Shake Yer Groove Thang

Okay, okay, the project was just called "Groove", but darn it, I couldn't get that song out of my head while I was stitching up these earrings and the ring!

The only problem I had with these was my tension. At first, I was afraid to stitch too tightly because I wasn't sure how the pattern was going to work out. But after I finished the first earring and started in on the second, I saw that I could stitch with a tight tension and it actually made it easier to add the bumps and finial beads!

I didn't like the way that the tops and bottoms collapsed in on me while I was adding the bumps around the sides, but once those bumps were stitched, the earrings had a lot more body. They worked up surprisingly fast - it was like they should have been in the "Easier Than They Look" chapter.

When I ordered the 2mm gold beads for this project, I threw in some extras because I knew that I wanted to make a matching ring. And it came out beautifully:

Yes, there was a little bit of thread showing on this project. I didn't know how else to make it go away. The project called for blue thread, but I used my green Wildfire instead, which looks just as good with the olive-green seed beads.

Fun, fun, fun! These stitched up so easily, I was genuinely surprised at how fast they went. I started them yesterday afternoon while Colden was painting and put the finishing touches on the ring this morning while I was waiting for my oatmeal to cool.

I started feeling a little panicked about how quickly these projects were working up, until I sat down to look at what's ahead of me. Reading a right-angle weave graph. Adding hundreds of bumps and rose montees as embellishment to a necklace. Joining dozens of liquid silver bead components to jump rings. And I gave myself a year to complete all of these projects? I better hope those rose montees and chaton montees come sooner rather than later so I can finish knocking off all the "little" projects in this book and get on to the big ones!

Colden has conked out for a nap, and I have a choice: do I go try to catch a quick nap, take a hot bath with a piece of chocolate and a good book, do the dishes and clean the kitchen, or go rummage through the basement and look for my 1/4" plastic tubing for the two projects that call for it?

I'm thinking that the bath and the chocolate are going to win here...