Though my entries were scarce in April I have been beading. Mostly doing the same thing over and over as I have steadied myself through my usual April nerves.

I feel my nervous system must look like this mess in a jewelry tray! Lizards of panic and stripes and bands of disquiet. I am hoping that May, with its longer days and warmer sun, will stabilize me while beading also. Having two bead contests reject all my work, not even allowing me finalist status anywhere was not helpful.

I am letting the joy of this new project -putting together two projects I love to do - of making these crocheted rope bracelets with lizards overshadow the small blip of discomfort caused by Bead&Button rejecting both my works: "DragonFLY in Amber" and "Visiting Snowman." April is the cruelest month. . . for beaders, too.

PS

No matter how hard I try, I cannot get a perfect closure of the crocheted ends. Good the lizard belly covers up my gaps. I have about 20 rope bracelets to practice on. Now to make the lizards for them. That should keep me busy and that is happiness.

As a result of my vast reading (!) I found this method for making spiral crocheted beads. I think that for beginners it would be even easier to use this method than the usual one of bands of several colors. If your rope-bracelet is five beads around, you string on five different beads and then repeat the same order of five different beads until you have a 3 - 4 foot string. This method is so much more helpful, especially when beginning, because you always add a new bead to the same one in the previous row. Goofs are immediately visible and the 'cluster of grapes' in the beginning makes sense so you can add on at the proper place.

I really enjoy crocheting these ropes, but like most people, I do not enjoy sewing them together. Even the 'job' of putting the beads and colors together is fun and stringing them is possible even when I am very tired. Of course I do make errors then. If the beads are doubled up I can break the extra bead and save my reputation. However is missed bead is noticed forever.

I decided to use these as attempts to either practice making better joints for the crocheted tubes or trying out other ways of making them. I even tried to try the idea of putting a bead on a headpin and enclosing it inside the tube. This did not work well as the bead tended to slip out of the tubing no matter how tight I gathered up the last row. I did try running a head pin through a couple of the last beads and was very glad to have a wire making the connection with the clasp. Because the headpin comes through the regular beads it does not exit exactly in the middle and even bending it did not keep it centered very well.

With my last tube, I tried sewing bead caps over the ends and butting those together. That seems to work the best for me. However, now I want to try putting a large stone bead where the bead caps meet, with maybe a tiny metal bead on each side of the stone. I want to try this today. Made a couple of new tubes to try it out and felt I had made the tubes too long. Adding the stone bead makes the bracelet way too long. So today I want to try making a shorter tube and am eager to look through my stone collections to see what I have. What a marvelous way to use up those leftover stones!

Was so surprised that my beading fingers turned to doing the bead crochet again. I had tried to pick it up a couple of times in other months and it seemed I had forgotten how to do it. Then all at once there I was finishing up old pieces and starting new ones with even thinner crochet yarn. I vacillate between wanting very contrasty designs and then more subtle ones. I loved the one with purple and greens and golds.

On Wednesday, while in Santa Rosa to have a biopsy on the spot on my leg, I carved out an hour at Legendary Beads and really got stocked up on seed beads. One of my very few complaints about Fire Mountain is the fact that they carry so few 8s. They seem to work the best for me for bead crocheting. As you can see from the photo I will have several sessions now sewing the tubes into bracelets.

After getting the final rejection from "Beaded Earth" I decided to enter the BeadDreams contest which closes on April 5. Here there was an entry fee of $30 for two entries so I added the "Dragonfly in Amber" necklace to get my money's worth. After just having the snowman rejected it was not easy to toss in money into the gamble in addition to the two month's work and several bead orders, but I still feel it is a good work and just needs someone to recognize it.

I must say the web submission form by BeadDreams was very well made, and very easy to use. They ask for a lot of information, including techniques and materials, but at least I did not have to type in all those Fire Mountain item numbers. The reason I did not enter the necklace in the Fire Mountain contest was because the amber was from Germany, the bead was made by someone not selling through FM and the lampwork beads were made by Debbe and also not a FM product. That is over 50% of the necklace. At least I have found a place to enter it in a contest. I love the idea of a dragonFLY in amber! Wish me luck! This feels so much like gambling! I wish I enjoyed it more.

In an attempt to find a new project I dipped into the April / May issue of Beadwork to find this. I simply could not get it to work by following the instructions, so I struck out on my own and figured out two ways to get something similar. All in all I found it very fiddly with at least ten attempts and samples to find bead sizes that worked together. The end result is very delicate and lacy - far too fussy the kind of women I normally hope to adorn. Looking at the necklaces I want to be a rebel and make something huge and gunky!

Got the official notice from the folks at the Beaded Earth Contest that I did not make the finalist list. Hmmmm. Again I am unable to work with the Interweave Inc. I guess we are not on the same wave-length.