“a blank blob of face”. Also beads

I don’t think it actually suits me all that well to put all of my hair up – I have good hair, but small, undistinguished features that don’t catch the eye without that frame around them. Basically, all you see is a blank blob of face – no compelling eyes or elegant bones. However, it’s just such a cool trick to be able to hold up all that hair with a single stick (plus a bobby pin for stragglers) that some days I can’t resist.

I found a local bead store and managed to stop in last night. Not impressive: no crystal, very little real silver, and lots and lots of plastic. (Plastic I did find a pair of coppery-gold beads that will go into a pair of earrings, but that’s about it. I need to see what my wire supplies are like; at the least I’d like to get some GF wire to lengthen a necklace I made of jade (or possibly malachite) nuggets. I have enough stone that I may be able to make it long enough to wear wrapped twice. Or I may just lengthen it an inch or two and give it to my mom when she visits – I think she’d like it. I realized the other day that there’s a solution to the problem of making more jewelry than I can store or wear: make as much as I want, but don’t try to store it with my jewelry. Keep a separate box somewhere of things to be given away or traded. However, that didn’t keep me from buying an enormous jewelry box and a rack I can drape necklaces on, for the things I already own and wear enough to want to keep. I don’t have that much precious jewelry, just lots of glass and/or silver earrings and a bunch of beaded necklaces (I should get rid of most of the latter, since I don’t wear them often).

I should also make myself a new rowing necklace, to match the local club’s colors, but it’s hard to think of how to make something in sky blue and orange that I want to wear, especially if it has to be sturdy enough to wear in a race. I did have some lampworked beads that were perfect, but made them into earrings and gave them to someone who loves wearing bright colors. I’ve also seen some necklaces recently that were made of thin wire twisted into vine shapes – these were made with leaf and flower beads, but I could try them with a bunch of star and moon beads I have, if I had the fine wire. I can buy nonprecious wire here; maybe dark blue would work.

This is actually fairly academic, since I’ve done almost no beadwork since arriving here, but I expect to finish Rudder’s gloves this weekend or soon thereafter, and nothing else I’m knitting has any time constraints. I do still have a lace shawl and the Trellis scarf on the needles – the former was fun to knit, but I’m feeling reluctant to restart it because I have to unpick a row or two that’s out of alignment before I can make any progress. Maybe if I make some nice fast earrings, I’ll be more in the mood for that task. or maybe I should just accept that I don’t have much free time between work and class and anything I get done is always going to be slow.