Heading East

It's time to pack the beads into the car and head to NH for the Summer. It's already hit 90degrees in Tombstone. This trip there will be a trailer following along behind my Honda. Some wags have said it looks like a mouse following behind a big orange toaster.

We're going to take the long way around and do some sight seeing. From AZ we're going to Los Angeles, up highway 1 to San Francisco, on to Portland Oregon and then across the Northern border with Canada before dropping down into NY and home to NH. Wireless connections willing, I'll try and post an update or two from the road. Otherwise I'll be back in touch around the second week of June.

Shutting down in Arizona, packing the vehicles and hitting the open road....

Challenge Beading

When a group of beaders get together, someone always seems to have an odd something or other that is offered up as a creative challenge. The bead cave in Payson last month was no different. I had found bamboo placemats in Marshall's and thought, "what neat long beads." I bought several and took them to the cave.


I used my portion to make a broad collar with small beads in between the long bamboo beads. It's always nice to have that many holes to work with. Several of the other gals said, "Wind Chimes!"

What might you have done with these placemat beads?

In return, our hostess had these copper scrubbies for all of us. She does like copper! Well, mine is in the process of becoming a "Domestic Goddess" necklace. I sawed off the handle and attached a bone face that I antiqued with rit dye. I have some white, drawstring cording that is going to go through the clothes pins to make it into a necklace. The parts are all done and gathered together, I just need some time to finish it once I get into my Summer Studio.

Thank You Robin

The end of April I had the pleasure of joining several ladies for a bead cave in Payson AZ. They had seen some finger weaving that I had done and wanted to try it. I grabbed Robin Atkins' book, Beaded Treasures, wrote up a materials list and facilitated a great day of finger weaving.

Lauren and I made bracelets, hers in all shades of red and mine in Lucite with faceted gemstone roundels. Every once in a while I manage to make what I saw in my mind when I bought the beads. I went to Maine last year and bought vintage Lucite beads. Just see how nicely the project finally turned out (bottom bracelet).

Jo went drawer diving and was using every largish bead she could find (including plastic) to create a very large tassel.... or was it going to be a wind chime? Whatever you call it, it turned out big, brash and in-your-face bold.

Drawer Diving: a drawer full of leftover or otherwise discarded beads. All participants bring contributions to throw into the pot. Then everybody can pick out beads that might work for their own project.


Pam's work is always meticulous, but selecting the right color combinations for her bracelet became the focus of her beading time. Sometimes you just have to stop and fondle the beads! Don't we all know how that is?

Sandra also decided to make a tassel and chose soft colors. I'm sure we'll see more finger woven elements in her paper work. She makes the most beautiful books and bead embroidered pieces.

Crystal thought she had brought enough neutral colored beads to make a tassel, but had to drawer dive several times to make her earthy piece full enough to look right. I enjoyed the ethnic look as a contrast to the fanciful colored pieces.

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Marque kept saying, "no, I'm not going to do that"! We knew that at some point she just wouldn't be able to resist. Capiz shell flowers, long bamboo beads and an assortment of over-large plastic components made a wind chime with the most unusual, soft tones.

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Once again, Thank You Robin for writing the book and sharing with us a technique that gave our group so much enjoyment.

And Thank You, Jo for hosting a beautiful, relaxing weekend of beading amoungst friends.

Designing Bead Crochet Elements

I haven't gotten a lot of beading done in the last 6 to 8 months, but I have been doing a lot of work that will make bead crochet graphing as easy as falling off of a log. I'm even so far behind on my Bead Journal Project that I'm going to have to drop out as I'll never catch up at this point.

Instead of writing a third book on Bead Crochet ropes, I've been collaborating with a computer friend, Ken, on creating a software program for graphing bead crochet designs. It's finally to the point that I want to show it off and let people know that it's coming. It'll go to bead fairies for testing next week. We'll ask themand to try and break it as well as find any bugs and flaws . It should be ready for release around mid-June of this year. Watch Bead Line Web site for announcements. It'll be for sale through my good friends at Bead-Patterns. There will also be designs sold on Bead Patterns that will import directly into this program.

Sneak Preview:

Bead Crochet Element Designer is a software program that will allow you to import bead crochet elements, change the bead colors, change the design itself and save your design. You will be able to design on a graph or on the rope itself. The fantastic thing is that you can twirl the rope to see what your design will look like in real life. We all know that the flat graph is useful, but requires that you visualize what the finished rope will look like. Too many times we've had to actually crochet a sample only to find out that it wasn't quite right. Once you have a design you like, just click one button and up pops the stringing table for the design on the screen. When you're ready to get out the beads, just print out your design and you can take it (with stringing table) to your beading table and get to work.

The program will come with 6 to 8 designs that you can use right away.

If your eyesight is as mature as mine is (like, almost blind!) there is a zoom feature that allows you to blow up the graph itself.


I'm excited and have been using it to refine my own designs without having to crochet several samples to make sure things look like what I thought they would.

We envisioned this as a true entry level design program, thus there are not a lot of frills and extras. You get one size bead in 9 set colors and will have to pick your own colors and bead size to substitute for the bead letters A through I. It is limited to 14 graph rows, but can handle 5-around through 9-around. I just looked in my books and there are very few designs that go beyond 12 graph rows.

Now maybe I can get back to actually crocheting some of the neat new designs I've come up with.