Bead soup

So on Wednesday I took a trip out to Haddenham with young Hezekiah, his mum, and his granny (wasn't expecting his granny; I thought she was going to be looking after Hezekiah's older brother, but possibly daddy was doing that as he does work from home sometimes, I think). It was entirely too hot, and East Anglia is... well, it's East Anglia. If you see a hill any larger than an average molehill, you get excited.

Nonetheless, Haddenham is quite pretty; and Spoilt Rotten's bead warehouse is right in the middle of it. It doesn't look like a warehouse. It looks like a shop that's closed all the time, because there are blinds in the windows. You ring the bell, and you wait, and shortly you are admitted to something that looks... actually, very much like a shop.

There is quite a steep step down into it, so Juliet, the owner, had to go and get the ramps, and even then it proved to be a little awkward to get the wheelchair in; but it's do-able. It just requires a little thought and care to avoid the footplates scraping on the ground. There are two floors, and obviously I couldn't go and look at the first floor, but that was fine, as Juliet was quite happy to go and fetch anything I wanted to look at from there. Hezekiah, however, shot straight off upstairs with his mum and granny... and stayed there; it was a little while before I found out what he'd discovered up there that was of such interest.

Initially Juliet went up with them to explain what was what, leaving me to self-propel around the ground floor, which is mostly devoted to seed beads (including delicas, which are those little cylindrical ones I quite like to use for spectacle chains - they have every single colour that Miyuki do, which is over a thousand!). In this way I was able to fill a few significant gaps in my collection. Of course they're all on the website, but the problem is that beads are often a bit of a nightmare to photograph, especially if they have special finishes. I have a problem with blues, and often have to adjust the hue on photographs of earrings which are blue or blue-adjacent. Juliet says she has a problem with reds, but actually that does extend to purples; the one colour I've found to be very hit-and-miss on their website is purple. So it was great to be able to see them all in person and think "right, I don't have a purple in this range, and come to that I don't really have any olive/peridot green in the size 15/0, and that red there is definitely one I don't have and could use..." I could obviously have bought a lot more - seed beads are the bread and butter of beading - but you can't buy the whole stock, so it's a question of getting a good range of colours that are going to work together well and suit most people's preferences (so, for instance, not neon orange, which is a fun colour but what you might call a bit niche).

There are also the glass pearls down there, but it turns out I've already got all the colours of those I'm likely to want to use; there are quite a few that are nice but too similar to what I already have. So when Juliet came down again I asked her for two specific colours of earwires (at the moment I use five different colours, but there's also a polychrome coming in at some point, and I think I'll get some of those when they do) and some more beading thread, because I knew I needed those. Then it was a question of looking through the other beads I use - SuperDuos, MiniDuos, 3 mm bugles, Lipsi Par Puca (discontinued), and 3 mm firepolish.

It took a lot longer than I expected. And I'm not a ditherer; it generally doesn't take me long to make up my mind. I can look at a bag of beads and decide that a) I already have that colour and it might be a good idea to restock; b) I don't have that colour but it would be very useful to have; c) I like that colour but I can't really see it fitting in well with the others (SuperDuo Powdery Yellow, I'm looking at you); d) I'm not mad about that colour but it'd really work well with Colour X, which I've been struggling to find things to work with. That will take me probably thirty seconds maximum, often a lot less. I took one look at the Jet AB (in both the SuperDuo and the MiniDuo) and said, "right, that one goes in". But there are just so many colours of everything that even if you do go through them as fast as that, it takes quite a while. And it's not even just the fact that some of them don't look great on the website so I've passed over them in the past. Quite a few of them aren't even on the website. I thought they'd sold out of the Lipsis in a colour called Coral Red Tweedy (actually a proper red, not very corally at all, and the "tweedy" bit really means "splashed with a mixture of silver and gold, so they look equally good with either" - so you can see why I found that a very useful colour). But no! I discovered a whole bag of them, not to mention Lipsis in both silver and gold, yellow 3 mm bugle beads (didn't I say only the other day I wanted some of those? Those are new in, therefore not on the website yet), firepolish beads in something called Apollo Pink which is really somewhere between pink and lilac and very sparkly... the list goes on. I'm not sure why there's so much stuff that hasn't made it onto the website, because it'd definitely sell.

I also found out why Juliet discontinued the Par Puca range, and to be honest I can't blame her... any more than she can blame me for going elsewhere to get the colours she doesn't have (in fact she knows my Lipsi people and seems quite happy they're getting my business). The thing is, as I've said several times, they're expensive beads... well, they are at full price; Juliet is doing what she has left at half price, which makes them a lot more reasonable. Apparently the minimum order is pretty large, which is fine if Par Puca is your big thing, but it's awkward for a more general bead business like Spoilt Rotten. Also, they do keep changing the colours, and they never reintroduce any; even since I've been going to the place that does the Lipsis (which, for goodness' sake, is not a long time), some new colours have come in and others have disappeared. People don't like that, on the whole. If they like a colour, they want to be able to order it again. I don't like it much myself; it means you get left with odd beads. I mean, I can work around it, and it does keep the variety going, but I don't love it. And the third thing is that Lipsis (and, apparently, the Par Puca range in general) are notorious for blocked holes. Fairly often it's possible to clear the hole with a cross stitch needle, but not always; sometimes you just have to throw out the bead, and since they're expensive beads, that doesn't go down well with customers either. Juliet's had a fair few complaints about Par Puca beads because of that. So she finally decided, right, leave those to the specialists; and that's enabled her to expand the seed bead range considerably, and absolutely everyone who does any kind of beading at all wants those. Par Pucas are a bit more of a specialist thing.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, down came Hezekiah with a huge grin and a bag of beads, and I found out what had been so fascinating up there. They have a thing called "Bead Soup". It is a huge container of beads - all sorts of oddments, mostly the leftovers when they haven't got quite enough to make up a regular bag; and you get given a little ziploc bag, which you're allowed to fill to capacity for, I think, £1.95. Hezekiah had been having the time of his life firkling through that looking for pairs of suitable beads that matched, so he could use them for earrings. (It is as I've said. I can easily use over 100 beads in a pair of earrings. Hezekiah, though? Maybe two or three pairs of beads. We're really not in the same market.) I should think he's now got enough beads to keep him going till about Christmas. I think he got some earwires too, but I'm not absolutely certain; I hope he did, as they're really good value (not to mention nickel-safe, cadmium-safe, lead-safe... heck, I can wear them, so they must be all right!). And I bought him a tube of craft glue (I have some of the same kind myself, and I can vouch for it entirely) and a spool of tiger tail wire.

It was a splendid afternoon; even Stroppy Sibyl behaved better than she'd done for... probably months, in fact (she usually fluctuates between minor nuisance and full-scale pain in the proverbial). Hezekiah's mum and granny got to look at the art gallery just down the road. And Hezekiah and I were... well, absolutely Spoilt Rotten!