Today, however, my little sister (well, she's not that little any more!), my nephew and my mum called in to visit. Whilst frantically attempting to 2-year-old-proof the flat I unearthed some forgotten craft box gems. 2-year-old proofing is process which basically consists of running to the nearest hardware store buying as many clip lock boxes it's possible to carry, running back, sweeping everything into them randomly and chucking a throw over the whole lot. Amazing things surface as you do this and I know how the prospectors of old felt when the saw glimmers of gold in the silt.
Anyway - last year, ten of us at work all decided we needed a break from the lab and booked a long weekend in Prague. Prague is a beautiful and amazing place, but unfortunatly full of bead shops so therefore not the best place to put a renagade crafter with an addiction to shiny objects.
This is just a small sample of the reason I was ditching stuff at the airport to bring the hand luggage in at a respectable weight and doing the old trick of wearing all of the clothes I'd brought with me on the way back to make space.
*note to self - beads and airport scanners are a bad mix due to the tendancy of beads to diffract x-rays forming a pretty mess on the observer's screen. You will get searched and questioned as to the reason you are wearing two pairs of trousers, three t-shirts, a sweater and an evening dress. Answering "because the master told me to" is a bad idea.
I really ought to do at least something with some of this stuff. I can't just drag it out every so often and admire how shiny it is.
For beading, my weapon of choice is normally lycra beading cord. This stuff:
I like lycra beading cord, it doesn't rust, slice through your fingers or give you amusing tiger tail related injuries - you know, the sort that make you look like you've lost an arguement with a deli counter cheese slicer. It looks pathetically thin and weak, but you could bungee jump a hippo on it. I've never managed to snap it as yet and I've tried really hard. Here I've doubled over long bit threaded a crimp bead on the end to give a loop - teeth, scissors and tweezers were dismissed as a poor replacement for jewellery pliers - after twenty minutes of searching for pliers I realised they were in the bottom of the first box I shoved in the avalanche cupboard this morning - all sorted.
As always, I will spend ages getting organised - laying everything out in front of me...
..then I'll get distracted and just start threading things together.
I do have this odd sort of reverse entropy when it comes to this. I love the irregular abstract patterns I see on so many other bits of work, but myself have this odd aversion to disorder. What was supposed to be random turned out rather regular in the end. This is a simple repeat working on two threads - the purple flower beads have two sets of holes for double stranded work.
A fight with a lobster clasp and we're done for the day.
Now if I could just work out what I did with yesterday, I'll be fine. That and why there is a squashed biscuit stuck on the oven door.
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