I Like Thinner

I finished the kumihimo necklace using all size elevens (instead of eights, which are bigger. Think eight beads per inch versus eleven beads per inch. Very approximately)

Since I may (most likely) want to slide a pendant onto it, instead of my usual sewn clasp, I added jump rings and a narrow S-hook clasp so as not to make the ends fat and lumpy.

See how much nicer? The thicker necklace has better colour definition and those beads work really well with some of the other beads I've been using as accents within the braiding, like lentils and daggers and teardrops, but as a sort of wardrobe staple on which to hang things, the thin one is better.

It doesn't take all that horribly long either (I did about a third or more of a necklace in under two hours), though the braiding seems more likely to go awry: I found I had to correct a couple of mistakes that I missed. I suppose if I'd have been wearing glasses while braiding that might not have happened.

I think I'm in denial about the fact that my eyesight is just not as sharp as it was. It's somehow always a surprise that oh! I can't see! I should put on my glasses! which sounds studiedly and annoyingly disingenuous but is in reality the same affliction that strikes so many people who are no longer in their twenties or thirties: they feel that they still are and every time they're reminded by reality it's just a tensy bit shocking.