The Russian Spiral Blues

This is a Russian Spiral bracelet that was the February bead-along project on the Seadbeadersters yahoo group. I was a very late start because for a while I was VERY behind on emails. I also hadn’t done it because I was in the middle of my own little challenge that I didn't want to stray from. I felt it was sort of a cheat this week because this wasn’t a pattern that I had sitting around for a long time just waiting for me to make it. After I saw all the lovely bracelets everyone was coming up with, I decided that I was going to do it (and perhaps the March bead-along as well). 

So I have been trying to do this pattern all week and it’s pretty much been kicking my ass. First of all, I didn’t have the Hex beads listed in the instructions but I saw that some others in the group didn’t have them either and improvised so I decided that I would improvise as well. Boy did I improvise, many times and in many ways. There was always something going wrong or something not looking right. I’ve started, taken apart and restarted and taken apart and changed colors quite a few times. A couple people used bugle beads in their bracelets. I tried that, a couple times. I should've taken a picture of my attempts and titled them "Epic Fail". It's not that I couldn't work up the pattern, I was just having serious bead problems and it wasn't looking "right" or at least not pleasing to me.

This incarnation of the project was started Saturday night and finished Sunday afternoon. I decided in the end that using size 6 beads worked best of the stuff that I had to work with, and in addition to those, these round blue beads that I’ve had forever and never used (I supposed that sorta follows my challenge, huh?). I also REALLY wanted to use the orange beads that I’ve used in this one. They are some of my favorite and it’s a part of my scheme to get the world to fall in love with orange. 

I don’t know why this particular project was such a struggle for me, but I can tell you one thing that bothered me about it. It seemed pretty impossible to keep any kind of tension in the thread as I worked on it. As it is, it seems a little floppy to me but it holds its shape. I have no idea if it’s supposed to be like that or not. 

 

I will say that my husband and MIL were wowed by the way it turned out and I really do appreciate their appreciation of it because I was pretty much mad at the whole project and just wanted it to be over with. Maybe I’ll try it again one day after buying the hex beads that were supposed to be used.I think I'm also going to add a clasp next time, that might help me establish and keep proper tension. We'll see. maybe one day I'll even get the bugle version right.

I seem to be doing pretty well taking pictures without my light studio set-up