Here they are!

(Thanks, Marylou!)

My beeeeeeaaaaauuuuutiful new beads.
I tried to find a background for the purple mix that I already had, but now I'm thinking maybe the blue mix. I think I'm going to have some silver in there too. So I got a LOT of potential background colors, but I got them in small quantities (I can always get more), knowing that I will find other uses for whatever I don't use for this particular endeavor. Now all I have to do is get beading!!

And now I will talk about the weather. (Seriously.)

It's been unusually cold here in New York. But all of a sudden there is a heat wave. I think my body is in shock. I went outside to take pictures of the finished necklace that I started last weekend, and after a couple of minutes, I had to rush into the doorway to relieve myself of the heat. I went back outside to finish the job, and quite frankly, I don't even care about the shadows right now. When I got back inside my apartment, I could barely see, even though the the lights were on. This is something that I'm not used to happening in New York. (Sydney, but not New York.) I got a couple of pictures of a gift that I just finished so that I could post them after the gift is received. But just barely. They're pretty bad pictures, but I couldn't stand the heat anymore! I'm supposed to go out tonight, but I'm not so sure if that's going to happen.

Here is the finished Etsy necklace:

<3

I love making things. It's like my comfort food. My chocolate cake. (OK, well maybe that's taking it a little too far, but you get my point.)

And that is why I spent my Friday night making myself a necklace. It's the same one that I made for Angela and Hilary, but in olive green. Back in the day when I used to sell jewelry, I always made quite a few pieces for myself. So while I have some new ideas up my sleeve, the first few things will probably be for yours truly. Besides, I use them as measuring devices. (Who needs rulers anyway?) It's just the same as using an old sweater to take measurements for a new one when knitting.

I used Japanese Delica beads that I got with my mom at an expo in Australia a few years ago. As a rule, Japanese seed beads are more uniform than Czech seed beads, and that is why I mostly bead with them these days. But these Delica beads, though freakin' expensive, are the most near-perfectly uniform beads I have ever used. I love love love them!

Olive green has always been a comforting color for me. I know that that is really silly, but it's true! When I was a little kid (like, three years old) my mom put me in a pottery class. The teacher's only complaint about me was that I refused to paint anything any color other than olive green. I can only imagine how strange it would have been to see me come home with a clay sculpture of a bowl of Cheerios, painted olive green. That I, at three, had chosen that color, is pretty bizarre.
Don't worry, I haven't forgotten my UFOs. I've been working on Sam's mystery item, but I think I don't have enough yarn, so I went back to the place where I got it last weekend to see if they could get that dye lot in, and I still haven't heard back from them. (So I should probably follow up on that.) If they can't get it in, I will probably have to incorporate stripes of some sort.

I swear, this is totally not cheating, but I am counting long overdue gifts that I haven't exactly started yet as UFOs. Hence my dad's fiftieth birthday sweater come-post-fiftieth birthday scarf. I am using Misti Alpaca, which is amazingly soft. I looooooooooove it. I using the pattern I mentioned before. It looks pretty cool and it's not as tedious as seed stitch. My only minor annoyance is that it isn't quite symmetrical. On both sides, it starts with garter then knit, and ends with purl then garter. Even though I am a very messy, cluttered person who loves olive green, asymmetry to this magnitude annoys me. But I'm not starting over. And I still love the scarf so far. I just hope my dad isn't allergic to alpaca!