I do have some tricks to help ease the tension before I start to bead. I don’t always use them, which is why the herringbone is twisting, but when I do, they work wonderfully. I thought I’d share my tension tamers, just in case anyone else needed them.

1- Chamomile tea with honey and lemon. If time permits, I make myself sit and drink all the tea before I start to bead. It sounds ridiculous, forcing oneself to drink tea, but if you drink and bead simultaneously, you end up with cold tea and tense beading. Drink first, then bead for best results.

2- Turn beading into meditation. Focus on your breathing while you bead and try to let the pattern of your beadwork push any other thoughts from your mind. I’m awful at meditating. No matter how hard I try not to think, I end up running through my “to do” list, running through my “what if” list, or wondering if I look cute meditating. Repeating the bead pattern helps quiet the mental chatter.

3- Stretch. If you’re feeling tense, put the beadwork down, stand up, stretch and take a few deep breaths. It’s quick, simple, and effective. And yes, you’ll probably look silly, but try and get over it, it’s for your own good.

If anyone else has any relaxation tips for tense beaders I’d love to hear them:)

When someone I know hands me a sandwich baggie filled with knotted thread or kinked wire and a bunch of miscellaneous beads that belong to their neighbor’s cousin’s daughter’s BFF, my instinct is to drop to my knees and plead with the heavens: WHY ME? It isn’t that I don’t like helping people, because I do, but I love the “give a man a fish and you’ll feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you’ll feed him for a lifetime” philosophy. I would rather spend two hours with my co-worker’s neighbor’s cousin’s daughter’s BFF teaching her to make and fix her own jewelry, than spend one minute repairing it myself. Teaching people to bead is fun, repair work is boring. It is that simple.

But doing pro bono repair work comes with challenges beyond the snooze factor. Missing beads, broken clasps, and old or improper materials can make doing repair work for others a pricey, or even impossible task. Be honest with people when you take on these tasks. Honesty will help you avoid feeling resentful or stressed out and can help make a repair job more palatable. If the money matters to you, let the person you’re doing the repair for know if you’ll have to spend any replacing a clasp, beads or switching out fishing line with Soft Flex. Heck, you might even get lunch out of the deal. If too many beads are missing, the repair might not be possible. Make sure you tell the owner up front that you might not be able to find the right beads for the job so they aren’t disappointed when they get their baggie back instead of their favorite necklace. Be honest with yourself about your availability. If you’re like me, a toddler, work, and the three zillion undone things on my “to do” list can make a sandwich baggie of beads feel like an anvil hanging over my head. If you can’t do it, it’s ok to say so. Direct your co-worker, friend, or whomever to your favorite bead shop, many of them do repairs for free, or for a small fee.

I am repairing a right angle weave necklace today. My mother-in-law gave it to me months ago and I figured the least I could do was fix it before her birthday next week:)

Maybe I was too excited to start working, maybe some impish fairy is out to ruin me, or maybe I just had too many cups of coffee at breakfast, but I broke my thread three times and broke two needles just trying to get tubular herringbone started. Then, just as I get a good start, my little man wakes up way too early from his nap. I couldn’t be mad at him though, I got some good snuggle time while we watched “Up.”

I’m using a modified herringbone rope for the leaf margins. Usually when you make tubular herringbone you use a six bead foundation and add row two while the piece is flat and then join the two rows in a circle before continuing. Since I’m using a four bead foundation I found it was easier to start with a two bead ladder, then add the next two beads individually. Once you’ve got all four beads in a ladder, just join them in a square and add row two after that. I start row two by adding two beads on top of the first two beads in the foundation row, just like regular herringbone, but instead of adding two more beads to complete the square, I add three. This will make more sense later once the leaf is further along, but that third bead is necessary for filling in the center of the leaf. If you add that extra bead on every row, the rope has a tendency to curl, so only add it to every other row.

My beady brain is already brimming with ideas for using the modified herringbone rope in jewelry. I think it would make a great foundation for embellishment. For now though, I need to focus on finishing this orchid. If anyone uses the modified rope before me, let me know, I’d love to see pictures.

I’ll post pictures of the herringbone tomorrow, I didn’t have a chance to take any today.

