Lots of Wiggles

I do like these little beads. They're fun to make and they're just so bright and sparkly! I call them 'Wiggle' beads as they have a twisty kind of thing going on. Very tactile - great beads for those of us who like to fiddle and twiddle with our jewellery.

I'm off up to Cambridge tomorrow for the weekend so I'll see you next week!

I always say it . . . . .

. . . . . but it really is tricky to pick a favourite from all the great names you've suggested.

I narrowed it down to five names and I kept gravitating towards one of those. The name I've picked is 'Persian Glow' as suggested by Janine. Thanks Janine - I'll get your beads in the post to you!

Big thanks to everyone who entered! There'll be another bead naming competition soon.

It's bead naming time!

I made these greeny-bluey beads and I can't think of a decent name for them!

If you've got any thoughts please post your name suggestions in my comments section. You can post as many names as you like. I'll pick my favourite name at 7.00 pm (GMT) tomorrow night and the winner will receive the pair of 18mm lentil beads pictured below.

Marian Keyes

You may remember that last month I went to see Marian Keyes at the Chichester Literary Festival. After Marian's fantastic talk she did a book signing and I got the opportunity to meet her. She is such a lovely lady!

Now, you may also remember that way back I wrote a blog entry about how much I loved her book 'Anybody Out There' and how it had me laughing and crying the whole way through. If you haven't read this book, it deals with death and grief but Marian writes in such a down-to-earth way that she doesn't make it depressing or miserable. I know it sounds cheesy but 'Anybody Out There' helped me a great deal after my Mum died.

I knew when I went to the literary festival that there would be a good chance of me meeting Marian so I made her this bracelet to kind of say thank you for helping me. A few days later Marian sent me a lovely email to thank me for the bracelet.

And today I was very flattered, very excited and very pleased when I read Marian's November Newsletter - yours truly gets a mention! Please click here to have a read. Oh, and if you've never read a Marian Keyes book then make sure you stick one on your Christmas list!

Coffee

These are a set of lentil beads which I've called 'Espresso'.

I love coffee. Totally love it. But I don't drink it half as much as I'd like to. I kind of gave up drinking coffee at home a few years back because I found that it made my hands shake. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't a trembling wreck and the shaking was minimal but enough to affect my beadmaking. Applying hair-thin stringer is difficult at the best of times but quivery hands make it nearly impossible. I read somewhere that cutting out coffee helps with the shakey-hand thing so I switched to tea and voila - no more wibbly fingers!

So now I only drink coffee on days when I'm not making beads (er, not often then) which tends to be when I'm up in Cambridge. Chris and I went to Starbucks at the weekend and I had one of their seasonal Creme Brulee Lattes. How lush was that?! So lush that I broke my no coffee rule and had another last night when I popped into town .......