Taking Time For Me

I've been consumed with the act of keeping Pooch going for the past week and a half (actually for the past year). Somehow, I've gotten lost in the shuffle: I began defining the quality of my day by how well the dog did that day. Thankfully, Marble Man stepped up this weekend and I got to swipe the cobwebs out of the studio doorway and do some beading. (Oh, yeah... she makes jewelry, right?) It took a while to get my groove going, since I haven't made any jewelry projects since Thanksgiving. It really got away from me!

A couple of weekends ago, I treated myself to a triple-shot-skinny-latte at Barnes & Noble while perusing the latest issue of Bead and Button Magazine. There's something special about a new mag: the smell of the fresh pages, the promise of projects to come, and the thought of learning something new. Last Fall I made a stab at teaching myself the flat peyote stitch. I love the whole idea of bead weaving. You take piles of little tiny things and weave them together to make a greater whole. The bracelet I made was fun and cute, and used fairly large beads. It was a good first project but I wanted to step up the difficulty a notch or two. I set out my dishes of size 11 and 15 seed beads and polished up my reading glasses. Those 15's are very tiny!

I started with some beautiful 14mm crystal rivoli's. When they arrived in the mail, I thought, "well this is interesting - there's no hole for stringing! What do I do with this?" I sat down with my new mag, turned to the instructions for bezels and figured out how to make one using peyote stitch. Basically, it's a beaded cage that encases the rivoli. It came out pretty well. So, now I have this beautiful pendant, and what am I going to do with it?

The bracelet I made last time used even-count peyote stitch. To shake things up I thought I'd try odd-count peyote and make some beaded tubes to match my new pendant.

Turns out, odd-count peyote is a little trickier than even-count, but I got it figured out and see the result!

Now to make a tubular right-angle weave rope to hang these beauties on, and I'll have a real treasure.