Red Sea Star beaded bead

It’s pretty, but a little disappointing: the sparkle of the round orange Swarovski crystals doesn’t really stand out, it’s the clear seed beads and the big red glass faceted bead in the center that really catch most of the notice.  Still, it’s a very lovely bead.

I have managed to get my new laptop up and running and installed with my various weaving software, and decided to celebrate by threading some more of my 1400-thread weaving project (24″ x 60 ends per inch).  I’ve been threading at a rate of about 3 threads/minute, treadling the threading, which is about 180 ends per hour, which means about 8 hours to thread the whole thing.  Yikes.  Well, best to get started right away, if it’s going to take awhile…so I put in an hour or so of work and am now on thread 223. I plan to do some more tonight.

I may have to work all weekend, but if not I’m going to try helping Gwen Fisher with her Bat Country project – a tetrahedral “jungle gym” made of baseball bats and baseballs.  (Do look at the mockup; it’s pretty amusing.)  needless to say, this is a Burning Man project.  They’re assembling it this weekend as a trial run, and I plan to help.  The photos alone should be worth it.

Off to work!  I’m running really late.

At any rate, I’m working on a gaudier version in flame-colored Swarovski crystal, white crystalline seed beads, and with a big red faceted glass bead in the center, and so far it’s coming along quite nicely.  I should finish it tonight, assuming nothing distracts me.

Beading is kind of fun, but it doesn’t hold much intellectual interest for me.  It’s sort of like knitting I suppose; there’s a lot of variations you can do, but the planning stage seems to be a tiny fraction of the amount of time you spend working the pattern.  On the other hand I suppose you could say the same thing about weaving, and beading at least is quick: it took me about 3 hours to make the first Sea Star and probably about 2.5 hours to make the second one.  I also suspect it would be a lot more fun/intellectually interesting if I were making my own patterns instead of following someone else’s, but I don’t think I want to put that much effort into it.  I guess I’m just saying that beading doesn’t “speak to me”, so (after this spate of work) I don’t plan to pursue it further.

It is neat, though.  I do recommend Gwen’s patterns, expensive as they are – they’re very well-written and it’s hard to go wrong with such clear diagrams.  And the results are gorgeous.

Actually I’m trying to talk Mike into doing ALC with me. But that’s another story…

Anyway, riding with Mike is much more fun than riding on my own – he is faster than me and so challenges me to ride faster, which (curiously) I’m finding I enjoy more than I thought I would. Don’t know if it would motivate me when I’m on my own, but it is much more interesting than doing long rides by myself.

The downside is that (once again) riding is taking up all my weekends. I did manage to get to a bead store before it closed on Sunday, but it was one of the worst-organized shops I have ever seen, so I didn’t manage to find all the beads I needed. I looked online at Fire Mountain Gems, but they had such a dizzying array of beads that I got hopelessly confused. I really need a way to look at beads, compare them, and then decide what I’m using. Which brings me back to the physical bead shop. I think today I will leave work a little early and go to Baubles & Beads in Berkeley, which has an excellent reputation.