Foam encased with Effetre Rose Quartz 067, decorated with Effetre Light Pink 260, and half of the beads have been tumble-etched

'Maple Syrup': CiM Foam encased with CiM Brown Eyed Girl, decorated with Effetre Red Roof Tile 440

'Lemon Sorbet': CiM Foam enacsed with CiM Candlelight, decorated with Effetre White 204 and tumble-etched

'Hydrangea': CiM Foam encased with Effetre Medium Blue 054 and Effetre Dark Lavender 081, decorated with Effetre White 204 and tumble-etched

'Soft Pink' Spotties: CiM Desert Pink encased with Effetre Super Clear 006, decorated with spots in Effetre White 204, with spacers in CiM Rose Quartz

All of these beads are currently available in my shop. Because you're here reading my blog I'd like to give you a discount code to say thanks. Enter the code BLOG10 at checkout to get 10% off your order. You can use the discount for anything in my shop and it's valid until midnight (UK time) on Monday 4th November.

Enjoy the rest of your Saturday!