Today was such a day. I have had these lovely strands of creamy white Akoya pearls in my stash for ages, toying with different plans for them now and then, until deciding that they really should be hand-knotted on silk. And today would be the day when I would teach myself hand-knotting, with the help of a couple of different techniques that I'd printed out and had beside me.
Once I got over the initial fumbliness (is that a word?) of my unpracticed fingers I strung a few pearls, divided by 18k gold beads, before I decided that the awl and/or tweezers just wasn't working for me and I started using just my fingers. Worked like a charm! I got to the middle of the necklace (a few hours after my early morning start time) and I already had the perfect (or what I thought was the perfect) idea in mind for the centerpiece of the necklace. Keeping it simple, I had planned on using a large, perfect lemon quartz center-drilled bead. But then for some unknown reason I ditched that idea and went with two small peridot rondelles on either side of a very large 18k gold bead...which I thought looked great, until I strung and knotted several more pearls and gold beads...and then it struck me that I just HATED the centerpiece! After all of that knotting! And now of course, I was nearly out of silk thread. Arrrgh!
I then did the smartest thing of my day so far...I put it away (after taking a quick pic of my faux pas to post here), along with the silk and all my other tools of the trade, poured something cold to drink and buried myself in a book. And tried to forget that I'd just wasted several hours of my day. :(
Not a total waste, though. I did learn the hand-knotting thing!
