Double Deadlines

A week from today, I'll be having dinner (or perhaps finishing dinner) with Nancy, Adriana, Sunita and Bob in San Francisco. I'll also have finished two days of teaching: Saturday being an introduction to seed-beading, covering as many stitches as possible, and Sunday comprising two project classes, Verso and Flat Russian.

I already have instructions for Sunday.

I've spent much of the weekend compiling instructions for Saturday.

I actually thought I'd be able to cut and paste a whole lot more from my little library, but it turns out that much of what I've done is sort of specific, having detailed instructions to achieve something in particular, and not necessarily well-suited to introducing a particular stitch.

So I've had to make new instructions.

This means making samples which get photographed at every significant step along the way.

Sometimes the sample that results is just a little thingy.

If I'm showing beginning and ending too, the sample can be an actual thing, like a bracelet.

Sometimes when I really liked the sample, I added stuff to make it prettier. This one was actually an interesting exercise.

I know that I like the look of silver-lined seed beads in herringbone stitch, particularly flat herringbone. I also know that I like the way it looks using size 15 seeds, and both Japanese and Czech size 11 seeds, and that I don't care for the way it looks using Czech size 6 seeds.

Turns out I also really like the way it looks with Japanese silver-lined size 8 seeds.

A week from now I'll be days away from having to turn in my teaching proposals for October through January, which is about a month earlier than expected, due to bead store anniversaries, open houses and the like.

I confess, not the very best of timing for me.

I did devise a fun zig-zaggy motif which I've repeated and flipped and joined to make an airy bracelet, though it would also make a rather nice cuff as a single long strip. I may well not have time to make that sample though.

I've started on what I think will be a pendant, and which is so far appearing to be growing according to plan, even though I managed to forget a design element on the very first try.

Unfortunately this is unlikely to get finished quickly, as each section takes somewhere between half an hour and an hour to complete, and there are probably still about six more. I'm considering trying to bead on the flights to and from San Francisco, an activity I've hithertofore not been very interested in trying, as I'm rather fond of my flying time for knitting, and also I'm not sure I can accomplish it without spillage and loss (at best) or pokeage and expulsion (at worst).

Not to mention, I'm dying to start the next knitting project. And dyeing to start it. Actually I've done the dyeing, it's just now drying, and I'm merely anxious to start.

I mean, it's not as though I don't have to prepare (pack beading supplies, complete instructions, assemble kits, that sort of thing) for the trip: I probably can't count on large uninterrupted blocks of beading time before my proposal deadline.

Looks like I won't make the Bead & Button deadline again this year.

Realistically, I should have used the last fifteen minutes for beading rather than blogging, I suppose.

Not news that my priorities aren't always entirely expedient.