Saturday, December 4, 2010



More ping pong ball work. I was disappointed that my necklace form didn't get into the art to wear show. But after looking at it for a while, I decided that it was a bit plain. I made it with a continuous thread (yarn) just as you would in normal beading. By contrast, on most of my earlier pieces I had used short pieces of yarn that were tied together between each ball. This made for lots of color and texture to break up the balls. The problem was that I had made several pieces that involved 5-bead and 6-bead circles. When you make those sort of circles the beads pack close together and you don't really have room for a knot between each one. I managed to pull it off in the dodecahedron that's pictured, but when I tried a buckyball it wasn't firm enough and wanted to sag out of round. But, as any beader knows, when you make a circle of 3 or 4 beads you can see much more thread between the beads. That means you have room to put a knot between the beads for interest. So that's what I did for my wreath form, which is a variation on right angle weave, and so uses circles of 3 or 4 balls. I'll probably redo my buckyball with a continuous thread, and just add short bits of yarn to the finished sphere at the intersections so as not to compromise the structure. Who would have thought there was so much to learn from ping pong balls.

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