She loved the jade flower, but the twisted cord just wasn't her style. She likes big, bold, sharp pieces and this I think tended towards the hippie-cheap in style.
I knew I could do something, and even though I wasn't immediately inspired, I thought I could probably do it justice. The problem was that she wasn't in a hurry, so I felt no pressure, so everything else had a higher priority, so it hung on my wall for quite some time. I kept looking away.
From time to time I'd wander ask her desk to ask her whether she liked pearls, or whether asymmetry troubled her, or how long she wanted it to be, and I'd make little sketches that didn't seem terribly interesting once I looked at them at home in my beading space.
Three weeks ago she was due to have some sort of shoulder surgery, and I sorta kinda thought it might be nice to have the necklace done by the time she was back at work, so I started getting serious.
I knew from the beginning that it would have a chunky twisted rope with creamy white fresh-water pearls. I knew I couldn't use any of the jade in my stash which was more yellow and less blue than the flower. I knew I'd have to replace the cheesy faux carnelian in the centre of the flower and I thought I'd like to incorporate some sort of floral-esque motif. I also wanted to use the jade barrel beads on the necklace.
Asymmetry is always tricky in terms of the weight of the piece, and I could find no compelling asymmetric design, so it's pretty much symmetric, even the clasp, in which I managed to use one of the jade barrel beads, which in itself proved more challenging than I'd thought it would be, as it has a HUGE hole. Yvette has short hair, so the clasp has a dangle.
Even as it was in progress, I changed my mind.
I made a couple of floral motifs that didn't make it into the final necklace.
After making the second twisted rope, I realized that they ought to mirror each other, so I'm thinking that part of a bracelet is sitting on my work table.
Ultimately, I think I achieved what I was after. I hope she likes it.
And now I think I'd better get started on matching earrings.
During one of my slightly stalled periods, I was weak and took a break to make this.
A fun little pendant of slightly iridescent clear glass that allows you to see both back and front at the same time.
On the knitting front, I'm just about where I was last week when I realized that I'd in fact only been swatching all along. It turns out that the striping is even better than it was, so I'm not horribly disappointed, but I do hate that I wasted about two weeks of perfectly good knitting moments only to have to rip it all out.
I need to be strong, because I'm itching to start the next project which is especially urgent/exciting/appealling as I think it'll be an excellent use for the single skein of handdyed yarn that was too pretty to pass up so now that I've had the idea I'm not entirely sure that it's fair to deny myself the satisfaction. On the other hand, I'm fairly happy with the latest beading projects, so perhaps I should save it for a despondent moment when I need cheering up.
Perhaps.
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