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...