Pinch Me

In general, it's probably fair to say that I buy beads because I like them. Silly if not, after all.

There are those beads that I buy with no specific purpose, but that I know will be useful, and are. Things like size 11 seed beads, 4mm fire-polished beads and fringe beads. I almost don't care how many different colours and finishes I buy, because I know that there will come a day with a project for which that bead is exactly what I need.

Then there are beads I buy out of sheer lust with absolutely no concept of what I could possibly do with them, and yet like my biological clock, am unable to resist. Sometimes it turns out well, as with the big fat faceted rondelles. It took a few years, but I did come up with something to use them for. Of course that encouraged me to stock up on more of them than I could possibly use in a zillion variants of the same design, but hey! I might have another Rondelle-Inspired Flash of Brilliance.

Sometimes I see a design requiring a specific bead that I think I might like to try, and so I set out to acquire a rich and balanced enough palette of said beads that if ever I had the burning impulse to make that design, any failure on my part to complete said design could not possibly be blamed on lack of raw materials.

Way back when, I saw a right angle weave necklace using pinch beads, and so set out to stock up a good selection (which I did) and then to make the necklace (which I did, and which sucked).

For some reason the emotional overtones of pinch beads (which really are very cute) associated with the suckage never really percolated through and never overpowered the desire for More Pinch Beads, so every now and again, I find myself with pinch beads in yet another colour, which I then place with the other unused and unloved (in terms of the attention I pay to them) pinch beads, and move on to lavender permanent finish gilt-lined seed beads, and what possessed me to buy that many tubes.

Some days ago in my endless surfing through beading blogs, I saw a rather ugly necklace of beads beaded from pinch beads strung on a knotted leather cord, and it reignited the pinch bead flame in my heart, and so, thinking it was the last day to get 40% off Czech beads at the local bead store (which an email today informed me was in fact so, but is no longer true as the sale has been extended by a week), yesterday I bought two more strands.

Even though I have kits to fill (it's amazing. When you procrastinate for as many months as I have, things mount up) and even though there are unfinished projects demanding my attention (but on which I did spend a few hours on Saturday. Not enough to finish anything, but enough for noticeable change) I needed the instant gratification of the low-hanging fruit that is a quickie beaded bead, and so I used up all but three of my new pinch beads (one broke).

I'm thinking that knotted leather cord isn't even slightly on my radar, but the question is whether I need more pinch beads in the same colours (I have none), or more in other coordinating colours (I have none. Mine all seem to coordinate with purple or lime), and if I acquire more, whether I should make beaded beads in other shapes, or more of the same. I guess that's two questions.

Really though, bicone beads in dark bronze would be just the ticket to string between them, and the sale is on for another week after all.