Cranberry Delight - In Progress

According to my project page on Ravelry, I started this project on November 25, 2010.  Yes, 2010.  It has been sitting in my bead project box waiting patiently for me to return to it.  Well, this weekend I finally did.  I pulled it out, and did some more stringing of beads, and started in on the crocheting.  I was having a devil of a time starting out the spiral bead crochet, especially with the small drops, so I finally gave up and strung several rounds of the size 11 seed beads and started out with a plain bead crochet rope.  Once I had that established, it was easy to transition into the spiral.  I did have to do a little improvisation when I discovered that I had somehow missed a bead on a previous round in the plain bead crochet and I was a bead short.  I did an increase and you can't even see it now.

I was also having a heck of a time maintaining tension while crocheting.  Between the thin thread and the fact that it is silk, it just was not cooperating.  I finally solved that problem by setting the spool on the floor by my foot and letting the beads hang down and pool on the floor next to it.  The weight of the beads tensions the thread perfectly, and it is easy to lift the strand and feed out more thread.  The entire project is sitting in one of my beading boards.  They are great for laying out beads for stringing, but they also work to corral components.  The metal tool at the bottom of the picture is one of my dental picks.  They are great for snagging the loop if it accidentally slips off of the crochet hook.  The strand of leaves are carved tourmaline, aren't they swell?  I love the colors, the cranberry drops and the gold size 11 beads really catch the light, while the olive lined with purple are so solid.  I love the puddle of strung beads with the champagne gold silk.  The crochet was too tight to get a strand of Soft Flex through, so I am going to have to come up with a new design for the assembly, but I have some ideas.

Silver and Teal - Finished

It's been a quiet day here in King George.  We finally got rain yesterday after about a month of heat.  I spent the day finishing up this necklace.  With my two circular shawl projects dragging on I felt a need to finish something, and this one has been in my works in progress since January.  Yikes.

Materials used:
(Beadcats stock number)
2-06-927-14:  size 6 real Nickel metal beads (20 grams)
2-08-694-90:  size 8 rich teal transparent lined with teal (10 grams)
2-11-592-79:  size 11 bright light blue green opal silver lined (10 grams)
2-11-686-79:  size 11 turquoise-green silver lined matte, dyed (5 grams)
2-11-759-76:  size 11 lavender transparent silver lined matte irid
D-T1-773-01:  3mm x 5mm tear drops, light amethyst transparent irid
Soft Flex Sterling Silver Extreme 925 flex - Medium (.019 in diameter)
Silver End Caps
Crimp beads
Magnetic clasp
Gudebrod Silk, size E in silver gray for the bead crochet
Teal Nymo, size B, for the embellishment
Focal beads, one Larry Scott Byzantine Bead, 2 small lampwork beads, also by Larry Scott

I did the bead crochet around the Soft Flex, to make the final assembly easier.  Make sure you leave a long enough tail of Soft Flex at the start, and anchor it so it doesn't pull free.  I taped it to the silk thread tail.  I used two silver cones to cover the ends of the crochet rope, and strung the focal beads and more size 8 seed beads on the Soft Flex to close the gap.  The clasp is hidden in the kinky fringe.

Silver and Teal

I finally finished the spiral bead crochet on this project.  You can see the Soft Flex that I ran through the center to ease assembly.  It was pretty easy to do, you just have to make sure that you feed the Soft Flex through very early in the crochet process, and secure the end so it doesn't slip free.  As you crochet, just make sure that you always keep the strand of Soft Flex to the left of the crochet hook.  It needs to stay in the center of the rope and not get caught up in the crocheting itself.

This rope is a little less than 10.5 inches long, which leaves me a couple of inches to play with for the focal bead and the clasp.  I did have one minor technical difficulty.  The large beads are real metal beads and they have a seam.  Two of them came loose and I will have to sew them back in place.  If you look closely, you can spot the gap.  I thought about re-doing the piece with different beads, but I really like the look of the metal beads.

Silly Bead Crochet Bracelet

So, after I crocheted about seven inches (half of the planned necklace) I decided that the Larry Scott bead needed something more than this.  Basically, the colors were too close to the colors of the Larry Scott bead and it just wasn't standing out the way I thought it should.  But I had to do something with this after spending the time making it, so I looked through my bead stash and came up with this.  The center bead is a "mood bead." I got mine from Tika Imports at the Bead & Button show last year, it changes color when you wear it (body heat activated).  The two green beads are lampwork beads that I made in a class that I took a few years ago.  It is a silly little thing, but happy and smile-producing, and we need that on a cold and rainy night like tonight.

Silver and Teal

The picture really doesn't do it justice.  I'm running a strand of Soft-flex through the rope to make it easier to turn it into a necklace.  It does make the crochet a tad more difficult, but I hope that the end result will be worth the effort.

Beads, beads, beads

I've been buying a lot of beads this past month.  I ordered some for bead knitting, and some for my Larry Scott Byzantine beads.  Last year at Bead & Button I bought a lot of Larry Scott beads in some really great colors.  Larry has been bugging me to do something with his beads that involved seed beads rather than stringing them with semi-precious stones.  I started a bead crochet rope for one of his beads over Christmas and actually finished seven inches of it, but decided that it just wasn't going to work, so this past week I sat down with my Larry Scott beads and my bead cards and picked out a bunch of colors.  One of the sets that I picked out is for this lovely teal bead.  The plan is to do another spiral bead crochet rope, like the Dragon Scale.

