Project Two - Their Way (sort of)

The next project is the Small Beaded-Bead Lariat, designed by Deneen Matson (Creative Bead Weaving by Carol Wilcox Wells, pp. 38,39).
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Aw jeez.  More cylinder beads?  Nothing against the teeny tubes, mind you.  I can see the point of using them in certain circumstances - but they're so TINY!  My fingers don't like them.  And I don't think they're very interesting. Each one exactly like the other - that's great when your design demands uniformity, but my eyes just slide over their surface and don't catch on anything.
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This project is an exception, as it includes surface embellishment on the beaded beads, but still.  My inventory on these is pretty low, so I have the problem of working out if there are enough.  I found this really handy website: All Info About Jewelry Making and it should help, but honestly.  Why hasn't anyone made a chart of bead counts per teaspoon?  We ALL have teaspoon measures - life would be so much simpler.  *sigh*
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My Cylinder Bead Stash

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The materials list is pretty short and sweet - just two colors of size 11 cylinder beads. 10 grams (or 1900 beads) of each color, if the conversion chart is to be trusted. Hmm. How many size 11 cylinder beads in a teaspoon? About 550. I just counted them. So - almost four teaspoons? Umm - I only have about 2 teaspoons full of any one color. So instead of two colors, I'm using maybe ten. And as I think about it, each of the larger beaded beads  uses 40 beads for its base. I'll need around 1250 for the bases and another 300 for the stringing between the beaded beads. Maybe 1000 tops for the embellishment and a little fringie thing at each end. I should have plenty of beads for this. I hope.  

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The techniques list indicates 1. even count flat peyote (I know this one), 2. odd count flat peyote (Yay! something I've avoided in the past and now must tackle) and 3. surface embellishing (I've done a lot of this with free form peyote so I grasp the concept).

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Okay. The first step is to make 32 'pieces.' The second step is zipping the pieces into tubes. Seems like it would be easier to just zip as I go. So I'll make 32 tubes. The pictured lariat has 7 tubes/beaded-beads of one size, 21 of the same size but a different color, then four more of another size. Step three is the embellishing - I love that word. This is where I can go sort of nuts with personalizing the design.

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Whoa. I have to check the size on these. They seem awful tiny to me - like 15s. *sigh* yup, the 11s really are that small. Didn't seem that way when I was working the flat peyote piece - but trying to bend these little tiny buggers into tubes is tricky. (note to self - what about making a bracelet length tube for a bangle?)
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Linking them together seems simple enough - but I think stringing four or five non-embellished beads in the middle makes more sense - the lariat would lie better along the back of the neck.
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The final step mentions adding "a few fringes to both ends of the necklace." Page 31 has the basic info for adding fringe. Another place to individualize the project, eh?

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Good lord. It took me all freakin' day to figure out how to do the embellishment. I kept trying to add beads to the surface all around, instead of making a band around the bead attached only in one place. Adding beads to the surface was kind of cool, but I wanted to at least try to follow the instructions. Now that I've rounded that particular learning curve I can get on with this. 
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So weave the base, zip it up, attach the band. Deneen refers to the bead base size by width and depth, instead of column and row (which I'm more familiar with). I'll vary the width from 8 to 11 beads and use a depth of 10 for all of them. I'll use different colors in the same family for the embellishment bands on about half of them.

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Each bead took me 15 minutes to whip up because of my fudgy fingers. All told, I think this took about 8 hours to do.  Check this out - it's an online stopwatch! Now you too can figure out just how long it takes to bead a beaded bead (say that three times fast).

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So here it is, their way. Sort of. I veered away from Deneen's design in that I decided not to make some of the beaded beads look like little dumbbells, I used a lot more colors than suggested and I made the beads that will lie along the back of the neck without embellishment. I put 11 beads instead of 9 between each beaded bead as I was stringing them together. I gave each end five fringes instead of three and made them a little more delicate in appearance. Other than that, it's exactly the same! ;-)
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Now to have at it, my way! My version should go a LOT faster! See ya next time!!