As regards my beadwork; I have decided that it is worth it, for the sake of my own learning, to allow myself to follow other people’s patterns. Particularly where it comes to basic techniques I don’t yet know well enough to accomplish without the help of instructions, it’s fine to accept the assistance. Right now I am working with a good all-around manual, the Bead Stitching Handbook, published by Kalmbach Media in 2019. There is still no information in it about Albion or Hubble Stitch, which are both relatively new stitches on the scene.
Sometimes I’m surprised that we’re only in 2022. It’s been three years since Bead Stitching Handbook was published. I suppose the Pandemic has taken its toll in more than obvious ways; though if you asked me about Hubble or Albion Stitches in 2019, I probably would not have known what you were talking about — even though they both pre-date this time.
I mention the book because there are a lot of books specifically on beading and other craft work which I can post about, here. I had forgotten the purpose of even mentioning that work. The problem for myself that I can see now, is what role my “hobbies” take up in my life context; how much time and energy to allot to them; and specifically, whether to carve out time for them.
I’m getting a clearer idea of where I want my life to go. Careerwise, I have a substantial inroad which I’ve decided to follow up on. I’m thinking of working with Digital Libraries in a technical capacity, as a Metadata or Cataloging professional. This means that I should be focusing on Computer Programming and renewing my six-year investment in Spanish language, for the time being…and aprender español es más importante que leer en inglés. (It’s more important to learn Spanish than to read in English.) At least, until I get back up to speed.
Beadwork then appears relatively appealing, as a release which is not language-oriented, although the other day, when due to sleep abnormalities I could not absorb my extremely abstruse reading, I began playing around with St. Petersburg Chain. Yes, again. I actually had wanted to work on this using bugle beads, but I can tell that I’m going to have to improvise in order to get that obvious slant to the beads, and still pack them in as densely as I wish.
The way that St. Petersburg Chain is set up (by instructions I modified from Bead Stitching Handbook, at least), just doesn’t work out of the box with bugles, unless you want a long, stairstep chain (with the bugles end-to-end, rather than side-by-side). I have an idea of what I want; the question is, now, how to get there. That sounds like the beginning of design, to me. Right now I’m thinking of using a variation of a more basic stitch, like diagonal Peyote or Brick Stitch…but I realistically have no idea how that is going to work up.
The best way to see if something will work out, more often than not — especially with beads — is to try it. If nothing else, I should be able to tackle this via bead embroidery, but I’m trying to avoid that, as it will give the work a back face and a possibly unnecessary textile component. Of course, the largest potential problem with that is inconvenience in hand-washing, and my own discomfort in not having devised an elegant solution.
Which reminds me — I got a few books on Computer Science which I’m letting quarantine for the time being, although I probably don’t have to. I still have to decide whether I want to keep them. The used notation as regards math and logic, may be beyond my current level of understanding…or I might be able to either learn while reading, or compensate by looking things up online…or with further study with more basic texts.
SpectralBeads 