Thursday, January 3, 2008

Yours in obsession...


"I'm the best in the world at what I do. You, too, can become the best in the world. All you have to do is to pick a small enough area of interest."

I've left the dreams of being best in the world behind, but my father, who said that, is still a great inspiration to me. I've lived my entire childhood with someone who's obsessed. I can't say I share his personal obsession, but I think I may have found mine in beads.

They talk to me, I swear. I was thinking about taking up beading, because no jewelery I owned would suit my dream dress. So, I spent half an hour browsing a craft store, and bought a small starting bead kit and a combined tool. I started to look at the beads, and discovered that they didn't want to be a bracelet in all red. They wanted to be a red and black necklace instead, so I bought more beads and made something I'm not at ashamed of as a first try.

I've done a few pieces of jewelery, and I really do have talent for this. I found my perfect esthetic outlet. I, who always thought I was the "brainy" kid compared to my brother, the "arty" kid. (He's a great graphic designer, by the way.) The necklace and bracelet set you see in the image above was a present for my mother, who's very fond of green. The focal beads are green glass with yellow-green spirals, found at Panduro. Otherwise, it's mostly green glass or seed beads, with a few yellow and transparent glass beads. I also have a few shell beads and freshwater pearls. The necklace is on wire and the bracelet on nylon thread. (The finished bracelet is three beads shorter, because it was too large for her wrists.)

I saw a link to A Dress A Day yesterday, and it was lovely to read about someone else's obsession. So, I decided to start my own beading blog. Trying to post as often as possible, if not every day, and with photos of my and other's jewelery or beads, or with bead designs I'm thinking about. I'm sure there is a beading blog community out there, and blogs are really the perfect outlet for small interests, so I'm going looking for the others.

(As an aside, I also have a personal journal, where I've been blogging for almost six years now. You can find me as Thette on LiveJournal.)