Mirrix Loom For Sale

Hi ho, everyone!  I hope all of my friends out there in blogland are doing well.  I have an Ebay listing up right now.  I have an 8" Mirrix Lani Loom that I have never used that I am selling.  If you are interested, please click here to go to the listing.  There are about 3 1/2 days left to bid, or you can buy it outright now for 50% off the current list price.  The opening bid is $50.00.  There is only one bid right now, but there are 8 people watching it, so I expect there will be bids close to when it ends.  Here is a photo of what will come in the box:

On beady news, I've got nothing.  I strung a necklace on beading wire with just a mix of beads and there 2 beads on it that are making me not like it.  I need to restring it and get those beads off.  It's on a stand on my kitchen counter and I wrinkle my nose and make the icky face when I pass it by.  Other than that, nothing really.  Ever since I worked on and finished the book projects, things have really quieted down for a while.  I think part of it was because I was so intensely working on those things that I got a little worn out and now need a break.

What is on your table?  Share with me.  Or drop me a note and just say hi.  Anyone is welcome to email me at anytime at indigosbeads@live.com.  Hope to hear from you!

Teaching!

Lucky me!  I've got two ladies who want me to teach them some things about beading.  I'm always glad to have new beady friends.  They got some of my patterns from The Bead Coop and we are going to start with square stitch on a bracelet.  Then when they are comfortable working with the beads and charts we are going to move on to the loom for more complex tapestries.  I'm really very excited.  They have to order the beads first, so that may take a week or so.  Then we have to coordinate schedules, and that may be a little tricky.  I'm hoping that Jeff is working by then which means my afternoons would be more tied up and we'd be stuck with either evenings or weekends.  But it will work out.  If anyone else out there reading my blog lives in the Phoenix area and wants to get together for a bead day with some new friends, give me a holla.  If they let me I will take pics and show our day.  Fun fun fun!!! 

In the meantime, I don't really have any pics to show today because I am trying to finish up a project I started about a month ago.  It has sat unfinished for quite a while and I don't like leaving unfinished things around.  So I'm going to finish that before I move on to my brandy new handmade cabs.  I made a little headway today...got about 3 inches done on my rope, which I'm aiming for 34".  I'm almost half way!  Hope I don't run out of beads before the end.  I'm using leftovers of things, so it might get nip and tuck there at the end. 

Ok, kids.  That's all I got today.  My in-laws are coming over for cake and ice cream tonight at about 7 (it was my mil's bday yesterday).  Made a super delicious black forest cake!  Can't wait to dig into that!!!!!  But first, it's what my husband calls Jimmy's Casserole.  (Frozen burritos layed out in a baking pan, covered with cheese with green salsa poured on top and baked for about 45 minutes.)  It's a quick and easy night.  But still surprisingly tasty nonetheless.  It's best with my amazingly awesome homemade guacamole, but avocados are still a bit pricey.  So it's just topped with sour cream for tonight.  I've rambled on quite long enough for one day.  Have a very happy weekend everyone!!!

Hallelujah!

Waaaaaaaaay back in September '09 my dad wired me money to buy beads for some loom projects for him.  He lives down in Mexico and wanted something Mexican and oceany to go in his beach house.  I had a hard time finding pics that would fit the bill, but I found these two, one of a photograph of a Mexican beach and a painting called Mexican Riviera.  He said yes to both.  I didn't have any projects to work on at the time, and I just loved looming, so I was very excited not only to get some projects to do, but also to make something special for my dad.  Did you catch the part where I said September of last year???  It has taken me 6 freaking months to do these two pictures for him!  I have felt so terrible about them taking so long. 

Well, I took Robin Atkins' two day class on bead embroidery the first weekend of October and I HAD to do some more of that...right away...a lot!  I got the beach and palm tree done pretty quickly.  It is 7" x 5.25" and uses 35 colors (10,080 beads).  I think this one only took me 2 or 3 weeks.  That's because I got a good jump on it before Robin's class.  So I finished it and then started the Riviera, but it just went so slowly.  The Riviera is 6.5" x 8.5" uses 51 colors and 14,976 beads.  I had such a hard time with this one for some reason.  Maybe because it had so many colors.  I would get to the end of the row and I'd be 1 bead short, or 1 bead too many and I'd have to rip out the row until I found the mistake and then redo the row.  It seemed like I was ripping and redoing as many as I was getting right.  And I got so incredibly frustrated with it.  I just couldn't keep my concentration.  Then the BJP started, and of course I HAD to do that.  And my dad kept saying, "There's no rush.  Take your time."  But I couldn't help from feeling guilty.  So in the beginning of February I decided I have GOT to get this done for him.  So I worked very diligently.  I forced myself to concentrate.  And I was getting into a really good groove.  I was feeling good about things.  Then one day my darling Sara (see previous post for a cute pic) was dancing and spinning around in the kitchen.  My bead tray was hanging off the edge of the counter just a little bit, and WHAM!  She knocked it and all the beads went flying EVERYWHERE!  All 50 or so colors of them.  That day I had one of the worst anxiety attacks I've ever had.  It was so bad I wanted to go to the hospital and beg for a sedative.  It lasted 9.5 hours.  Sara came up to me as I was sitting there in shock in horror and with the saddest little puppy dog eyes she said, "I'm sorry Mommy."  All I could do was take her into my arms and hug and console her.  And she burst into tears.  I think she felt almost as bad as I did.  So the next day I had to chop down the pattern to the row I was on and rework how many beads of what colors I needed to rebuy to finish this project.

Well I finished the beading about 2 weeks ago.  Then I had to weave in all the ends.  And that was taking forever.  Last night I finally finished the top side.  And this morning I was bound and determined...dammit, I'm going to get this thing done!  So I sat ALL day weaving in ends...and I finished!  And the skies opened up and the angels started singing.  Ok, not really, but in my mind they were! 

I took some pics for you to see.  I'm a little bit unhappy with the pics.  They weren't laying nice and flat.  In actuality, they are very nice and square and evenly measured from top to bottom.  In the pics they're not lying smooth and don't look as good as they do in person.  But I'm not going to keep messing with it.  You'll get the idea.  So here they are...The Beach and Mexican Riviera for my dad...