Battle Skirmishes and Strategic Changes of Direction…

I’ve decided that there’s some kind of correlation between how good I think my beadwork is and how successfully/easily it’s coming together. Or to put it in another way, I’m beginning to think that the battle isn’t so much with my opponent, the very talented Christian V. Rodriguez (did I mention she did rather well in last year’s battle…scary?!), as with my own work. I’m definitely feeling a bit of a love/hate relationship developing with my battle piece.

I think I said I had the choice of making the clasp, which would be straightforward, or playing with a section for which I didn’t have such a clear strategy. Well, what’s the point in doing one or the other? I thought I’d try both! The week got off to a good start with my experimental section actually working out quite smoothly. I even managed to use both a stitch that I don’t use very often and some of the Superduos that Steven very kindly gave me to play with when I met him at Craft, Hobby and Stitch International a couple of months back…(do I get any brownie points for that?!) So I pushed myself a little into unfamiliar territory and felt quite pleased with the results. Just as I was patting myself on the back over this, I realised the fatal flaw…remember I said my design was reversible?…Well, this new section wasn’t – big problem! Not to be put off, and never one to reach too eagerly for my scissors (I still find it soul-destroying to cut up work that has taken hours to make, especially when I actually quite like it), I put the offending section to one side in favour of starting on the clasp and in expectation (hope?!) of a cunning strategy to get around the problem.

The beading for the clasp has taken me about ten hours, but that at least went smoothly. Unfortunately, I had foreseen a possible problem with my little plan and, sure enough, said problem materialised. I’m still sorting that one out!…and it’s going to have to involve scissors!

On the plus side though, I did think of a way around my reversible (or not) issue and have implemented that and think it looks ok. That didn’t involve any scissors – just a reorganisation of a few components, so that makes me happy. I do think, though, that the knowledge that things didn’t go quite according to plan has clouded my view of the piece. It’s hard to look at something objectively when you know all the little bits that didn’t quite work as you intended. In such situations I normally put the piece away for a couple of weeks and usually find that when I take it out again it looks a whole lot better because the memories of beading frustration have disappeared. I’m not sure that this is an option here, hence the love/hate relationship, but I will persevere and hope that the love wins out!

I now have to make 37 beaded beads, so that could take me a while. Assuming that all goes according to plan, I may be a little quiet here while I bead away, but you can assume that I’m (mostly) having fun! I’ve also discovered the other benefit of the Battle – making new beady friends on Facebook, so it’s not only the personal challenge, but also the growing spirit of community that is making this all so worthwhile.