I kinda got myself into a funk where I set the beading aside and did not touch a bead for a few months. I tried to write it off as a problem with what I had and what I had none of. Turns out, it really was about what I did not have.
Now, there comes a point in any hobby when you either dedicate yourself to it and just jump off the deep end and try to find out just how deep the rabbit hole is going to take you, or you just decide to either skim the surface of it and move on. I have gone through many different phases with different artistic endeavors, and comparing what I actually identified with and what I just skimmed over, there is one element that distinguishes the two. The Stash.
With knitting, it was the yarn. Right now there is a few hundred dollars worth of yarn sitting in my coffee table (it is a giant trunk). When I was knitting I still could not find the right fiber, the right weight or the right color despite this. In the yarn store, I could justify buying 60 dollars worth of sapphire fingering weight merino for a single project. Then I would buy a skein of this, and a bit of that, and before I realized what was happening, I had filled a 2'x5'x2' trunk with this yarn, this stash of squishy goodness. Now, I sit in front of this trunk, and I am slightly perturbed with the fact that it is all just here, sitting, taking up room. After about 75 different finished knitted projects I am done knitting. Mostly. I know I have not knit my last item, I will knit again in the future, but on the whole, it does not grab me like it used to. I could sit for hour just listening to the clicks, watching my hands manipulate string and just be amazed at the movements that look so graceful, whereas I am the farthest thing from graceful.
It was the yarn store that kicked my knitting habit into overdrive. Once I realized that there was a specialized store for it and got to go touch and squeeze the soft fluff balls, I was instantly a yarn snob and overnight, the big box craft stores were no longer a place to get the goodies. Those are just a gateway drug. This is where most of my bead stash came from in the first place. A few random goodies snuck in here and there, and some of it found it's way to me via friends, family and random broken pieces of jewelry, but it was not the good stuff. Thanks to yarn, I knew to start looking for bead stores in my area, but came up almost empty handed. I did find one boutique style shop, but the prices were high and selection was not big enough for me to really start working on the things I wanted to make.
At this point I decided that there was not any other option beside finding my supplies online. I had no trouble finding things I wanted, things I thought I needed, but the shipping would kill me. Most of the places where I'd find one element I wanted to use did not carry the right colors or sizes of complimentary elements to complete a project. I would end up with a handful of tabs open to different shops and sites with long lists of stuff that I wanted to work with, but all totaled up the prices for the items plus shipping from different stores would have killed me. I was so frustrated by the amount of my budget going to shipping I would scrap the whole idea. after a few months of this I was so bitter and angry at the whole situation that I just stopped trying.
One day while doing a quick check to see if another bead store had opened in my area I got a really strange result. Did not look like a bead store, so I wrote it off, but a few minutes later the curiosity really got the best of me. I looked up the store again, this time by name, and poked around until I found their website. I nearly started crying because here was a shop that was less then a half hour from my house that was an honest-to-god bead store. Nay, warehouse! T&T Trading, here I come!
So naturally, I made plans to go visit the store next day, hoping against hope that the store was a real bead store, and this is what greeted me:
Holy bead heaven. You could spend hours in this place and not see everything. I tried. Everything I asked about, they had. Everyone was so very nice, and ever so helpful. I finally bought a bead mat. I got to see the seed beads I needed for my red necklace and got them. I even found all the pieces for a completely unplanned project that I had to have. My 2nd visit went just as well, got everything I needed for the third piece I am planning. This time one of the owners even pulled out a rare stone from the back so my friend and I could see it, even though it was not ready to be on the showroom floor. My stash is finally growing, and I have a place to go and pick up and touch the things I want to work with. I honestly love this place, and if you are ever around the greater Lansing area, you should really stop by.
Needless to say, I am not feeling blocked anymore, I am beading again. Just a teaser for you, since my next post will be about this necklace:
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