Almost Done - For Me!

In between other projects, I've been working on this rope for myself. I have a set of white and black ropes that are my personal dress up and travel necklaces. However, truth be told, my wardrobe leans more to sage, dusty pinks, lime and hot pinks. So I need another set of grab ' go ropes for myself. I think this one will do nicely, especially paired with one that is predominately the pink you see above. Now I need to finish the last inch and join the ends. I'd better hurry as I will need them later this week.

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Understanding Bead Crochet:

I have the facility of being able to see a design from the flat graph paper. However lately I've been trying to explain the mechanics of it to my programmer/friend as we explore the next possibilities in bead crochet software. Thus, I went to bed with a headache last night. It would be much, much easier if he would learn to bead crochet!

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You read a graph from the bottom up, left to right. The worst of it is that you string up the graph and crochet down the graph. Remember: "the last bead strung is the first bead crocheted". This is especially important when you want to add on to your rope and match a design. You need to think backwards, and string your beads that way.

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I never thought I'd revert back to crocheting white beads and marking them with a Sharpie. It was the only way I could think of to show just where each bead from the graph was on a rope. And I learned something ..... it doesn't make a lick of difference if you start stringing with bead 1 or bead 36, the pattern comes out the same. Duh, I should have known that as I did know that you needed a reverse stringing table to be able to add onto a rope and match up a pattern! Try teaching something to someone else and see what you manage to learn yourself.

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I did get a chuckle explaining that you can add on to only one end of a rope. Because of the way the loops are formed, the other end is sort of sealed. Light went on and I brought up a dog food bag, or birdseed bag.... pull the string loops one way and the thread just zips off; pull the other end of the string and you have the tightest, non-moving, knotted piece of string.

All of this mental exercise is because we want to be able to have a software package that can go get design elements and put them together to make larger pattern pieces. To do that, you have to really understand the mechanics of the craft at a deeper level. Almost more than I ever wanted to know!

Bead Crochet End Caps

I happened to be in Lowe's with a guy and while he was looking at stuff, I was opening drawers in the hardware aisle. I came across these soft plastic screw protectors and had to try them with my bead crochet ropes. Now, I'm not too excited by the colors, but I'm told that there are other colors out there. Gals, go bug your local Home Depot, Lowe's or hardware store and see what you can find!
The green ones I tried fit 3/8" screws and work perfectly over a 6-around rope done with 8/0's. I had to make a hole in the end for the thread to exit the top. I can see these with an attached wrapped loop for a clasp. Nice, soft feeling, non-allergenic......
The yellow ones that fit 5/16" screws would work well on smaller ropes with smaller beads. My only complaint is that they were packed 3 to a bag, but at under $1 a bag, buying two bags for 3 pair isn't too shabby.

Suprise the man in your life and ask to make a visit to a hardware store with him..... Then go look in all those hardware drawers - you never know what neat beading things you'll find.

It's Done - BCED that is

Bead Crochet Element Designer is done and up for sale. You can find it at Bead Patterns or Sova Enterprises as a download, for $30. I'm so excited that this is finally a reality after more than a year's worth of hard work. In my wildest dreams, I never expected to find myself on the authoring end of a computer program at retirement age!



There is more information about the program and what it does at Bead Line Studios. It's not a fancy program with loads of bells and whistles. It does one thing, and does it very well. It allows you to graph bead crochet patterns and see what they actually look like on a rope. The colors are limited to only 9, and we've joked that the programmer is color-blind, but with the stringing table printout, it's easy to make bead substitutions.

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A design like this is difficult to see and graph on the traditional slanted flat graph. With BCED I had it completed in about five minutes. I could rotate the rope and see that it would work right away. I printed out the stringing table and was stringing it immediately. The design crocheted up without having to go back and make several sample pieces to get it all right. The hard part was not fiddling with the design to see what else I could come up with. One evaluator said that the program was better than Windows solitaire for plain play fun.
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Now that the software is over at Bead Patterns, I can finish getting some pattern sets completed to add. I'm doing sets of 8 to 9 patterns in a group that you will be able to purchase and import directly into the program. Then you can either use them directly or fiddle with them to make them your own patterns.

Did I say that I was excited?

AZ to NH - via the Pacific Coast

I now have postcards in my mind of favorite places and some new places that I will probably never see again in my lifetime. I have now been in all of the lower 48 states. Gas prices were not a pleasant part of the trip, but finances and health might not make a trip like this possible in the future. So we decided to just go ahead and do it. Arizona to California(via the tip of Nevada), Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, British Columbia, The Dakotas, Minnesota, Upper & Lower Michigan, Niagara Falls, Toronto, New York, and Vermont. Three weeks on the road!



Southern California was great... architecture, vintage cars and a smell to the air that somehow evoked memories from my 20's.

Then up the Pacific Coast Highway 1, along the twisty road with the cliffs straight down to the ocean. The last time I drove that road was in the 1970's in a 1937 MG.






What's San Francisco without the fog rolling in over the coastal hills, driving a car and trailer down Lombard Street and eating San Francisco sourdough bread





The glorious redwoods are still one of my favorite places in the USA. Tall, quiet, and beautifully big.








The Columbia River Gorge in Oregon was a delightful surprise of a rain forest. Everything was moss covered and very green and lush. Wild flowers were everywhere along the windy road.



The Canadian Rockies in British Columbia were majestic. As far as I'm concerned, that's where the snow belongs - on top of the mountains.


While we were there we visited Fort Steel. I couldn't resist the photo of the field covered with dandelions. I like them and never have tried to have a lawn without them.


What's a trip without a "what-is-it?" - In amongst the Ft Steel vintage farm equipment was this yellow, cast iron thing with a seat on one side and a chute on the other side. "Oh sure", I said, tongue in cheek, it's a good old "C11"! Still don't know what it was used for... any ideas?






Glacier National Park was mostly closed due to snow in the higher reaches. We did get to drive about 20 miles into the park and enjoy the glacial lake and beautiful mountains.


I fell in love with Montana. What a tidy, clean state with wide open skies. The only drawback is the thought of how much it snows there in the winter. It's hard to see them, but this is a field of what they say are wild buffalo.

I had forgotten that Butte MT was a copper mining town. There are still two Bertoglio's in the phone book. We spent an extra day exploring and went to look at the old smelter stack - world's largest masonry structure - 30' taller than the Washington Monument.

A visit to White Pine and Rockland Mich. in the Upper Peninsula was a trip back to my childhood - 3rd and 4th grades to be exact. Surprise.... the small museum in Rockland had my 4th grade class photo in it.



The maple table and chairs in my AZ kitchen were build in the basement of this Rockland house in the 1950's. It's the only woodworking project that my Father ever did.




Niagara Falls from the Canadian side was interesting, but somewhat of a disappointment due to the commercialism of the whole thing. The drive along the river to Ft. Erie was more interesting.



We stopped to visit children and some old friends along the way and arrived back in NH just in time for the hot and muggy weather. All I can say is, "what a great trip and what a beautiful, ever changing country we live in!"