Sarah Downton Beads and Jewellery

Tuesday morning

What a wet day, it’s been so dry lately I was almost thinking it was time for Rick to give the lawn it’s first haircut of the year. At least if it’s wet it can’t be so cold as it was a month or so ago, although they are predicting another cold snap for the weekend, which is a bit annoying as I was thinking we could make a start clearing out the garage.

The kiln is on and heating up (8 deg C today in the studio) and I have yet to don my thermals and stuff, although I haven’t need the long johns for a week. In store for today I’m planning to continue making handmade glass beads for my jewellery range ready to make more pieces to top up my Surrey Guild cabinet, and hopefully make a stock of jewellery ready for the forthcoming Open Houses. I’m also starting on my beads for the Dorking bead fair and to put in my webshop. I’m absolutely determined to try and get ahead this year while things are a bit quieter as I hate the stress and last minute rush of preparing for fairs and shows, and I want to try and avoid this as my fairs seem to be at the end of weeks off school and during our summer holiday season, which is rather unfair on our daughter if I have to sit and work when we could be doing fun stuff together at home. How long I’ll stay ahead will be seen, I really hope some other problem doesn’t rear it’s ugly head this year, we could really do with a break from dramas.

On a lighter note I was relly pleased yesterday to actually achieve making almost an inch of a chain linkage that I’ve liked for a long time but never had the time or decent instructions on how to make it. The chain in question is Jen’s Pind and makes a chunky looking but nicely articulated piece. Following the instructions every third link looked wrong, so I undid it and made the links look how I thought they should and hey presto, what a result. I now have to wind and cut more jumprings so I can continue the linkage and make either a necklace or bracelet or both. It really helps to get the ratio of wire diameter to ring diameter  correct, as I had tried it out using cheap wire available that was the wrong ratio and the whole pattern just didn’t work.