I’m participating in a project, hosted by Angelica, a beader in Germany, called “Bead-around-the-world.” Its blog is here, and the basic premise is this: each person makes a starting beaded bead, and then the rest of the participants make a bead to complement it. Each beader gives her size and color preferences, and at the end, we have a necklace’s worth of beaded beads. This year, there are 12 participants. Sylvia Sur is the one who alerted me to the project, and I think it sounds like fun; I get to explore within a given palette and a small size. I posted my starter bead earlier:

If you go to the Bead-around-the-world blog, you can see the remaining 11 participants’ start beads. Now to bead them all! I have until January 25th to complete them. I’m going to have to figure out my timing with the holidays approaching, and those gifts to make. I started yesterday pulling a few possible beads. It’s highly likely I will use essentially none of these beads, but this gives me something pretty to look at and think about.

I asked, and the finished beaded beads are to be a surprise, so no progress reports will be made here. And I also can’t post about Christmas presents. I’ll have to have other projects going too — or use it as an excuse to get back to looming!