Home Again

Back from Denver and just a bit worn out. I did have a wonderful time, met some great people - including a lovely and talented beading artist, Elise Matthesen. I bought this necklace and these earrings at the convention plus another necklace "Dawn at White Sands" - I couldn't find a picture of it to link to, so I took my own.

and these earrings, which she made on the spot. We had been talking about a number of things, including how much I love to wear pink (my "uniform" for traveling is pink polo shirts and either beige/khaki/tan pants or jeans) and she just happened to have these lovely milky pink beads lying about.

The final bead related purchase is also SF related - a limited edition book of short stories to mark the revival of the Fourth Street Fantasy Convention in June 2008 titled Glass Bead Games is full of stories inspired by Elise's beaded necklaces. Lois McMaster Bujold, the Worldcon Guest of Honor wrote the introduction, and Elise got her to sign my copy of the book. The other fabulous thing about the book is that it includes a story called "Tideline" by Elisabeth Bear, who won the short fiction Hugo for that very story. I wish I could have gotten her to sign the book, too. Maybe at the next con?

I did an 18" necklace tonight, unfortunately the picture doesn't do it justice - need to get some frosted, lower watt bulbs for the lamps. I'll take another in natural light tomorrow and update with it. The beads are small iridescent-coated clear glass drops and iridescent clear glass mini-hexagons (or "wavy diamonds" as some sites sell them) separated by tiny seamless sterling silver spheres and finished off with very small iridescent clear glass spheres for the last few inches.

I'm going to finish off the ceramic lanyard I made in Denver and do some complementary pieces with the rest of the beads from that lot, probably bracelet, earrings and maybe a pendant necklace, just for the heck of it.

Updated picture (on Aug 15th) - not sure it's that much better...but taken in natural light against a better colored background.