Save Me From Myself

It seems that the minute I admit to one obsession, another just jumps in and takes over.

What I was really supposed to be doing was writing instructions either for my next class (in more than a week, no sweat) or the next Earring of the Month Kit (only partially done; I'll start thinking I'm late towards the end of next week), but instead, after getting all fired up after making the earrings from the last post, I got caught again.

I had made a couple of multi-coloured beaded beads for the earrings, and started messing around with two colours (white and silver), the results of which you see above.

And then I ran out of the white beads, which I'd used up in the necklace at the bottom of this post, for my Tuesday class - the white beads were an experiment to see if size 6 seeds could be used as a focal area, and I think I've managed to answer that in the affirmative. It's not as obvious as you might think, as some stitches (tattoo stitch, used on the chain of my Mariposa necklaces) just look nasty in larger beads, so I wasn't about to make any assumptions.

This is the advantage of a big stash: no more white beads to go with the silver ones? No problem - let's haul out all the size sixes and arrange them into shiny/matte or shiny/silver-lined pairs and start at the left.

And now I have no more of the matte green beads. Actually, I lie, there's one left but it's a cull anyway, as it has a very small hole.

I'm kinda liking the necklace: a green somewhere between mint and lime, paired with iridescent pale amethyst crystal beads, brass nugget spacers and deep copper-brown fire-polished beads.

The way I feel now (apart from tired; I need to be asleep) makes me believe I shouldn't put those matched pairs of sixes away, because I'm not done yet.

So this necklace was a repetition of a lesson I should have actually learned before: grey and white beaded things just don't look fabulous in photos. They look as though I turned off the colour, but I swear, in person it's far less dull and much more elegant.

For those paying attention to anything beyond the pictures here (and I'm not making any sort of judgement, as there are quite a few blogs I visit regularly only for the pictures. Admittedly, it's because they're in Hungarian, Italian or Spanish, none of which I actually read or understand, although I have learned the Hungarian words for pattern, necklace, bracelet, pendant, beaded bead, earring and beaded bead. I can't pronounce them correctly, but I recognise them in print. I still can't make sense of the text in the blogs though, and sometimes I really want to. Occasionally I read a little bit of the French blogs, but my French is limited to asking for and receiving directions, business hours, shopping, food, subway stops and other touristy-type conversations), I finally have something to do at work. It's not thrilling work, but it's a thrill nonetheless.