Rings first, I think. For my niece, I made a Guardian Angel ring. You may recognize the pattern from when I posted it back around Christmas. I had made one before, but it had been a while. There are some minor flaws in this one when the brick stitch was added (for some reason I forgot the trick of starting a row with two beads to hide the thread... no idea where my mind was...), but my niece was THRILLED! One of the great things about this ring, is that it is so easy to change the colors of hair/skin/dress to personalize it for the recipient.
Next we have a Super Mario Brothers 1 Up Mushroom ring. This one will be for my personal wearing only, as I am pretty sure this mushroom is covered by either copyright or trade marks... or both! But, some days you just need an extra life!
Time to admit the truth. I do not always bead up a ring before I post the pattern. Sometimes, it is days, weeks, even months later that I finally get around to making one. There are a couple I have never made, either because I don't have beads in the color I want, or because I just got distracted. Sad but true. This weekend I did bead up the butterfly ring that was posted earlier this spring. I love the way it turned out.
And finally, how I doubled my beading space... First let me explain that I bead mostly on a small table in front of a recliner. If I need to have my laptop open while beading (to see a pattern or to watch Netflix) the table can get very crowded, and the safety of the laptop is a little iffy. On Friday, I made a run to the Habitat Re-Store (Habitat for Humanity Resale Store - if you haven't been to one in your area definately go!) to get a tile for baking polymer clay on. Since the Re-Store I go to is in a college town, it tends to have a lot of office stuff in it - desks, chairs, file cabinets - in on Friday it had an old monitor stand/keyboard tray. This thing is made out of really heavy steel - to hold the old giant monitors! And it was only $3! So I grabbed it and brought it home. I cleared off my table, added the monitor stand/keyboard tray and suddenly I can bead and have my laptop open! YAY!
As stated before, this thing is heavy, so there is no risk of it tipping when I have the tray out. And, it gets the beading a little closer to me, so I no longer require a giant pillow in the chair to support my back while beading! Did I mention yay? 'Cause - YAY!
