Czech again or more on that bead ho thing

After the temptation trek down to the San Diego Bead Society's Bead Bazaar, I further gave into temptation at Amonite (local bead pusher of note) for some Murano glass and more. I thought the beading frenzy was over and promised myself that I wouldn't include the upcoming GemFest on my calendar.

Whether I make good on the latter promise or not, given the weekend's walk and spend about it is very clear that the beading frenzy is/was far from over.

When I saw the blurb in the events section of the Reader about the Czech bead trunk show by the folks (read Wiley & Kelly) at San Francisco Arts & Crafts, I was just planning to classically enable Brenda a bead-ho co-worker.

Okay so maybe I thought that I'd walk down, look around, keep my spending to a minimum and walk home -- an easy four and a half miles or so and just a look see for the right bead s to finish off a few projects that don't quite have all the right components. Easy right?

Sure, right. The walk was easy as was the walkabout knitting (more cubism on the knit with wire front) but finding the show in the motel was a bit more challenging.

The girl at reception's "through the cafe and a left at past the counter" instruction didn't quite get me there -- there was a bar and there was a meeting room sans beads or bodies.

I could have been a good girl, called it an omen and walked home. But I'm not a big believer in omens and I am a big a believer in more than one way to skin a cat so I walked outside and did a bit more poking about.

The trunk show was (and maybe always is when it is) in the meeting/event room that opens onto the motel's swimming pool. It is also through the cafe, left past the counter, through the bar, into the pool table room and then to the left. Yup, a bit of a maze and I feeling like a lab rat looking for cheese when I found the place.

Me? I got there through a walk 'round the outside of the cafe/motel where I observed that there was a "Bead Sale" sign on the security gate/door to the swimming pool and that said door was ajar -- bingo. Yeah, I'm good at heuristics, analytics and general problem solving skills too.

In any event, I arrived. I shopped. I schmoozed. I spent. I knit. I walked home.

I'd been kicking myself a bit over only buying one strand of the creamy beige coloured pearls at the bead bazaar so I was looking for some work back to beads to extend the single strand. As you can see, I found plenty of good combinations to make a really special piece.

My Amonite adventure Murano glass purchase was also in a looking for something else phase as was the Rama ceramic piece I picked up at the Bead Bazaar.

I was thinking about playing up the green quality of the Rama suite of ceramic beads with an eye toward giving the resulting piece away. You can see the I was thinking green until the blues came into town story in the photo below. Given the fact that I didn't have any of the looking for companion pieces with me I think I did really rather well.

On the Murano front, the only thing missing from the make the perfect earrings equation for me was a small copper/metallic bead. I was sure I had such an animal in the stash but couldn't find it for anything. That's my excuse for the metallic excess of the day.

As things turned out, I was right I did have just the right beads already (a Lost Cities adventure) I just couldn't find them until I had others they could work and play with. Here's the mix with the inspiration strands with the beads and one of the tubes of metallics that demanded to come home.

I spent more than at Amonite and Bead Bazaar combined so it was a very dangerous trek but I'm happy with the purchases so it's all good.