My friend and neighbor has a standing order for a new beadcurtain strand to be delivered on (or about) her birthday, to celebrate living another year cancer-free. Since the prior year's (2014) was so late—and I had cleared out the many, many orange beads created for it^[1] by making one for Frances I resolved (I suspect) to start on the next year's immediately, with the idea of shifting the emphasis to yellow^[2] . I have a document photo of the very first strand with a yardstick taken about the time I made these beads, after I turned in the other; why would I worry specs unless I was planning the following year's?

clear colourless pressed lentils with 069 effetre scrolling. Picture was taken at 8:00, 13jan2015^[3]

My in-progress shots tend to be quickies for Instagram, so I don't work as hard setting them up: in this case, I relied upon freshly fallen snow & clouds to provide a plain background and good diffusion.

Beadcurtain strand, Nov 2015. Photographed 23nov2017, E620, macro lens.

Then I was basically busy until it was due: I went out of the country during the summer, then took Joy Munshower's ‘surf and turf’ (i.e. learning how to make horsie-head beads), which pretty much absorbed my time around the deadline for this project, so clearly, photographing it got lost in the shuffle. According to my 2015 list, the strand was strung & delivered on the due date.

Also on black, because that's what I had set up, before I remembered that I could choose the background to please myself; I think white tends to bounce light better, though there's no denying the black is nicely dramatic for thumbnails.

Note that the focal beads in the first photo form the core of the design, with a few leftover shard beads from 2014. The furnace glass beads were given me by a mutual friend. There's also a lone green dottie, similar to those featured in 2013.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.