Careful what you wish for

Back in September I said,
" Now I wish I could replace my antique oak table with one of those retro red and chrome 50's kitchen table sets. That would look awesome in this kitchen."

I was semi-joking when I mentioned the table because because I'd only ever seen one red one for sale and it cost as much as half my beads. 1930's through 1950's anything in red seems to be popular and very expensive.
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This was in the Salvation Army store in Concord NH today.

I hesitated.

I hemmed & hawed,

walked away and went back

to look again.

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The table came home with me.

It really wanted to live in my yellow kitchen.

Now I need help. I need to find 4 to 6 chairs to go under it.

New Orleans & 4 years of Blogs

4 years ago I started this Blog.

29,800 visitors read what I had to say in that time.

Thank you all for showing an interest in what I'm doing.

It's been a journey with lots of changes. Many good and a few not so good.

A little over 4 years ago I visited New Orleans and later created a freeform bracelet after the hurricane. This winter I'm going back to New Orleans. Although the city won't be the same, I know the time spent with Bev at No Easy Beads will be just as enjoyable.

A couple of photos of my very early beadwork

Summer Studio (to be)

Paint instead of wallpaper? Should be easy, I thought. Well, not when some idiot house manufacturer applied flocked vinyl wall paper right onto the wallboard. I tried wetting it. I tried one of those thingies that makes holes and then wetting it. Nothing, nada, it still pulled a lot of the underlying paper with it. So I resigned myself to a lot of work to get what I wanted, rolled up my sleeves and ....R i i i i p ... pulled it all off dry.

That meant picking at the edges of the wallboard paper to remove any that was still lose. Then I put a coat of "Gardz" sealer on the wall. That stuff sort of glues everything down and waterproofs the wall. Next came a skim coat of joint compound to even up the edges of the ripped paper. Sand all of that, touch up any places I missed and sand again. Next came a coat of "Bin" primer on the high gloss lower portion. I wanted the decorative molding gone, but the thought of repairing what would be left made me quickly change my mind.

Finally I could paint the studio walls. Two coats of matte gray paint and it looks pretty decent. I can still see the flaws here and there, but I don't think anyone else will notice them. Today will see the other half painted and then I can do the window and door trim

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My arms and shoulders are tired. It sure has put me back into shape quicker than any gym workouts!

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I have marks all over the floor trying to see where studio furniture will fit and work the best. Being visual, I need to see it, stand where my desk will go and look around. I still am wondering just how I'll get all of my creative junk into this room.

Now we're up against a 4 week deadline and it's looking like we'll move stuff in, winterize the house and head West for the winter. Taking the Southern route this year with a stop over in New Orleans. What fun as we'll have the best tour guide possible there.

Designing Woes

Finally - a successful test piece with larger sized beads!

It started with this, an idea for more pattern space on one side of a flat caterpillar bracelet. Eight months of trials and a new graphing model later I had what I wanted. Using 15's or Delicas(TM) on one side and 11's on the other side gave me what I wanted.

However, I have a lot of people who prefer to bead crochet with a base of 8/0 beads. After my workshop in Fall River I went searching for beads that had the same size relationship. From what I knew it seemed that 10/0 Delicas(TM) would work. But I didn't have any in any color in that size.

So I ordered some. Needed 5 colors to test things out - ordered 20 colors. Who can resist things like metallic bronze or gold flashed ruby? Six Plano containers of 8/0 seed beads - not enough .... I added 100 grams of an 8/0 mix to that order also.
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The beads came in and I started to put them away in flip-top containers. I used the last 4 that I had. Eight years ago I bought 1,500 flip-tops and I guess I used them all. At the time it seemed like an endless supply of bead containers. A friend pointed out that, as an addiction, it was less than one a day!

So, I ordered 100 more containers. All this to just test out a bead crocheted sample of what I thought would work.

What should have been an evening's job took a month to complete. Good thing I'm not on a deadline with this project. I have the proof that what I thought would happen, does ... a couple more crocheted samples and I need to think about pulling an e-book together with the technique and designs.

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Upshot of the whole thing is that I now know that I have more than 1,500 tubes of seed beads from sizes 24/0 through 6/0. Let's not count the accent bead and gemstone stock.

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A walk in the Woods

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Yesterday was warmer and the sun was out. The hard frosts have done the bugs in and cut down the undergrowth. There is still a lot of Fall leaf color and I took half an hour to walk in my woods and kick the ankle deep leaves.

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I'm going to enjoy the changing seasons in this very small patch of old growth forest.