More Kit Samples

Swirl has been really popular, and I hadn't originally planned to teach it at all. I had made one, sold it on a whim, but before I did, a sometime beading student of mine saw it and begged for me to teach it which I did.

Since I had the instructions done, I made them available in my Etsy shop, where it's been quite popular. It's a fun, quick and easy project, and even though the pictures here show matching beads, it would also work pretty well with an assortment of beads approximately the same colour - or fading from light to dark or random or whatever. Or for using up left-over odds and ends. I might just make one of those...

And now I'm putting kits together with one more to go (teal with copper).

It felt to me like taking a break (from kit samples), but the earring below may well be a class sample for the June through September session.

Today I taught Slant, which was interesting in that it really shows how adept people are (or are not) at reading their beading, which is hugely helpful in making happy progress.

I didn't teach the changing-direction thing that happens at the centre front of the necklace (though the instructions do include a description of how to achieve it), all we did was the basic structure.

You have to be able to do even-count tubular peyote with increases and decreases and keep tabs on your step-up which tends to move around in a seemingly arbitrary manner, which I kept telling the class participants, a bit stuck record-like. (As an aside, I think everyone in the class was old enough to know what a stuck record is. I just realised that to a boatload of people, that's just a semantic-free phrase. Weird).

To be honest, I find it harder to follow written instructions than to do actual beading just by looking at it, because it tells you what to do next. Five pairs of decrease beads? The colours shift. Working downhill? Add the colour you're moving towards. Uphill? Add the colour you're coming from. Just keep track of your step-up, though if necessary (if you lose it irretrievably) you can fake it.

Although my approach to pretty much all beading is conceptual rather than step-by-step, this is the sort of thing that is utterly painful step-by-step and a breeze in the overview. Like right angle weave: tedious in the extreme to explain step-by-step, but obvious looking at the structure, at the geometry.

Oh well. I clearly lack the part of the brain that gets sports: goals or wickets or baskets or runs or fouls or overs or offence for defence and which animal or bird name is what sport and why it's important who wins. I'll just never get any of that.