Blue Moon Beaded Bead

Today is the first day of the rest of vacation.  How glorious!  The little boys let me sleep until almost 7 AM (I think the fact that the birds are quiet because it is rather overcast and drizzly outside fooled them into letting me sleep.  I am thankful for small favors and precious moments of sleep.  Yesterday, Saturday, was still an up-at-5-AM because I needed to make the big drive to the graduation ceremony.  Although it got into the 90's by 10 AM, while the faculty was laid out in neat rows on the football field side lines we were treated to a slight breeze and cooler temps for much of the pomp and circumstance.  I had even selected my outfit to most effectively hide the sweat stains one gets when sitting on a folding chair under the blazing heat of the Georgia sun.  Perhaps the whole circus was less painful this year because I actually remembered to bring a pillow for my back and a great wide brimmed hat to wear.  Despite my grumbling I do enjoy seeing the graduates and it was actually pretty awesome to see our 80%+ graduation rate walk across the stage.  Exceedingly impressive considering ten years ago it was 49.1%.

Last week I worked on my first beaded bead.  I used tubular peyote stitch with 15/0 beads on a wooden ball which I drilled myself.  I still have a long way to go to perfect the beaded bead, but I started to get some nice patterning spreading out across the bead.  I started in the middle and worked my way to each end.  Perhaps if I had a pattern for the decreases I would have a little better patterning with fewer gaps.  Also, I realized the need to cull the beads for the too-bigs which tend to stick out. From the picture, you can see how uneven these little guys are.  They are supposed to be Japanese, but who knows.

Blue Moon Beaded Bead

Ignore the little silver tassel at the bottom - I wired it on with aluminum wire in about 5 minutes so I could wear it on a crazy beaded necklace.  It went with my outfit, but I really need to stop trying to make my jewelry as I leave the house.  I definitely need to find a new dangle for the end of this or use some proper silver wire.