A pleasant surprise

Once upon a time, before graduate school swallowed up all my time and/or mental resilience, knitting was a part-time activity that shared space with several other crafts. One by one those crafts have fallen to the wayside as they took up too much time, or were too fiddly, or took enough concentration and analytical focus as to be in direct competition with school rather than filling spare time.

The saddest for me to lose was beadwork, which I've been doing for nearly 20 years at this point (yes, I started when I was 12, though I've gotten a bit better since then). It lost its place because the kind of work I do requires careful decisions with the placement of nearly every single bead. Obviously a little too close to essays, and maybe more stressful! Early this week I achieved the coveted ABD (all-but-dissertation) status and as all of the little fiddly academic projects cleared away - granted, to make way for the mother of all academic projects - I found that my beading mojo was returning. I took some time at the end of the week to make this:

It's hard to tell scale from this picture, but the whole thing is about as big as my little finger. The beadwork is done over a piece of abalone a friend gave me years ago and called out to me finally this week. I really enjoyed beading again - though trying to photograph this piece REALLY has convinced me I need to invest in a decent camera! - and I think that with a little determination I can add it back into my life without risking my dissertation. Which is good, because I have half of a beaded life-size iguana that's been laying around for about 6 years that I'd really like to finish!!