Waiting For Godot....or Someone

I feel like I've been away from the beads for ages and I'm still not feeling like I'm back in the swing of things yet.

It seemed like there was a lot to do for Christmas this year which is so weird because our family had agreed not to do gifts this year and we'd decided to have a more relaxed Christmas without having to prepare a big meal.

Our visitors were late...six hours late.....each day!

So...most of our Christmas time was spent waiting.

I've discovered there is nothing worse than waiting. You can't start anything because you may have to put it down any second, so it's hard to focus. I've also discovered Morganna, my muse, gets really bored waiting and as she doesn't have to stick around she takes off....who knows where she is, I just know there's a hole in my brain where she usually is.

Anyway....the piece I was working on before the wait set in is this piece.

I bought this stone about eight months ago, much bigger and heavier than I usually work with...it's 2 1/2" wide.  The size was cool for doing a decorative bezel but boy, did I have a problem with the bail.

Creating the perfect bail for a piece is sometimes challenging and this was more than most. Such a large stone needed a substantial bail...plus I planned on adapting a Nancy Dale trellis rope which requires a generous hole.

My first attempts looked too long and threw off the balance of the stone and I realised I needed to create a wide bail.

After a couple of atttempts I finally worked a piece of tubular peyote and echoed the bezel at the sides. A little tricky to attach but I was finally happy. Of course I could have made life a lot easier for myself by using the stone portrait rather than landscape...but I'm not known for making my life easy :)

So...pendant complete, on to the rope.

Nancy has created a sweet trellis rope and was kind enough to gift the pattern to me (you can buy it here) and this was the perfect project for it.

After playing with the design I opted to add a kind of beaded bead cap that, once again, echoed the bezel at each end of the trellis. This worked great and I was off and running...well, beading.

Then I got whacked up side of the head!

All of a sudden the center beads of the rope looked too blue to me.

I hate that!

I think I knew it from the start but thought because they would be in the center of the rope I could get away with it....and maybe I could. The beads do match the very darkest turquoise of the stone but I just think it would be better if they matched the lighter shades.

Anyway...the project got set aside. Still wanting to play with Nancy's rope I chose another stone, pulled out some vintage gold beads that matched it perfectly and started the rope first.
And then the wait set in.
My studio is now the home of two new UFOs.

So...how were your holidays?