Burn Baby Burn

I have to tell you, I was pretty excited to find an online seller who not only had replacement thread burner tips, not only had them in cost-saving (and very forward-thinking: it's not as though I'll never damage another tip in my life) three-packs, but they also had two other items I needed, so I placed my order.

What a thrill - the package arrived today, and yeah yeah yeah, the other stuff is fine but my tips! Yay for replacement tips!

But let's look just a little closer. (Hint: the thin metal filaments are supposed to lie in the same plane as the two brass prongs).

Two out of three are damaged. Look again at the top picture. You can see it there.

Now my dilemma is whether or not to use the good tip in the hope that I can exchange the two bad ones for two good ones, or if they'll insist that I return all three and spend yet another couple of weeks without my burn, which I tell you frankly does not inspire happiness, even though it doesn't curtail my beading activities in the slightest.

To whit: a bracelet.

It's not really negligence in terms of pattern-writing and kit-assembly, at least not all that much. I had made it up some years ago, claspless. Back then I was open to the idea of split rings, which I am now opposed to on the grounds that they just look ugly, cheap and messy (not that I have much of an opinion). Anyway, it needed cutting up and redoing, and while I was at it, adding a slight accent colour, as it was bronze, all bronze, all the way - I added some peachy-coppery metallic seed beads which I think leaves it much improved, but not for me since it's too big.

I have actually been going gangbusters on the sample for the next class, but it's intrinsically (more than your average seed-beaded project) slow-going, though I am past the slowest bits. If I weren't going out knitting tonight I could easily finish it.

Tomorrow.

Since the class is over, I made two of my beaded bead samples into earrings. They're a really nice size, perhaps two-thirds of an inch in diameter, so the dangle is somewhere between an inch and an inch and a half. Not ridiculously huge, nor waste-of-time (some may say "overly delicately") tiny.

I had a bit of a fright on Monday: the Bead Fest Portland hotel website had it in for me and insisted that there were absolutely no rooms available whatsoever, not for any price, even if I wanted to smoke. Needless to say I became rather concerned about the whole teaching gig and cost and convenience thereof; thinking perhaps I'd contact people that I know will be there, who generally book a few rooms because they have helpers in their booth - but then I'd probably have to share which is not super-appealing since I'm such a light sleeper and the thought of four consecutive nights with no consecutive block of sleep longer than an hour or two just doesn't thrill me, in fact it fills me with gloom.

Then one kind and calm and extremely helpful Yolanda Brown (Reservations Manager) made all the bad go away.

Thanks. Seriously.