Holiday Projects

Bruce and I drove down to St. Augustine, Florida to spend Christmas at his Mom's. I needed a knitting project for the car ride so I started this one. It is from Tahki Yarns Spring/Summer Collection 2004. The pattern is #4 Moving Cables Pullover. The yarn is Tahki Cotton Classic. I've had the yarn for quite a while, I love the yellow, so bright and cheerful and warm.

I also started one of the bead crochet ropes for my Larry Scott Byzantine beads.

Dragon Scale - Spiral Bead Crochet Rope

I finished the spiral bead crochet necklace last night. I really like the way the colors work together. The blue iridescent beads of the center of the spiral with the olive green purple-lined beads and the bronze all seem very organic to me. Once I got going with the crochet I didn't want to stop, and I wasn't sure how long a rope I would end up with, so I decided to put the clasp in the front, hiding it with the flowers. I borrowed the flowers from a project in the October/November 2009 issue of Beadwork Magazine (the project is edelweiss necklace by Melinda Barta).

Materials
- approximately 20 grams of size 11 seed beads, blue iridescent
- approximately 10 grams of size 8 seed beads (Beadcats stock # 2-08-507-90, light olive transparent lined with lavender)
- 10 grams of size 6 seed beads (Beadcats stock # 2-06-816-14, dark gold opaque metallic)
- approximately 1 gram of Toho Aiko beads (TBC-221A)
- 3 8-millimeter semi-precious stone beads
- one focal bead by Larry Scott
- Size E silk Guderbrud in dark green

More Scarves

I've also been weaving. When I first started weaving (almost three years ago) I made a bunch of these rayon scarves. I made them in every color combination that they had. They have been a big hit with friends and family and I've sold and traded them at Bead and Button (you can buy them from my Artfire site). They have been so popular that I no longer have a complete set for myself, so I have been trying to rebuild my stash. Lately I've been getting up a bit earlier than I usually do and weaving before going to work. The fiber is Earth Guild Dragon Tale Yarn (rayon slub). The warp for this one is Purple Haze (variagated) and the weft is Royal Purple (solid). 8 dent reed, 16 epi, plain weave.



I also picked out some colors for bead crochet ropes for some of my Larry Scott beads. These are his Byzantine Beads. My favorites. When he was making these beads his wife told him that no one would buy them because the colors were so unusual. Larry's response? "Oh, Carolyn will buy them." I am an official Larry Scott groupy. I even have the button to prove it.

Back to Beads

Last Monday one of my work-friends told me that I had inspired him to get out his crochet hook and pick up crocheting again. I was tremendously flattered and of course told him about ravelry. We had gone on travel together to Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey (12 hours in a government van) and I had knitted during the drive. On Tuesday I wore my (only) bead crochet rope necklace that I had made when my sister, Virginia, and I took the Beadcats booth to Convergence in 2006, knowing that he would find it fascinating. I offered to show him how, but then realized that I would have to brush up on my rather rusty bead crochet skills. So I pulled out some beads and some silk Guderbrod (size E) and a 1.4mm crochet hook and got to work. I did a small sample to show him, but didn't get a chance to last week. He stopped by my office on Friday on his way out and borrowed my size 11 seed bead cards, and my bead crochet rope book, but we really didn't have a chance to talk. I did show another friend of mine from work, and may yet get her into beads (I have already gotten her into sewing). Looking at the book had inspired me, though, so this weekend I decided to get out a project that I had started some time ago.

Every year when I go to the Bead and Button show (I work in the Beadcats booth - and get paid in beads) I buy lampwork beads from Larry Scott, my favorite lampwork bead artist. Typically I buy his Byzantine beads and string them with semi-precious stones and silver, but one year I bought one of his long cylinder beads, intending to make a bead crochet rope necklace to go with it. I found some nice dark blue iridescent beads and worked up half the necklace and then decided that it needed to be more three-D. A rope and a long cylinder bead was just too flat. So I decided to do a spiral bead crochet rope. I rummaged in my pretty extensive bead stash (it took two of those organizer cabinets to organize it) and came up with some size 6 and size 8 beads to go with the original size 11 beads.

A couple of hours of stringing later I started crocheting and discovered that spiral bead rope crochet is a bit more challenging than straight bead rope crochet. It took me a couple of tries to get the hang of it, but I am quite pleased with the results so far. I'm not sure if it will go with the lampwork bead, but it will make a nice piece regardless.

A few notes on tools:

For stringing beads on anything I use the Japanese Bead Threader Needle, available from Beadcats. It is wonderful, and makes stringing a breeze.

For beading I put the beads I am working with in a white ceramic bead tray, also available from Beadcats. I use the large center space for any mutant beads that I don't want in my beadwork. I cover the bottom with self-adhesive felt so it doesn't slide or clink when I stack them.

The thread is silk Guderbrud, size E.