The Trials & Tribulations of Goal 8!

First of all, huge apologies for my lack of posting lately. I've been really busy with orders and commissions (although I'm not complaining!) plus other non-beady stuff and have spread myself a little too thin.

Also I came to a total standstill with my last goal. I had planned to use up that gorgeous tube of beads by the end of the week but three weeks later they were still sitting on my desk! Several times I had an idea, tipped the beads onto my bead mat and had a go but everything I tried was a disaster.

I discovered that they're not very good for herringbone, triangle stitch or right-angle weave. I had an idea that because they're triangles, they would look good stitched in rows on a bead embroidered cuff and I visualised a lovely zig-zag texture. No. They wobbled about a bit and it just looked messy, so back into the tube they went.

My last resort was peyote stitch which I had dismissed at first because of their shape. Success! They fit together brilliantly to give an unusual effect. So off I went, merrily making a six bead wide strip to make a bracelet...and ran out of beads three quarters of the way through! Grr. Determined not to buy another tube of these flippin' beads I unpicked it all and started again with four beads. Several hours later and with the addition of some red and gold seed beads I had this bracelet...



Now who was it that said beading was relaxing, lol.

8th Goal (Liz)

I bought these red & gold luster Toho triangles about four years ago at my very first trip to a major craft/bead fair. I didn't have many seed beads at the time and not a whole lot of knowledge about them either, so in a state of "OMG look at all the beads!" I just bought anything that looked pretty.

Quite a few of those tubes were triangles and after all this time I still don't really know what to do with them to bring out their, well, triangleness. Haven't decided what I'm going to make with them just yet but by the end of this week I want to see that tube empty!