Got It

I have boxes and ziplock bags and bins and drawers of little pieces of beadwork that haven't quite come into their own. Not yet matured, as it were.

There are tiny little motifs, design elements waiting to be incorporated into something bigger, little experiments that gave me an answer that wasn't interesting or useful - some are just ugly, but some are impossible to bead.

Sometimes they're impossible because the stitching is even weirder than usual or the number of passes through one particular bead approaches infinity where the size of the bead hole is definitely finite and sometimes they're impossible because a motif that needs to be repeated to make a three-dimensional shape and which works really well as a singleton just does not play well with others.

Sometimes the making was so unpleasant and unenjoyable that I couldn't even bring myself to finish it.

Sometimes there's something lacking, something which looks sloppy, something which is squishy where it should be firm; sometimes it's just ugly. If I can solve the problem, I tend to cut up the unsuccessful iterations so the bits and pieces of beadwork tucked away are those that just didn't quite make the cut one way or another (pun intended).

And even when I like something enough to finish it and enough to wear it, it's not always quite done because there's an improvement somewhere, whether in the design, the choice of beads, the thread path, something.

 Yesterday I figured out how to connect the components I wanted to incorporate into this beaded bead. It has the rivolis around its equator and tapers to an area with smaller chatons and ends up as something more or less ovoid.

It's ok. Nice-ish.

I really hate the ends. The one you can see above is just a mass of fringe beads which basically hide the fact that I couldn't come to a satisfactory solution at the poles. The south pole is even worse; I did this thing with size 15ºs and it was supposed to be sort of picots but they didn't behave and are just a mess so I covered them with a large rondelle so really only I know what's underneath.

Well, and you of course.

So I started the next version with a couple of improvements in mind, some of which I'd solved in my head, but knowing that the ends of this beaded bead needed to be better.

 Once I did away with my assumption that I'd use fire-polished beads at the ends it all fell into place: tiny picots form something like a star-shaped bead cap into which an accent bead may be nestled if desired, but which is neat and attractive enough to be left naked.

It's also even and regular enough that the bead can be balanced on its end. I think it's as close to done as it will be for a while, perhaps forever.

Right now? It's hanging around my neck.

I might be ready to move onto something else.