Progress on the Bead Journal Project

For those of you who won beads in my OWOH drawing, I put them into the mail yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon.  So you can look forward to getting your little prizes shortly!

Fortunately I didn't wait until today to ship them out.  My 86-year-old mom, Yvette, lives with us and last night she took a fall in her bedroom.  I was working on my BJP vessel while I was watching the men's figure skating short program out in the family room. I heard a crash and went running into mom's room - and there she was, sitting on the floor with a stunned look on her face.  She's gotten to the point where she doesn't lift her feet much when she walks and apparently she got tangled up in the rug on her floor.  Throw rugs and the elderly do not get along well, so the rug is now out of there.  Good thing she's a little pipsqueak - I was able to get behind her and lift her right up.  But I spent a good part of the morning tending to her - she was in a fair amount of pain.  Ice packs and Ibuprofen last night and this morning, and now she's feeling a lot better.  Scary!

Speaking of my BJP vessel, here are some pictures of the "state of things" at this point in time.  Here we are, heading rapidly toward March and I haven't even finished January yet.  Sigh...

I still have a lot of work to do on this piece.  I need to patch up a few "holes" that are obvious when you look at the last picture.  And then the collar... yes, this vessel will have a collar.  I've already started it, but it's going to take a bit of time.  

I sure have learned a lot while doing this piece.  The thing I dislike most about this one is how abruptly the organized stripes begin (see middle picture).  This is totally wrong, both from an aesthetic point of view and from a symbolic point of view.  And I couldn't really rip it out and start over - which is the second thing I learned.  I need to make knots every so often rather than use up most of my long length of beading thread before I make a knot.  Then it won't be such an issue to do any "frogging", as they say in the world of knit and crochet.  Another thing I learned is that it's much easier to bead when the felted base is thicker.  I felted this  vessel a lot more than some of my other vessels and I'm having a much easier time beading it.  But I also learned that I need to pay attention to the size of the holes in the seed beads that I buy.  The red ones have tiny holes, and I've managed to break two needles.  It will be interesting to see what other things I learn as this Bead Journal Project progresses.

Oh, and if you're wondering what I meant earlier about "from a symbolic point of view", I've decided that each month's vessel will be based on what and/or how I'm feeling about life in general that month.  In January, I was feeling very strongly about getting organized.  Before I got heavily involved in craft-related activities I was very organized.  Even my spice rack was in alphabetical order.  But since I've become more artistic, particularly with activities involving beads, my physical environment has become very chaotic.  Not just the beads, my entire environment!  I'm out of control... and I hate it!  So the beading on the vessel represents how my organized life has spiraled out of control and how I want to get things back in order so that I can enjoy my environment and be more productive creatively.  Wish me luck on THAT one... LOL!

Now I'm going to work on that collar while I watch the Vancouver events on the TV.  And YOU go have yourself a happy and creative day!