On my tray were the golden bugles and beads from the earrings so I started ladder-stitching the bugles together.

Oh I see the photo now! Those bugles are twisted; that is why they look so speckled here. I like the looks of this just as it is, but when I wrap it around my wrist it looks too plain. Or maybe the liver spots on my arm need more competition!

Somewhere I saw such a bracelet with pearls sewed on to the center. Since I need things with flowers on them for the Point Arena show, I started making small flowers by my method using the brick stitch. Only got three done last night. But I am excited about finishing this since I did lay those green stone leaves that Bambi had gotten for me in Moab last autumn on the gold and felt they looked just perfect.

Last night, after finishing the fish lure thingie, I did not know what to do next. We had gone to Manchester and to my dismay all the fishing lures, all four kinds, were made of that soft squishy plastic like those cheap toys. Nothing I could use. Marianne found her lures online, from areas that have lake and stream fishing probably, and I will have to go there.
Anyhow, at lose ends I started a daisy chain because there some nice pearlized 11s that had fallen out of my new method of organizing beads - also a creative technique!
Anyhow, while boring myself with the daisies, Judy called to ask how to increase with the peyote stitch. I had an idea of how it was done, but she wanted to increase at the edge. I looked in several books and ended up finding the info I needed in the back of BeadWork in that handy appendix of how-tos. So after I gave her what help I could we started to chat and somehow we got on the subject of wind chimes and she said, "Wouldn't they make great earrings?" So I launched into this!
I used a lacy bead cap as the top of the wind chime and suspended bugles as chimes. Unfortunately they are glass and not metal so they sort of clitter instead of having tones. The wind catchers were some brass heishi and my favorite crystals.
The earring to the right flipped up so you can see the underside of the bead cap and the ball I used as stopper for the clapper.



See, I did finish the fish I showed you yesterday. I was particularly happy with this tail! The bugles have the feeling of the 'ribs' in the tail of a fish. I mixed silver twisted ones with clear iridescent tubes. In the string of cats eye that I used on the body, they had included two tiny stars, so I saved them out for the tail. Need more lures! Off to search the net - the obvious place to find a fishing lure!

Marianne, here is the fish you bought and then let go at the meeting. I am very pleased with it so far. I quit working on it about 1 a.m. last night only because I feel there must be something that goes up in the middle of the back and was too tired to figure out what it should be. I had started the 'scales' using mother of pearl chips (good pun there!) with pearl beed dots but they were too yellow for the color of the real fish lure. So I cut those off and used these cats eyes chips. I had less than an inch of silver-lined AB 11s in a tube and thought this was an excellent way to use the last of them.

Here is the fish lure I started in the class on Saturday. The tail got too heavy and I tried to balance it with the bubbles from another embedded loop under the 'chin' but when the fish is suspended it is definitely in an upward leap. Then I realized that if when making it into a necklace, I could use fairly large beads on each side of the hanger loop it might make the fish look less like it is standing on its tail.

I liked the effect of the 'bubbles' under the gills! It made that hanging down part very different from the tail but using the alabaster Czech beads from Rhoda were not heavy enough to balance the tail.

We are having a beautiful spring day between storms so am eager to go off to Manchester to see if I can find some more lures and check out the daffodils blooming in the cemetery on Windy Hollow Road. There is a haiku in there somewhere. . .

Yesterday was the monthly meeting of BeadsNBeyond at Gualala Arts Center. I took my new camera intending to be a good reporter who would come back with photos. However I got so involved in beading I forgot all about cameras, and telling a story.

Sue Hansen was on the docket to demonstrate her method of encrusting fishing lures with beads and I really should have shot a photo of the marvelous example she brought that she had made. As it was, Sue began, in her low-key way, to show us how to make one ourselves.

Though Marianne had searched the web, found and ordered fishing lures of a proper size, we all got hooked into the project because Sue had done her homework!

She had already prepared the lures for use (removing the hooks and sewing a tiny blanket of felt around the part to be covered) and very soon we were all involved in picking a lure, (being lured in by a lure), finding what colors we wanted to use based on the beads we had lugged in from cars (or which ones we could borrow from someone else).

Even members who usually do not do the brick stitch were soon into the project mainly because Sue has devised a method of doing the brick stitch that illuminates that tiresome first row of ladder stitched beads that is so hard to attach and measure against a slippery form. I will save this secret because Sue will be teaching the whole project in a class in the Bay Area in April (we were her guinea pigs) and you should really learn from the master.

Three o'clock came, Sue and Bobbie packed up and headed for home for a well-deserved nap before volunteering for another of their projects, but the rest of the group stayed with our noses glued to the fish lures. In the silence after their leaving we each and all admitted that when we came to the meeting we had no intention of beading a fishing lure, but here we were - following instructions and discovering a new technique with great joy. Well, all except one. There is always a rebel in every cause and Kathy covered a wooden needle case instead.

I came home and got this far on my fish before collapsing into bed. It is not fair to show you only this half-done version, so I am eager to get off the computer and get back to beading this just so I can show you what a neato thing this can be.

Before I shutup, I do want to relate that Vicki sold one of her new necklaces for men off the show and tell table, Judy had a tray of her newest wire wrapped stones that were delicious (and I got one in a trade for wooden needle cases) and Sue had brought a bunch of her amulets as demonstration of various options for beading a necklace. Her work is always so exquisite!

The show n' tell table is such an important part of our meetings! Not only is a way to share our current projects with each other, but people working on other events at the arts center take the opportunity to wander through our meeting to see what we are doing. And, joy of joy, Marianne taking up one of my bracelets blogged here, said, "Oh, so this is what that bracelet looks like! It is so much lovelier than the photo." Reason enough to leave my camera at the bottom of my purse!

While playing around with left-over beads and the sea shell chips, I refound this method of using the right-hand weave to make squares for a bracelet that are fun to fill with 'stuff' that embellishes.

The little glass flowers from Czech beads worked fine. Only with the last bracelet of the evening did I notice that on the backside one could see the thread. I changed the way I got from the side of the square to the center and really found an interesting embellishment.

I just realized that I have promised to put stuff in the 'Flower Power' show in Point Arena in the middle of March. I had planned to display my stuff on wooden trellis panels but now think they are are too old and rotten.

Last autumn I started making a net out of fishing line until the appendectomy stopped me. This afternoon I need to look at what I have and make a final decision on how to display, and carry there and back home, the beads. Trellis or net, net or trellis. . .

I had ordered several gemstone toggle clasps from Fire Mountian so yesterday I devised this method of using one in the lariat. Not having any stones that fit with the jasper one (it looks very different here than in real life) I used two kinds of the coated glass chips. I was surprised how good they looked and I must say the glass is a bit lighter in weight than the stone chips.

It seems this is my 'comfort work' just now. I get such a good feeling while doing this kind of necklace. I forget all the irritations and just enjoy the marvelous colors! How do people survive then they don't bead?

Off to catch the sunshine for a photo of the work "Springtime." Fire Mountain's seed bead contest closes March 9th. Much to do before then.

Cannot decide which lariat I prefer. I guess I should simply accept that these are different, but each is valid. Probably one would fit a smaller quieter person and the other. . . I guess it is good that I cannot make a thing twice the same way. I was using florite rainbow chips here, not because I wanted to have a certain color in a necklace but because of the idea that florite clears one of psychic attacks.

I have allowed someone to upset me very much on the weekend so I beaded. At least I could do that and I was thankful I had the florite on hand and two such interesting focal points! It was a good weekend after all!