It's hot. Obvs.

Obviously it's hot. Because it's summer. But hot weather means very limited beadmaking time because on a very warm day the shed reaches 34°C by lunchtime and my brain stops working at about 30°C and I start making stupid mistakes and crap beads, so on the days where anything above temperatures of 27°C are forecast I don't even attempt making beads.

As such, I've been working sporadically – a couple of hours here, a couple there – and I only have a few beads to show you. June was a bit of a write-off, really, not just because of the heat but because I had a couple of doctor and hospital appointments and a wodge of worry and stress alongside them but it's OK because it all turned out fine in the end. It was just my woman hormones making my boobs go mental, is all. Fun.

But yep, beads. There are the very jolly Bubblebumps ones which are un-encased orange beads decorated with turquoise scrolls, little slightly raised blue dots, and pink 'bubblebumps' which are raised bumps with a bubble trapped inside each one. Innovative naming.

I don't know what the orange is. It's definitely Effetre and it's not their standard orange – it's some kind of special – but the label has long fallen off the bundle of rods so I can't be sure exactly. It's a glorious colour, though. The pink is Double Helix Rhea Light which seems to vary in its hot pinkness from batch to batch.

I also have these double encased spotties:

A couple of weeks back I got a bit obsessed with double encasing. I wanted to make beads with an opaque cylindrical core encased with a coloured transparent and then encased again with clear but so that you could clearly see the demarcation between the coloured transparent and the clear. I managed it eventually and I worked out how to do it so that the opaque core doesn’t bleed onto the encasing layer whilst also making sure that the encasing doesn’t overshoot the core, all while keeping the opaque core cylindrical.

The effect is one of those things that easily goes unnoticed, after all, it’s just a little bead, right? I mean most people wouldn’t look twice at one of these and consider all the things that I just told you about. It’s not a fancy floral, it hasn’t got any inclusions, it’s got no silver glass – it’s a basic fat donut-shaped bead. So why bother? I think I just enjoy setting myself a bead challenge and completing it, really. Normally those challenges involve making the most simple-looking beads but simple-looking isn’t always simple to achieve and getting it right is where I get my glassy kicks.

I made a couple of other beads in the same colours (Effetre Light Violet 041 and Light Turquoise 034) and then it got too hot to carry on that day so I ended up with just a trio.

The spacers here are Bullseye Light Aqua 1408 which is a bit greener than Effetre's Aqua. Lovely colour.

All of the beads pictured above are currently available to purchase in my shop.

In knitting news...

I've finally taken some sock photos because there is nothing like contorting your legs into photographable positions while wearing wool socks in peak summer, is there? I had to do it as the finished pairs pile was going a bit Tower of Pisa.

Today I'm showing you these ones. The pattern is Soma by Summer Lee from her book The Sock Project.

They're knitted with Yarnsmiths Merino Sock in shade 2K367 Magenta.

And in other news...

I went to London last week to spend a couple of days there with my friend Jen. It was hot and Londony and we walked and talked and we went to Hackney City Farm to pet goats and sheep, and I barely took any photos because I just don't tend to when I'm doing stuff, plus in London there's a constant fear that someone will snatch your phone as they ride past on an electric scooter or bike. Do not even get me started on those things. Living in Cambridge was already a bike nightmare but now electric bikes and scooters are here being a pedestrian is more perilous than ever. But anyway, yes, I shall leave you with the one photo I took of the adorable and very vocal sheep and goats of Hackney City Farm.

Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, don't overheat and make sure you've put a bowl of water out for the birds and other garden wildlife. Bye!

Beady stuff and unbeady stuff

I've not got a lot to report on the bead front. It's not so much that I haven't been making beads, but more that I've been making lots of the same beads over and over.

I made lots of the 'Shoreline' hearts pictured above and I turned some of those into necklaces.

Now I'm on the Bumblebeads. I don't know how many of these I'll make. To be honest, sitting in the shed in these temperatures, making the same bead over and over again is already starting to do my head in and I've only spent two beadmaking sessions on the bees, so I'm not holding out much hope for vast amounts of them.

