Wednesday Worktable

Happy July 4th!

I can't believe it is already 7:30 PM! The bead shop was closed today, so I decided to take advantage of that, and transform the classroom into my enamel studio again. I really have to have a day without interruptions in order to enamel with the torch.

I arrived at the shop at 10AM, and started clearing off the table in the classroom while the computer was booting up. I needed to print off the 50% off coupon for Michael's, and dash over there for one tube of bugle beads - shhhh...don't tell anyone the bead shop owner went to Michael's to buy beads!

Naturally, after I found the bead section (I've shopped at Michael's before for scrapbooking stuff, but I have never shopped there for beads! Really!) I stepped into the aisle, and ran smack into one of my customers from the bead shop. Of course, I accused her of cheating on me, and she then proceeds to ask ME for help making her beading purchases from Michael's. Geeeesh.

After I finished helping her, I went off in search of the bugle beads (which I no longer carry at the bead shop). I purchased this beautiful tutorial from Smadar a few weeks ago, and it calls for 6g of bugles. Michael's doesn't carry bugles, either, so I went across the street to Hobby Lobby (no coupon, boo!), got my bugles, and arrived back at the bead shop at 10:45. {The Smadar tutorial is next on my project list - but not for today.}

By 11:30 I was all set up and ready to enamel:

My plan was to play with mixing colors, and also to get enough beads made to do some projects with them, and hopefully have a few left over to sell.

My enamel selection is a little dizzying, and a little sick:

I set 40 of them on the table - and this isn't even ALL of them. Crazy.

Then I chose the ones I really wanted to work with, which amounted to about 22 different colors, and put the rest away so I'd have a little room. And then I fired up the torch. And torched, and torched, and torched, and before I knew it, it was 7:05!

I always bite off more than I can chew when I set aside an enamel day. By 3 PM, I had stopped doing sets of beads in each color, and was just doing 2-3 beads with each color just to see how the colors turned out., I'll file the test beads away with the color labelled, and then I can come back to them and make more as needed.

I managed to make it through about 25 different color combos (sometimes combining 2 or more colors to get a different color altogether). Some of the colors turned out great, others, just so-so.

Here is today's bead turn out:

It's about 135 beads. Seems like I should be able to get a lot more done in 8 hours, but what with changing colors, and mixing colors, it always takes much longer than I think it will.

That's it for today's worktable. Stay tuned tomorrow for the big surprise!

Rainy Days and Tuesdays

Sometime between the time I got up this morning and let the dogs out, and the time I left the house for work, the rain bands from tropical storm Beryl reached the area. Pouring rain - so hard that the doggies refused to set foot outside. Including Bailey, my intrepid golden retriever who once swam from Daufuskie Island to Hilton Head Island,* chasing a pelican with a wicked sense of humor.

Bailey after the Great Pelican Pursuit

Bailey, on water:
Atlantic Ocean, sharks, salt water, and all: Yay!
Swamp, alligators and all: Yay!
Bath: No way!
Rain: Unh-uh.

So, it's off and on raining pretty hard here. Thank goodness I have an attached garage, or I might not have gotten the dogs into the car! But once we arrived at the shop, they bolted out of the car and ran for the safe dryness of the shop.

And whatever is going on with the barometric pressure is giving me an awful headache, which actually started around 3AM, so I should have known this system was close. Of course, the weather guys here had forecast all this tropical storm weather would start in this area 2 days ago, on Sunday! Never listen to them!

My shop is closed on Mondays, so Mondays is (sort of) my day off, making Tuesday, my Monday. So the Carpenters reference seems pretty apt.

Unfortunately, bead shop customers are a delicate bunch, apparently highly susceptible to melting when wet (cue Wicked Witch of the West theme music!) - the shop tends to be pretty deserted on rainy days, sadly. Such good beading weather! But mustn't get wet! Paradox!

I turned on the TV once I arrived at the shop - my morning ritual is to blog while listening to Judge Marilyn. Love me some Judge Marilyn! I glanced over at the TV, and noticed they were running an unusually long weather advisory across the top of the screen. I saw the words "localized street flooding" - which I had already experienced on the way to the shop. Lots of the roads I traverse to get here are surrounded by small lakes and ponds that tend to spill over onto the roadways whenever it rains. No biggie.

Then I saw the words "7 inches of rain expected." Whoa. That seems a little excessive! But this was a really long, wordy advisory, and I didn't have the attention span to read it: I kept getting distracted by the fools in Judge Marilyn's courtroom! I finally caught the words "rivers not expected to flood" - that caught my attention. Yes, we live on a river (the Savannah river). But rivers? What rivers? And in 23 years of living here, I have never seen a weather advisory that mention river flooding. Ever. So I made myself read the whole advisory, and I guess there was a glitch in their system, because they were running the weather advisory for the coastal areas from Charleston to Savannah, which are pretty far from here, at least as far as tropical storm effects. Whew! But I hope everyone there stays safe!

I spent hours yesterday reaming metal beads, and to steal a punchline, "boy are my arms tired." It takes a lot of forearm and hand pressure and strength to get the cutting broach through metal! The technique that worked for me was to hold the bead tightly between the thumb and forefinger of my left hand, and to hold the cutting broach ... blade?... whatever the metal part of the broach is called, about an inch above it's tip, with my chainnose pliers in my right hand, tightly. The cutting broach blade is square, and it enlarges holes by turning and cutting, and in order to get enough force behind my movements, I would twist the bead with my left hand in one direction, and twist the pliers and broach with my right hand in the opposite direction. I applied a lot of pressure with both hands, and just alternating twisting both hands one direction and then the other, to make the broach blade turn and enlarge the hole. I think I finished about 400, maybe 450 beads. And my thumbs, forefingers, and forearms are unbelievable sore. It hurts to hold anything in my left hand right now!

And I still have several thousand metal beads that need to be reamed! Waaahh! Will NOT be buying these smaller-holed beads again, no matter how nicely they take the enamel!

*almost. He made it almost all the way to Hilton Head, as I stood in waist-deep ocean, hollering like a fool at him. He would periodically turn around and look at me, and then the pelican would dive-bomb his head, and he would take off chasing it again. Once I was reduced to a mere speck on his horizon, he finally turned around and headed back to Daufuskie. The pic above is Bailey, right after the pelican chase (and a roll in the sand), ready for more beach fun!

Edited to add: Right after I hit the "publish" button, they interrupted programming with a local weather advisory: There is a Tornado Warning (warning, not watch) just one county to the south of here, and that weather system is moving north. Eeks! And it is actually eerily calm outside right now, with no rain at all. I think I will rush the doggies out, and then batten down the hatches a little. May even close up and go home, since today will be a lonely day at the bead shop!