Less Time, More Done

One queued kumihimo necklace completed.

 I bought the focal bead years ago and made the two small beaded beads dangling below soon after, and then I stopped. I suppose there didn't seem to be an attractive plan immediately presenting itself, even though the beads with which any plan would unfold were apparently obvious.

I started braiding the necklace with little to no plan (just braid it and then make a clasp) when I remembered the stone and found the beaded beads and then it was obvious.

It's rather satisfying to have something fall together so conveniently: the necklace is more interesting than when I started it, and the stone and beaded beads are no longer being shuffled from drawer to drawer in the stash.

Today I was teaching part two of the class for which I made the sample yesterday, getting a massage, running errands and yet somehow in the remaining time there was more beading than the day before which was almost completely dedicated to beading. Go figure.

Actually I really shouldn't be surprised as I've always maintained that the less free time you have, the more efficiently you use it. Back in the paleolithic era when I was married with two small children I still managed to take care of the three (no, that's not a typo) children, work full-time, cook every meal except when I was lucky enough to get a babysitter on the weekend, and still sew about eighty to ninety percent of my clothes.

Not that I even slightly yearn for those days, though the kids were pretty cute.

You know how when you buy new clothes that you really really like and you just have to wear them immediately and even though there's no need to change that day, you do because you Must Wear New Clothes? Yeah same with new beads. Mostly I buy and I put them with others to which they're related and then some time later they get used in the course of things without much fanfare.

Not today.

I had a few minutes around the class time and picked out two tubes of seed beads, some utterly delicious daggers and some tile beads and I USED THEM ALL THIS EVENING.

Hah.

 The daggers and tiles in the necklace above, and the tiles and both seed beads in the pendant below.

And look! I thought I'd see just how awkward it is to string size elevens for kumihimo (quite) and just how tedious it is to braid (not dreadfully). The rope is the perfect size for the pendant and is actually really close to a herringbone rope with four size elevens in each round.

I think I should switch to elevens to slow down the rate of production. If I'd taken elevens instead of eights to Australia I wouldn't have made quite so many necklaces and my hand-luggage wouldn't have been quite so heavy - though not light enough to have made a difference at Brisbane airport.

Some of the accent beads I like are better matched to the larger seed beads though. I guess it's always good to have more options.