Just a Few More Earrings

I have just three more sets of earrings to show, and then I'm done with jewelry for a while. I did Marilee Rockley's "Elegance" pattern from her book Boutique Tatting.

The thread is LadyShuttleMaker's "Helm's Deep" (not only do I love blue, but I'm also a sucker for anything with a Tolkein reference), with brass focal beads, Czech faceted beads, and an assortment of seed beads. I really like this pattern; some day I might make a pair for myself.

Then I made two pairs of Marilee's "Grand Aura" earrings from her other book, Up and Tat 'Em. And by the way, congratulations to Marilee on getting her upcoming book published by a "real" publisher!

The top pair is in Krystledawne's "Whisper in the Garden", and the bottom is in Marilee's "Night Wind".

You may have to enlarge the photos to see the different colors of seed beads that I used in these two pairs, although it's quite noticeable in person. This pattern is a bit convoluted, so the order that you string the seed beads on the thread doesn't quite reflect the order in which they appear in the pattern. This is no problem if you are using all one color of bead, but if you use more than one color you have to read the pattern through and count out which beads end up where. The three beads on the left side of the top split ring are the first three you string on, the one on the core thread of that chain behind the big ring is the fourth, then all the ones on the big ring, then the three on the second thread of that same chain behind the ring, then the three on the right side of the top split ring. Whew. Rather than count this out every time I make the pattern before I can even wind the shuttles, I wrote on the picture in the book, numbering the beads in the order that they are strung on the thread. This gives me a handy reference so that I can make the beads show up in whatever pattern I want them to.

I haven't put findings on any of these yet because I'm waiting for a new order to arrive.

My next phase is going to be bookmarks.