Favorite Read(s) of the Year

A glance at my sidebar will show that when I am not beading, I can usually be found with a book. It’s time to pick a favorite from 2010.

Having lived in Jackson, Mississippi in the early seventies, I felt like the characters in Kathryn Stockett’s The Help were old friends. They were my privileged, intolerant upstairs neighbors. They were the women I stopped to chat with at the bus stop when my year-old daughter and I went for our morning walks. It’s a wonderfully written book told from the voices of three very different but incredibly strong southern women. If you haven’t read it, I recommend the audio book, where the narrators’ voices make the characters even more vivid (and harder to leave behind!)

But my favorite book of 2010 has to be Mornings on Horseback, David McCullough’s biography of the pre-presidential life of Teddy Roosevelt. The subtitle says it all: The Story of an Extraordinary Family, a Vanished Way of Life, and the Unique Child Who Became Theodore Roosevelt. This is an amazingly detailed look at a close-knit family – an admired father, a cherished mother and the life they created for Teddy and his siblings in post-Civil War New York City.

The running list on the right doesn’t include all the beading books I’ve savored (devoured!) during the past twelve months. It’s even harder to pick a favorite in this category. But I love peyote stitch, and I was able to take my skills from flat to dimensional this year with Diane Fitzgerald’s Shaped Beadwork. The clear and detailed instructions and gorgeous projects make this a book I’ll return to again and again.

Sunny Lemon Bars

To most people, the holidays mean pumpkin pie and gingerbread, much enjoyed with a dollop of sweet cream. But this year, our daughter Dani, who gets to choose our Christmas menu by virtue of the fact that she missed Thanksgiving, has requested tangy lemon bars. It might just be nostalgia for one of the comfort foods of her childhood, or maybe there’s a clue in her remark that she’s ready to be back home in warm Atlanta – since her move to Pittsburgh, she’s had enough of gray skies and snow.


On Christmas Eve, I'll be making this recipe, published several years ago in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I’ve occasionally experimented with other versions, but these Sunny Lemon Bars are the best I’ve found. The fruit layer, more of a lemon curd than a custard, is intense and contrasts perfectly with the crisp, sweet, shortbread crust.

Hope Dani enjoys them. If the weather forecast proves true, I’ll be serving them up on Christmas Day with – what else – gray skies and rain….turning to snow!

Back Home

Time spent with family is the best part of the holidays, and I got to do a lot of that on last week’s trip to Louisville for my first trunk show with my sister. I stayed at my daughter’s house, and my 3-year-old grandson, Nate, got caught up in all the holiday excitement, especially the dinner table with the special touches the holidays brought – the cheerful holly and berry tablecloth, set with red and green plates and Christmas salt and pepper shakers.

When Nate wanted the pepper, he would use his best manners and ask for "the Santa," and when he needed a bit of salt, I was bemused to hear him ask for someone to pass “the Grandma.” I could only hope that the portly, bespectacled shaker called to mind an image from a Disney movie, and not the flesh and blood relative who sat across from him at the table!

The day of our sale arrived with a surprise snow storm, keeping some of our expected shoppers at home, but we had a great time visiting with those who ventured out. Granddaughter Abi tagged along, and spent the afternoon admiring the glittering jewelry piece by piece, testing each of my sister’s scarves for the instant style and coziness they brought, encouraging shoppers, and planning a few purchases of her own!

As we packed everything back into the car, she was heard to say that this was the best day ever- and how awesome it was to have a grandmother and an aunt who made such cool things. Making my first sale was exhilarating. Hearing that I was definitely not a salt shaker grandma - priceless!

And they’re off…

The flyers and postcards for our December trunk show went out today. I was able to scratch those and several other items off my to-do list. This seems to be one of those times when more gets added to the list each day than gets marked off! I’m just hoping there are lots of people out there who have building up their jewelry collection on their to-do lists!!

I have six necklaces and 4 bracelets I must finish before leaving in ten days – I just realized that’s one a day. Now I just have to work them in around pricing my pieces, printing my business cards, designing a 12-page newsletter for my daughter’s middle- and high-school classes, and, oh yes, there’s the turkey in the refrigerator waiting to be brined!

But still – our first show – exciting times!

Same Stitch, New Slant

I love cool variations of herringbone, and Tina Koyama offers a great one in her design, Beautiful Bargello, also from the pages of Beadwork's Favorite Stitches. (I’m definitely getting my money’s worth from this magazine.)

I had just finished this first version when I downloaded Margie Deeb’s Instant Holiday Glam: Color Palettes of Splendor, the first line of which reads, “Kiss bright red and green good-bye.” Oh well, I wasn’t really going for glamour with this sterling silver seed bead and flame red bugle bracelet. It’s a grab your bag and head to the mall to start Christmas shopping kind of accessory.

My second version does have some hallmarks of glamour with its gunmetal and starshine seed beads and jet crystal button. I’ll pair it with the short rivoli earrings when I want an elegant, sophisticated look, and with the aptly named paradise earrings when the occasion calls for true sparkle and glitz!

Sparkling Waves

Yearning for a little peyote, I chose this Shelley Nybakke design from the current edition of Beadwork. Last year was all about peyote, but this year I’ve gravitated toward herringbone and netting. Also, I’d never worked with memory wire and was curious.

The base row is made with size 6 silver metal seed beads, followed by three-cut size 8’s in a warm bronze and topped with a 3mm fire-polished bead in luminous blue/honey. Silver, bronze and gold in one bracelet? On your arm, its five turns are shiny, highly reflective, just dazzling. Shelley’s designs are always brilliant!

Squaring the Circle

I picked up Beadwork’s Favorite Bead Stitches because I wanted to master a new technique – square stitch – and the cover featured Kate McKinnon’s fabulous Modern Art Cuff, which employs both square and RAW. Flipping through the square stitch projects, I decided to start with Jamie Hogsett’s Starry, Starry Night necklace because if you’re going to learn something square, why not attempt it in the round? And also because I was looking for a project to use a newly acquired glass pendant in lush plums and corals.




The beaded links work up just like flat square stitch, with the addition of occasional increases to adjust for the larger circumference in each successive round. I used lots of thread passes to give the round links some stiffness. I didn’t want any distortion, anticipating that they would be pulled a bit by the heft of the pendant.

I like the airy feel of this winter necklace, and would use this technique again if I needed a custom closure for a bracelet and couldn’t find a button in the exact color scheme I needed. Love these examples I found by Dustin Wedekind.