Bead Complete 21 june 2015
I've been admiring the work on Linda's Crafty Inspirations blog for a while, and the Elinor pattern particularly caught my eye. Although she shows it as a bracelet, I figured it would be easy enough to make it into a necklace, so I just kept going. (And going, and going... this is not a super-quick pattern but it's worth it!)
I read somewhere a while ago that repeating your thread path tends to make beadweaving projects look nicer. I scoffed, but I tried it and decided there was something to it. This project is definitely one that benefits from retracing. Happily, if you follow the pattern, you will find that she has built this in. I did end up changing the order of the steps a little bit, but once you get a few motifs done, it's easy to look back and figure out where you're going next, so you don't have to keep referring to the pattern.
I also remembered to do some color samples FIRST instead of getting halfway into it and deciding I hated it. For the samples I cheated on the whole doubling-back thing so they went pretty quickly. I thought I had taken a pic of them but I guess I didn't after all, and they are now unstrung, so you'll just have to take my word for it that this was the winning combo.
