Oops, the images loaded in here backwards so you get to see the final piece first. On this tube I decreased the end to a point. Am not sure I am happy with this solution of how to relate the tube to a hook. I like the flat end of a tube and feel a small bead to cover the top would be better.

Since I only had one of the wire necklaces I moved on to one of these macrame ready-made necklaces from Fire Mountain that Debbe gave me. I rarely find a use for these, but here they work. On this one the tube is flat on top but it relates poorly to the shell and I suspect that soon I will cut it off and redo it. This tube was left over from the earliest set of green ones. Glad to find a use for it. I really like the look of showing off the beads in a simple way and the tube has an elegance about it that I want to emphasize.

This was the left over from "Chinese New Year" and I feel that here I got the top of the bead to have the proper relationship to the hook (it has one of the gold ball and elastic thingies used for holding eyeglasses on the chains) and I like the two small wooden pink beads that close up the space between the gold loop and the pink cylinders. I love the feel of this necklace. There is a serenity to it and the 8s really come into their own beauty. The 8s, with the same bead count as the 6s was only about 4 inches long. For a small person this would be about right.

My second attempt at making the tubes ended up with the name "Chinese New Year" because of the colors I had on hand. These I did with 8s and they are all the same length. For a hook I used the gold ball and elastic jobies for glasses and I like the ball but the black elastic shows up darkly through the transparent tubes. By this time I found out that the bead tubes had a tendency to not be straight so I stuck plastic straws up them. Next time I will make the tubes the size of the clear plastic tubing I have so the inner structure is of a better quality material.

At the bead meeting Saturday Vicki told about meeting a woman in the grocery store wearing a necklace made of tubes of felt. I immediately thought of tubes made of beads! The woman's necklace had wires, with small beads on them, between the tubes and this is something I want to explore but so far the tubes have kept me entertained enough. These tubes I made with 6s and they are about 6 inches long. I do not like how they 'hang' on this metal circle and the little tubes made of 11s between the hooks do not drape right. The hooks here are those simple silver plated hooks I use so much. In sewing the flat hook to the tube, the tube got flattened and that looks crappy.

This project was a good one because we were losing electricity each day and the doing the peyote stitch with 6s and 8s was easier to sew in the weak light from storm clouds.