That's why I'm not taking orders for the bees. I've found that I can bear the shed heat until it hits about 36°C and then my brain gives up which makes my hands give up so that's why I'm only making as many as I can make. I appreciate that people are disappointed that they can't order as many of the bees as they like, when they'd like to, but hey, you should have realised that I'm an awkward pain-in-the-arse beadmaker (and person in general) by now. You can tut at me and call me ridiculous – it's fine.

I did make a one-off red heart bead that I love. The glass here is CiM Heartthrob and it's such a glorious shade of red.

In other news, running in the heat is HARD. I ran seven and a bit miles in it yesterday morning and sweet flipping Jesus, it was difficult. The heat has got me to the point where I'm walking back from runs in my sports bra like some kind of runstrumpet and I don't even care. We're due to have this weather for another fortnight so I'm not discounting the idea of actually running in my bra at some point.

I finished reading J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy and oh my word, that is some moving stuff. The book is like a cross between a gentle Sunday night BBC1 drama and Trainspotting. After that I read Cara Hunter's Close to Home, which is gripping, compulsive reading and quite short, and it's good but I'd only give it four stars due to its ending.

I also listened to the audiobook of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. I'd seen so much talk about it that I had to see what all the hype was about. I was expecting it to be typical chick-lit, but it's not really. Well, the general feel of the book is quite chick-lit I suppose, but the main character is an unusual one which made for a refreshing change. Well worth a read or a listen, I'd say.

Last night I started the first of the Harry Potter books. I know I'm even more behind in this than I was with the House-watching thing but I was missing J.K. Rowling's writing so much I just had to Potter up. I'm about a third of the way through The Philosopher's Stone and I'm really enjoying it.

Right, enough tippy-tappy-typing as my dad-in-law calls it – I must go and make Bumblebeads. Enjoy the weather, if you like that sort of thing, and if you don't, stay cool.

Saturday Stroll

Chris and I caught the bus into town this morning but the bus was so hot we decided to cut the journey short and walk over Victoria Bridge and across Jesus Green.  The photo above was taken from Victoria Bridge and you can see people punting on the River Cam.

As we strolled across Jesus Green we walked through the Plane Tree Avenue which is just beautiful.  

A bit further on we saw some ducklings and their mum.  The little noises they made sounded like my guinea pigs!

It has been such a gorgeous day.  Are you enjoying your Saturday?

Packing Up

Beads, that is.  Outside in the spring sunshine.  How nice has the weather been this week?

I can't stop.  I know I owe you a lengthy blog post but right now I have to mop the kitchen floor and then I'll be heading shedward.  I'll try and write some words over the weekend.  

Until then, enjoy the sunshine!

Busy Bee

It has been such a beautiful spring day here.  It was quite crisp and chilly but the sun shone and it made me feel all smiley.  I sat in the garden with a cup of tea at lunchtime and I saw this big bee buzzing around the crocuses.  He was caked in pollen and I was only able to take one photograph before he flew off.

My first purple crocus bloomed today.  Its petals are kind of crinkly and wrinkly (I don't know if that's how it's supposed to be) and it is such a fantastic colour.

The guinea pigs were enjoying the weather too.  Here's Lisa on the grass :

She's hiding behind the pig igloo - pigloo, if you will - which is a much better hiding place than the one she found yesterday.  For a horrid few minutes I thought she was lost.  Chris and I were searching all over the place for her and we eventually discovered her wedged between two bin bags behind the wheelie bins.

I hope the weather was nice for you today too?

Beads that match the weather

These beads seem pretty appropriate for the current January weather.  We haven't had any storms here but the sky is moody.  It's blue with touches of grey and quite frankly it looks like it's in a bit of a strop.

If you fancy making some jewellery with beads that match the weather you can find these 'Stormcloud' ones over in the Beads To Order department of my website.

Have a good Saturday!

Breezy Beads

The weather has been really angry today - lots of dark moody clouds and really blustery wind. I had to have the door and window open as it does get quite warm in the shed and the breeze made beadmaking quite tricky. My torch flame kept blowing about at crucial moments.

This little quartet of blue beads was going to be a larger set but I gave up trying to apply tiny dots upon tiny dots in the breezy conditions. Annoying. But it was just as well as I'm not really happy with the yellow on these. I used Effetre Opal Yellow which is great but it's one of those slightly unpredictable difficult-to-get-consistent-results-with glasses. You don't really know what you're going to get until the beads are annealed and cool because the colour changes and develops in the kiln.

