Holiday Lariat

As I mentioned earlier, despite any evidence here, I have actually been fairly busy designing and creating.

Imagine my delight (and surprise!) when the Photo Fairy, the Download Fairy, and the Editing Fairy paid me a visit yesterday! PF took over 500 photos, and her sisters downloaded and edited all of them. Woohoo! No sign of the Listing Fairy yet, though.

Now I have some projects to share with you - pardon for a few days while these are holiday themed. You're not really tired of the holidays already, are you?

This is a lariat I designed around mid-December. The pretty lampwork peppermints had been for sale in the bead shop for several years, and I started to hope no one would buy them - I love them!

My original plan weave the entire lariat in a red and green spiral stitch, adding the peppermints about 6 inches from each end. But I didn't have anywhere near enough of the beautiful velvet red Czech fire polish beads I was using in the center of the spiral, so I had to come up with plan B.

I found some Czech pressed glass rondelles in green and in clear, some green Czech fire polish beads, and some red Czech pressed glass bicones, and played around with different patterns, and came up with this result. I love it, and am so glad I didn't have enough beads to make a lariat-length spiral, because this was quicker, and more festive, too. In my opinion. Keeping this one!