As usual, after the excitement of a show opening, there is the let-down and the "what was I doing before this?" feeling as I try to reconnect with my previous lifetime.

Back in January I had tried to learn a new stitch from the book Mastering Beadwork by Carol Huber Cypher which Bambi had given me for Christmas. Cypher calls it "Gemstone Zigzag Bracelet" on page 113. I remember making at least five attempts then and all of them were failures.

However yesterday I gave the instructions one last try and as you can see above, it worked. This is so easy to do! It is basically a two-needle stringing that goes, as you see, very fast.

Later in the evening I tried to use chips instead of round "gemstones" and things got very ugly.

However I have a lot of chips, both glass and stones so I switched to making the old spiral chain. It was so comforting to just settle back into a well-known stitch - like putting on old slippers at the end of the day. I am really not one who enjoys "stringing." I like projects that take a long time. Perhaps because I hate adding findings so much!