Falling in Love with Beads I was lying awake in the dark this morning thinking about the first time I really fell in love with beads. Oh, I’d learned how to string macaroni on yarn and fell in love with the process of beading pretty early on, but...

New for Beadwork in 2010 I get a kick out of seeing the reaction on some people’s faces when I tell them what I do for a living. “I design, teach, and write about beading.” Yep, it’s an unusual job, all right. It came about from...

Last weekend I took a break from my beads and tried my hand at Viking Knit, a type of wirework that creates beautiful wire cords that you can fashion into bracelets and necklaces. For months, I've been admiring some Viking knit bracelets the same way I admire a wonderful painting: Wow, I wish I could do that. ...

Here's a confession guaranteed to fill up my inbox with reader mail: My favorite beaded watch is made with pretty Kazuri ceramic beads in various shades of blue, silver beads, and a silver watch face. Very simple to make and easy to wear. So what's the big deal?...

It’s a cliché and dorky tradition, but my husband and I light a candle and make resolutions on New Year’s Eve. We’re each allowed only one. And those amorphous “I’m going to eat healthier” or “I will strive to be a better person” type of resolutions won’t fly. What we come up with are more like personal action items. They have to be utterly simple: things we know we can and will do without being overwhelmed. For instance, one year mine was “make one new friend in the neighborhood”. That was pretty easy to accomplish. Joe’s was “run an Ironman race.” That one seemed ridiculously overwhelming to me, but my dear obsessive mate crossed it off his list, no problem. ...

If you’re like me, when someone asks you to make a piece of jewelry for them you automatically go to beads, findings, wire, and thread. But after reading through Elements of Style, I think I’ll open my mind a little wider next time.

I woke up this morning quite aware that more than half of 2009 is already finished! It was hard for me to believe, especially since we haven’t had much of a summer here in the Midwest, and I count on those hot mid-summer days to get me through the rest of the year here on the tundra. Anyway, the realization made me do a mental check on my New Year’s resolutions....