Initially, I created the orchid just for the challenge. I had been beading for years and wanted a break from making jewelry. As the orchid began to come together, I realized I had a decision to make. I could craft it as closely as possible to the real thing and dazzle people with my incredible skill (insert eye roll here). Or, I could add a touch of fun and whimsy to the piece. I’ve never been a fan of fake flora. Silk flowers, fake Christmas trees… I really don’t see the appeal. Why exchange the messy loveliness of nature for a sterile fake? They just seem so Victorian, so superficial and stuffy. Every time I see a fake flower I hear this voice inside my head saying, “daaaarling, I simply can’t find the time to water a houseplant. What if it dies and the petals fall all over the rugs? How simply wretched.” So I decided that if I was crafting a fake orchid, I wanted it to be obviously fake and in no way capable of being substituted for the real thing. To that end I added crystals and wrapped the stem in green, polka-dotted ribbon.

At this moment, the orchid, which I started in 2006, is still unfinished; it lacks leaves and a proper arrangement. I’ve started the leaves, however, and I’ll post pictures as soon as I have some. The poor flower has been unfinished for far too long and at this point it is a matter of pride to finish the thing. So finish I shall, and document it too, just in case anyone finds inspiration in my project.

Fact #1 I had planted lettuce.

Fact #2 The seeds had germinated and there were sprouts.

Fact #3 Temperatures had dropped, but nowhere near freezing.

Fact #4 The sprouts were gone… Just gone.

Fact #5 The arugula I planted right next to the lettuce is growing splendidly.

Bad noir aside, this is a mystery I need to solve quickly. Arugula is a cole crop, like broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower. These winter veggies thrive in the cold and tend to have thicker leaves than lettuce. According to the University of Rhode Island, slugs aren’t as fond of the thick-leaved cole crops as they are of lettuce. Since slugs are a frequent pest in my garden, it is possible they ate the tender lettuce shoots and left the arugula alone.

As an organic gardener on a budget, I like to use beer as bait for slugs. Slugs around my house aren’t usually large so setting out several, shallow traps with one or two inches of beer in each one works best for me. But if you have big guys in your garden, you may need three or four inches of beer in each trap. It is important to locate your bait in the right place. My lettuce bed is boarded by the lawn and slugs are known to hide in grass during the day so a row of bait between the lawn and the lettuce should at least save some sprouts when I replant.

Cold night-time temperatures may also be to blame. Here’s the part where I confess; I’ve never grown lettuce before. I assumed that as a cool weather crop, lettuce sprouts could withstand cold nights. According to a local gardener much wiser than I, row covers are a must-have for winter lettuce.

Seems I have some work to do!

*

If he were going to call himself bad, he’d use the word ‘nefarious’. It’s his kind of word, full of pomp and syllables, fancy. Most people around here just called him a sinner. Bishop Martin told me I could love the sinner and hate the sin if I was uncomfortable labeling Mr. Hannover as a sinner. Which he was, Bishop Martin and my parents assured me. I always thought hating was a sin. So how could I hate sin? Some days keeping all the rules straight and the lines unblurred was enough to drive me to running away. Or running toward something else. And they meant love in the churchy, from afar, kind of way. Like sending out positive thoughts, leaving cookies from scratch at the front desk, and praying for Mr. Hannover, not being near him at all. They were pretty clear about that part. I still don’t know what to call him.

            I remember when he first came into town. He had a man’s van. That’s what Beth called it, a ‘man’s van’. It was all white with no windows in the back, “so he can rape little girls back there without anybody noticing,” she said. Beth liked to say things that made people uncomfortable. My momma said it was some kind of birth defect that made her like that. When I first saw the van I was in Winkie’s getting a peach shake because of the heat. A long, white van, covered in red dust from driving through the desert, pulled up and parked on the street out front of the store. Ed Wink, Brother Wink’s son, saw it first.

            “What’s that logo?” he asked, peering over the counter and letting the blender rattle on the counter by itself. I turned to look.

            “Says ‘GIAB’,” I said.

            “What the heck is GIAB?” He asked. I shrugged, studying the neat, yellow and black logo painted on the side of the van. If I were the font of all knowledge, what would I be doing in Abiah, Utah?

While it seems obvious enough that they are important, why are those two virtues sometimes so hard to master? Why do I find myself mired in the monumental time suck that is facebook, when I clearly have a path of self discovery to unclutter? Or why vacillate between a career writing non-fiction or a career writing fiction. Existentialism would have me make an intelligent decision based on my past and stick to it, right?

I had originally started this website to label myself as a ‘writer for hire’, but in the absence of true self discovery and mired in doubt, I’ve left it unmanned. For now I’ll just keep telling myself that I’m not ready to make this decision yet. That I’m just going to stand at this fork in the road a little longer, hands on my hips, pondering my existential path.