Some of the dots are cream, some are primrose yellow (which is what I was aiming for) and some are peach. Hmmm.

Although the windy weather made melting glass a tad irksome it did wonders for the washing. I pegged a load of laundry out on the line and it was dry in about forty minutes. At one point I did see a sock and a pair of my knickers fly across the grass but fortunately I managed to grab them before they took flight and left the confines of the garden!

The inevitable 'It's Hot!' post

Oh yes. It's mighty hot. Like too hot.

I don't do hot. I wasn't designed for it. I get very stressed (just ask Chris about my sandwich shop strop on Saturday) and I tend to do everything at a quarter of the normal speed in an attempt to stay as cool as I can.

Yesterday's train journey home from Cambridge was horrid. I was prepared for the mugginess and general sauna-type conditions of the London Underground and I made sure I had a bottle of water with me before I descended the steps at Kings Cross. But within about five minutes of stepping onto the tube train I got that horrible woozy, sounds-like-you're-in-a-swimming-pool, eyes-have-gone-blobby, just-about-to-faint feeling. I drank my whole bottle of water and got off the train at the next stop for some fresh(er) air. When I eventually got to Paddington I downed another bottle of water and an orange juice and I started to feel a bit better. I got on the train home but the flipping thing overheated and broke down at Reading. So did the passengers. There was a tonne of jostling, hot angry people trying to figure out where they had to go to catch a train to get them to wherever they had to be. Ah, the joy of trains.

It's mega warm again today but it's not really sunny. The thermometer currently says it's 32.4°C out there. As you can imagine, I'm not melting glass. Instead I've been to Tesco where I contemplated buying a paddling pool. For me. Yes, I'm thirty one years old but I tell you, I was so close to putting that paddling pool in my trolley. The thought of lounging about in all that cool water was very inviting but then I got a mental image of myself not fitting into the pool and kind of being splayed out in it, legs, arms and head dangling over the edges. And of course, paddling pools also involve swimsuits. Those factors quickly changed my mind so I left the pool on the shelf. I think it was for the best.

Tell you what though, I'm seriously considering a severe haircut. I still haven't been to a hairdresser which means that it's almost a year since my hair had any kind of professional help. Yesterday, what with all the stress, sweat and humidity, I looked like Brian May. And that's not good. May takes curly hairness to a whole new level.

(That's not me, that actually is Brian May but my hair was looking something like that.)

Must. Find. Salon. Quick!

'Storm Cloud'

These 'Storm Cloud' beads were inspired by the weather over the past few days. It's been constantly raining and very grey and dismal. But this morning, when I made these, the sun was shining and it's been a really lovely day.

I took the photo in the late afternoon sun so I've got a bit of weather conflict happening here - storm clouds in the sun, but hey, juxtaposition is always good. And I love the word 'juxtaposition' so any excuse to type that is fine by me.

'Nimbus' Lentils

I think I had grey on the brain when I made these. While I was looking at glass colours last night I was repeatedly drawn to shades of grey. I reckon it was the train journey home from Cambridge yesterday that was responsible for my colour choice, or lack thereof. It was a dismal day and the sky was full of rainclouds. It was pretty much the same today. Grey is nice for beads, though - a subtle hue that looks fab with silver and can be worn with anything.

Beads to match the weather

There's something ever-so tropical and sunshiny about this colour combination. These are the same as the 'Fiesta' beads I made last week but decorated with some proper old school Laurabead stringerwork.

How hot was it yesterday? Making beads was torture. I had to give up in the end as I had sweat running into my eyes and my hands were so slippery I couldn't grip the mandrel properly. Painting a nice picture of myself, there!

I don't cope with that kind of heat. And yes, I know that I'm moaning about hot weather after weeks of non-summery rain and cloud but come on, yesterday's mugginess was horrid. Give me crisp, chilly-but-sunny autumn weather over the hot, clammy and so-humid-my-hair's-fuzzed-up summer stuff any day!

That's it from me this week. I'm expecting a glass delivery next week which consists of loads of my favourite-to-work-with colours as well as some funky stuff so hopefully lots of new beads will be born.

I'm off to Cambridge this afternoon. Have yourself a fab weekend!