Beads and Wire -- enabling and enabled

At Knitnite this month the show and share was not limited to knitting as some beading inspiration pieces and beading WIPs were passed round for admiration and comment. Then came the news that the San Diego Bead Society was hosting a bead bazaar at the Scottish Rite Temple on
Saturday & Sunday. Turns out that some of my fellow guild members, are, like myself, bead-hos.

That's right, I'm not just a sluttish knitter (will knit with damned near anything), a jewelry junkie and a bag hag but a bead-ho to boot.

Last Sunday's necklace purchase and the poke about for cached kynar wire already had me in a beading mood.

It occurred to me that white kynar wire might be a good choice to rescue a thrift shop find that became a problem project. It was a gorgeous clearly vintage multi-stranded tiny cream coloured beads with a fab-o beaded finding. Before I could ever wear it, the string gave out and all those tiny beads scattered. I scooped as many as I could find and the findings into an oversized insulted mug and set it aside to restrand someday. The white kynar wire is found and sitting with the rest of the wire stash but the mug is now in that mysterious place known as somewhere.

My original plan was to hit the bead bazaar on Saturday by walking up through U Heights, down Texas Street & back. That would leave Sunday free for Whistlestop. With one thing and another that just didn't happen.

With my creative juices flowing on the wire front and not looking forward to a scavenger hunt for electronics shops in Kearny Mesa this week, I checked Frye's online for kynar wire -- bingo. I followed that up with a quick phone call to verify local stock and all important aisle number and set off.

A simple plan -- gas in van, Frye's and maybe a quick stop at the Bead Bazaar before home and walkies to Whistlestop. Hey, two out of three ain't bad.

I opted for the park far and avoid the idjits parking lot plan -- always a good choice but particularly good in hardware and electronics stores. My info (or my memory) was one aisle off but I quickly found that Frye's had small spools of multiple colours, 500 foot spools of blue and both red & green in the economy 1000 foot spools. I did a quick are you a Canon or Nikon shop (Canon) in the camera side of the house before checking out and onto the next agenda item.

I parked at the Scottish Rite Temple, unpacked the green wire and began knitting as I headed in for what was supposed to be a short look see.

Immediately I was in classic enable mode with the ladies manning the ticket sales and it just continued from there. I was very deliberate in working through the exhibits, enjoyed some good conversations, picked up cards and literature for follow up and when I was ready to buy I was also ready to leave. Never mind that that was at least two hours after I'd planned to leave. Speaking of leaving, several bead loving Knitnite sorts said hi and bye as they were heading out and I was making a final tour of the second exhibit room.

Most of my money went into pearls and whether it was my classic enabling or what, I ended up lucky to get one strand of the strands that initially caught my eye as the woman who questioned me about them ended purchasing the rest of the strands. Just as well as I know I'll be breaking up the strand into multiple projects and the directional nature of the shells has me thinking about bringing out my diamond drill bit to experiment.

My only regret is that I didn't get a few more strands of the peach/pink toned pearls but the same vendor may be back for the Gem Faire in three weeks time.

When I headed out to Frye's I briefly thought about putting the bamboo (and my regular knitting bag) in the van but convinced myself I'd be dropping back 'round for it before walking to Whistlestop.

It was way too late to make the walk and since I had told a number of people that I would be there not going wasn't really a good option so I did the unheard of and drove rather than walked over. I've occasionally snagged a ride home but I don't believe that I've ever driven over. I'm not planning on making a habit of it either.

My driving also meant that I wasn't drinking any thing other than water. Boy,was bartender Scott confused.

No bamboo means you know who was, in fact happily knitting away on some fairly small gauge not for her project. She'd been to a 3-day walk expo earlier that day so we had some discussion about her fund raising progress and my idea/plan to offer the girlie girl pink water bottle cosy as a pattern for donation.

By the time I left Whistlestop the knitted cube was about a half inch or so from the turning and decrease point. I finished it a few hours after I got home and started in on a 2nd one with an eye toward making smaller cubes to be contained inside a larger one.