A Beaded Bead, in a way

This week, I have been a little pre-occupied with my new tiny pink netbook. Since I was laid off, Augie and I have been taking turns on the computer, and it has been getting old for both of us. We had been talking about getting a laptop for me before September, but put it off as an unnecessary expense for several months. But when it became apparent that the Acer Aspire was a really powerful little computer with just exactly the features I would use the most, we decided it would be an acceptable investment. That it was available in pink is just icing on the cake.

You all know how it goes when you get a new computer, though. It might have everything pre-installed and ready to go, but there are always a bunch of things you have to adjust to get it to the way you like your computer to be. So I've been spending a fair amount of time fooling around with the netbook, not to mention being distracted trying out different new things. It's just about perfect now, but we're still working on getting the ethernet/wireless modem set up, so I'm still blogging on the desktop. I'm hoping my next blog entry will be posted from the new computer, and I'll tell you more about how I like it so far (spoiler alert: I really like it a lot).

Meanwhile, back at YOJ, I had some 18g 8mm rings in a tin. I have no idea why I would ever have cut rings with that large an aspect ratio, because they are far too weak and unstable for any normal chainmaille use, but I had a small tin of them and an idea. What if I used basketweave to make a barrel-shaped beaded bead? Perri and Iza have used a similar idea with coils, why wouldn't discrete rings work, too? So I pulled out the 28g wire and some #11 seed beads and started. I used 6 of the rings and added three rows of beads, starting with the third row. Once I got the hang of anchoring the ring at the beginning of the row, using a pin to maintain spacing between the rings, and dealing with the seams, it worked well. This one is simply slipped onto a twisted cord. I'm thinking of making several thinner ones, two or three rings with a single or double row of beads, and stringing a group of them onto a soft ribbon that would puff out between them.

Thanks for looking, and please feel free to comment or critique.