Not Entirely Failed

So I've been a busy girl, knitting and beading away (and yesterday, I made THREE DINNERS, so I don't have to do any real cooking until Wednesday, how organized is that!) and while I've produced plenty in the way of volume (I've made practically all the pieces for Amy's necklace), I'm not completely satisfied with what I have.

Hmm, some joined up.  The teardrop is the centre of the necklace-to-be, and the little hexagon lies somewhere about the shoulder line, but I don't think it's quite right.  I may have to lift and separate, eh, separate the components and find another way to link then together.  I have some ideas for a more fluid composition - I think this is a little stiff.

And oh yeah, I have a sleeve - I mean, a SWATCH.  It's long enough for a sleeve, though not really wide enough.  Turns out that before dyeing, I had about 18 stitches over 4" (yeah, knitted back and forth, which for me is not in itself a guarantee of looser gauge, rather, the fact that it's just a relatively few stitches is a better predictor, leading to my dislike of swatching, and my conviction of the uselessness thereof.  It's not bad for ball-park planning, but for precision, an actual piece or part of a piece of a garment is better), and after dyeing (I thought the yarn looked thinner, which quite frankly surprised me after all that swishing and simmering) I get 21.  Whoooops!

Never mind, I'll just do something different.  It's not handspun, so I'm under no compulsion to design my own (OK, so sue me, I sometime suffer under self-imposed compulsions), so in this instance I'd rather just find a pattern at my gauge  - and I have already! (Here!)

The next was a quick little experiment prompted by my need to feel good after the disappointment of The Great Putting Together above.  We're looking at a cabochon (actually, it's a bead, but who's counting?) about 30mm (a bit over an inch) in diameter, and I've used size 11 and 15 seed beads, and 3mm and 4mm fire-polished beads to bezel it, with some very pretty flat-back pearls for decoration.  The chain will probably be a double spiral rope, since I can't figure out an organic way of starting a peyote or herringbone or any other rope off the top.

I've no idea what the stone is, some kind of agate no doubt - pretty much everything is an agate or a jasper, it seems.  What you can't see in the picture is that the faceted grey beads have a soft iridescence which makes them a whole lot more attractive in Real Life.  

Meanwhile the Put Together Badly necklace is looking balefully at me, demanding a much better effort.