Oh And

Another cat picture.

Alternately a picture of my daughter somewhat masked by the cat. When I remarked upon receiving it that the picture was awfully green, she cheerfully said, "Oh yes, I used green and red filters because the colour was too dull", which makes me wish I was a comic book character so I could have a thought bubble containing the following three characters:

???

She knows more about photography than I do, which is good and proper since she plans on making her living thereby.

On to me and my travails with beads.

I bought one of these when I saw my local bead store had them. Recently.

Xilion Chatons SS34? They're teeny-tiny rivolis, and I desperately wanted to make a gaudy and delicate Something with them. I started as soon as I got in from work on Friday, continued all day yesterday (with a break for "Race" by David Mamet, highly recommended) and all day today until I finally had something that didn't need cutting up.

It wasn't this.

The thing I needed to make had to be something approximately like this, but not so square and, well, cheesy. I made about seven variations, none of which survived long enough to be immortalised via the magic medium of digital photography.

I thought I might be barking up the wrong tree, so I took a left-hand turn.

This was semi-successful in terms of what it was (and only semi-successful as the petals don't lie right), and wholly unsuccessful in terms of what it wasn't (an embellished thing encrusted with lots of seed beads).

Then I got vey close, so I pushed on until I had these:

In some small part of my brain I thought I'd make a delicate chain with exquisite little beaded thingies sprinkled hither and yon, but I only had four of these chatons (see the picture of the packaging above), so earrings it was.

The red one? That's one of the sizes I usually work with. It's about twice the diameter of the centres of the earrings.