Rhapsody in green

I've mentioned that beading dish a number of times now. Well, I do quite a lot of beading; and while I do have a little lap tray (and a very nice one at that), it has a fairly detailed design on it, so it's not really the best thing for making it easy to pick out small beads, though it would at least confine them to a limited space. Anyway, one day around New Year I was thinking about this, and I had this block of air-drying clay that had been sitting there looking at me for ages, and so it seemed sensible to put the two ideas together. This was the initial result:

And there it sat, for quite an appreciable time - about two weeks in the end. Air-drying clay doesn't dry very fast at the best of times, and the middle of winter is probably not the best of times from that point of view. However, I did at least have the presence of mind to put it on my scales. I have one of those double-layer sets of scales; if you take the top part off (which is what the dish is resting on here) you can do all the normal weighing, but if you want to weigh really large quantities you leave the top part on and set it differently. So if you have apple trees in the garden, you don't have to weigh them all in batches of a couple of kilogrammes. I do not have apple trees, sadly, so I haven't so far had any cause to use the top part; which means it just functions as a lid, or, alternatively, a conveniently relocatable hard flat surface on which to dry a flat-bottomed dish.

You'll notice it's very smooth - no fingerprints. I used those disposable plastic gloves. I'm not a fan of disposable plastic, but I'd had to buy them for something else, so I thought I might as well, as it would give a better finish.

By Saturday it was finally dry, so in between staining and waxing Adelaide I gave it a coat of paint. Nothing fancy; I'm all for decoration most of the time, but this thing's primarily utilitarian. I want to be able to see where my beads are. But I did just pop a copper line round the rim, like this:

And I'd just taken delivery the other day of some olive/peridot green beads, so I spent a fair bit of yesterday afternoon using the dish for its intended purpose. The thing is, I'm making an olive green Southbank. I already have two spectacle chains that are primarily green, one in emerald and one in that shade that is often rather confusingly called "jade" (I have never seen actual jade that colour; it's a bit darker and a bit bluer than emerald). These will go with most of my green stuff, but they will look weird with the Southbank, so something more towards the yellow end was required.

What I really wanted was delicas. I couldn't get them in the colour or anything like it (and I was prepared to go from quite light to quite dark, so long as the hue was right). That seems like a rather unfortunate lacuna to me, but then I'm not a fashion designer. I just like olive green. (And, before anyone asks, I am really not a fan of the Pantone Colour of the Year this year; I have no problem with chocolate brown for, you know, actual chocolate, but don't ask me to wear it.) So I looked for seed beads, and discovered I could get really tiny ones - that is to say, much smaller than these; but I wanted something in the 2 - 3 mm range for a spectacle chain. So I ended up with these 2 mm Czech firepolish beads, which are ridiculously expensive for some reason (the 6 mm beads in the same finish are excellent value), because they were all I could get in the right colour and size. I'm guessing the colour is out of fashion. I mean, they're very nice beads; but delicas would have been just as nice and a great deal cheaper.

Oh, and another thing about those 2 mm firepolish beads; they can have some quite sharp edges on them. Normally this is not a problem because the edges butt up against the adjacent bead, but while I was stringing the spectacle chain I was extremely surprised when the string suddenly broke. Fortunately I'd got to the double-stringing stage by then, so the beads did not go everywhere; all that happened was that the broken end disappeared inside the length of beads and I had to poke it out with the needle. And when I found it and inspected it, it was as clean a cut as if I'd done it with my little embroidery scissors. If that had happened before I'd have tied a new length in with a reef knot, but I can do better than that now! Now that I've re-learnt how to net, I can do a sheet bend, which gives a much more secure join. It took a little wiggling to pull the ends inside the beads so they wouldn't show; but it's done, it'll hold firmly, and nobody will ever know it's there except you and me.

I don't normally make a spectacle chain without a necklace (except where the same necklace clearly goes very well with more than one spectacle chain). The larger beads are the 6 mm Czech firepolish beads, which are really very nice; the photo doesn't quite give you an idea how sparkly they are. I'm a big fan of these. I've made another necklace using red ones (because of course I have). The crystal AB and the quasi-haematite in the same finish are both lovely, too. I usually also do earrings, but I didn't this time (might still do, though, as I do have more of both types of beads), because I had to go and sort out Sibyl as a matter of some urgency.

But, anyway, like the spectacle chain, the necklace is double-strung; and I love the fact that the beads aren't quite the same shade, as it gives a very subtle effect. I didn't use a clasp. I never make necklaces with clasps. They have to be long enough to go over my head, because I like them to hang down some way at the front anyway. And then when they're finished I just tie a reef knot (because it's not possible to tie a sheet bend in a confined space, or at least if it is I don't have that knack) and then seal it with jewellery cement and let it dry for a while before cutting off the ends, which is what you see in the feature photograph.

I wonder how long it is since I actually bought a bead necklace? It must be decades now. It's so much more satisfying, as well as cheaper, to make one's own!