Spring Fling

I've been busy this week, but took time to go to lunch Thursday with my best friend from High School. Marilyn has been doing Chemo for breast cancer and she is finished and feeling good so we went out to celebrate. Had lunch at a great little restaurant and we took half our entree home in dogie bags so we would have room to split a piece of Double Chocolate Turtle Cheesecake, and Oooooo was it ever good!!!

I think I told you that we are having a Herringbone Challenge on the BeadDreamz Group. Well I found a picture of a wonderful bracelet in one of my bead books and I really wanted to do something like it. I couldn't figure out how they got the outside rows of herringbone to stay slanted. Every time I tried it the outside rows flattened out and so I gave up. Then someone one the list posted a link to another site with the same kind of bracelet and you could see that they did the outside thread turn differently than what I had been trying to do. I revised my technique and this is the result......SPRING FLING......


In this next picture you can see the flower and leaf embellishment in the center and you can see the seed beads that I added on the turn at the end of each row.

The seed beads are hardly noticeable since they match the cubes so well and the outside rows stayed angled correctly.

The orange and yellow cubes are very bright, when I added the flowers and leaves it toned everything down some. Now the bracelet just yells SPRING instead of screaming it.

Happy St. Patricks Day

Happy St Patricks Day!!!!

This is my oxlis plant, it is several years old and spends the spring and summer in the flower bed and the winter in a pot in front of the South patio door with all the other plants we dig and keep blooming.


These are the crocus in the flower bed by the garage, a sure sign of spring since they are NOT blooming in a snow drift.

Each year in March the local lumber yard has a dinner and trade show, we attended last Thursday evening and I won the table decoration. These beautiful yellow tulips are just starting to open.

Even though the signs of spring are evident we still need to have the wood stove burning, so Steve keeps the wood ben supplied.

For the past two years I have been growing some of my garden plants from seeds. These starter flats contain: Roma, Better Boy, and Best Boy Tomatoes, Patio Cucumbers and Basil. I want to start some mixed salad greens and some Bell Peppers too. We will have more garden space this year since we finished the flower/garden bed last summer. I'll try to keep you up to date on the plants with weekly or bi-weekly progress reports.

New Work

On the Bead Dreamz group we are having a new technique challenge for March and April the technique is Herringbone or Ndebele Stitch. This is a technique that I haven't tried yet so I am doing some practice pieces to learn. You can click on some of the pictures and get a really close up look at the beading.


This first bracelet is a variation that is called Seed Stitch. You do the traditional two bead flat herringbone stitch but you very the size and color of the beads to give it the different look.

The button closure is an antique glass button from my collection. The color doesn't look very true in this picture, it is actually a cream and brown. The pattern for this bracelet is from the book Mastering Beadwork by Carol Huber Cypher.

The next picture is a little fuzzy, but the close up pictures are better. This is a sampler of variations on the tubular herringbone stitch.

The center of the necklace is a spiral herringbone done with size 8 seed beads, in a matt and transparent rose color. The two sections above the center that look like beads are actually just a herringbone stitch done with size 8 beads.

The section with the bright blue beads shows how when you very the size of the beads you get another effect. There is also a small section of spiral at the top of the photo.

My Amazon.com book order arrived yesterday, all three new beading books are wonderful and I'm sure I will be posting new project pictures soon.

The weather was very spring like yesterday and today, we had highs in the 60's and 70's. I am more than ready for winter to be over. I had to go to the Dr Tuesday, had been sick for several days and it wasn't getting any better. I had acute bronchitis, from what the Dr said it seems to be effecting people who don't normally get bronchitis (non-smokers) even the Dr was just getting over a bout. I still have a pretty good cough, and I'm very tired, but I feel better each day.