Dulcey Heller

I just love these colors used in the ceiling at the Naniboujou Lodge, which I wrote about here. I decided to make a double spiral rope using these colors. I wanted to use the bright colors more as an accent, to help it not be too overwhelming and busy.

Here’s my first attempt — too much core showing. I’m using beads on hand, and these 6s were what I had that worked the best as a core bead with these colors. An 8 would have been better.

Okay, let’s do a triple spiral. I’ve never done one before, but what’s one more spiral among friends? This works, but I have the colored beads disappearing a bit into the spiral.

Here’s the one I’m sticking with; it has the addition of a 13 in the red-brown after the two bright colors, to help the colors not get buried in the nearby spiral.

I think I like it, and will continue. I need a great button or something for a clasp, or maybe make a beaded clasp? For some great spiral necklaces (and many other pieces), look at Sabina’s website. Here’s a wild spiral sample of hers — it’s a quintuple. She ran out of needle space in the core beads, and I think she said it was inflexible.  Update:  check out Saby’s comment - the quintuple technically worked, it was the SIX rounds on a spiral that was inflexible.

Here’s the before:

And here’s the after:

It was just too rippled; it didn’t look good. I’ll have to sit down and start over. I’d like to get this footer established and the beading going, as it’s a nice project to have ready and waiting for when I want to do just a little something. I’d also like to FINISH, of course. I don’t want to look back and see when I started these two pieces (a bracelet and a wall piece), let alone when I started the piece on the rest of the warp.

A slowly progressing project is making more right angle weave beaded beads, to eventually string into a necklace with a wonderful button as a clasp (I’d like to figure out a great embellished loop for the button). I have one orange bead to include. I’m making a bunch of these blue beads. The orange bead that is the base are my “semi-precious beads” given to me by a friend. I think I want to throw in one more color of beaded bead, I think a darker orange. This is going to take me a while to complete as I don’t pick up this project very often.

Here’s some more I’ve added to the blogroll:

• Liza
• biZSUterie

is very, very small! I was on a flight yesterday, sitting next to a gentleman reading a book. We exchanged hellos, then he read, and I napped and then beaded (picture in a later entry). While we were waiting to deplane, he commented on my beading, and sounded a bit knowledgeable. He said he knew someone who beaded, had a website, sold patterns online. I asked who it was, thinking that I might know the beader, and I do! Our shared beading acquaintance is Pat Savu. Pat is the local coordinator for the Bead Quilt, we’ve exchanged emails, and we’ve met in person once or twice (I think, sorry if I got that wrong, Pat).

My seatmate works with Pat. It was very fun.