Alchemy

I've always believed that everything that happens has a purpose; sometimes it is really hard to imagine what the purpose may be, and other times it is immediately apparent.

Today, the purpose of two frustrating experiences came clear. Remember my engineering problems with my contest entry piece? How I struggled to find a way to make the beadwork flexible, but strong? I solved it, but not elegantly. All things considered, I believe that the best solutions are elegant solutions, so that one bothered me a bit. I know, I know; I've said it myself, "If it works, don't monkey with it."

And I didn't. It works, and I'm not changing it.

But that didn't stop me from longing for a slightly more elegant solution. Bingo. Enter the extraordinarily frustrating Dutch Spiral challenge. The challenge that was so frustrating that I dropped it at the first possible moment to make a flower from a pattern in a magazine. We already know that turned out well; the flower set the tone for the necklace and solved that problem.

And now, it's solved another one. The lesson from the flower is that different sized beads can be used together to make peyote billow and bow into lovely, and very stable, shapes. The flower is a solid, but the concept also works brilliantly for lines.

Lace.
It's the elegant solution, staring me in the face.
I love it!