Waves of Pearls Necklace

Waves of Pearls Necklace

One UFO on its way to completion. Holy Moly did I bite off more than I could chew with this one. I ran in to a few obstacles with this project. Obstacles that probably wouldn’t be an issue for experienced beaders, but since I am sure that I am not the first overly ambitious beader I’m going to share my stumbling blocks.

I’m pretty sure that I had the same problem the first time I sat down to do this. I think that is why I pulled apart the 8 links that I had done. Ugh. Fortunately I figured it out after just one link this time!

Waves of Pearls necklace

I managed to make my first mistake in the very first step of the outer strips. The directions say to “start from the underside of each bezeled pearl”. Fair enough. What it wants you to do is decide if you want one side up over the other. If you do, flip it over so that your top side is face down on the board and start there. That way the waves curves down around the pearl. Basically you are working with the bottom side up. My first go round,  I started from the bottom, but I kept the top facing up. So my waves curved the wrong way. I want to spare you from making that mistake, because I had invested hours and hours of my time doing it wrong.

Waves of Pearls Necklace, first outer strip completed.

I think this is how it is suppose to look once you get the outer strip finished. I won’t be absolutely sure until I get the other side of the wave done. Looking at the above photo, this is how it looks once I finished the stitches. However, this is the bottom side of the wave.  The bezeled pearl is upside down. I think it looks neat, almost like an abalone. I’m proud of myself for sticking this project out even though I know it is so far out of my level of capability it is laughable.

As for the pattern, I had a fairly difficult time following it. (I’m not even sure that I did) I have a very limited understanding or peyote stitch. I don’t know how to count rows. That made it a bit hard when it said to repeat rows 3 and 4 (twice). I looked at it over and over again and decided to default to the drawing on the next page.  This created even more problems for me.

In what I thought was row 3, the directions call for adding two beads. The first one is attached to the row before it. The second one you add, and then you attach it right to the bezel. Once you start row 4, the directions have you weaving back through the last bead in row three. The diagram on the second page back that up.  Fair enough.

However, when looking at the diagram, when the rows are repeated that second bead is attached to the row before it.  So you can’t really repeat row 3? Or at least if you do, it will be wrong. Again, I could just be reading this wrong because I don’t know how to count rows in peyote stitch. I looked it over and over for about an hour and then decided to re-write directions for myself, so that I could understand how to make my stitches look like the ones in the diagram. I’m still not sure if it is right, but my links look right and I’m not going to redo them. :p  I really would have liked to have a good diagram of rows 1-8. The diagram on the next page shoes the entire outer strip, but that just made it more difficult for me to follow.

Waves of Pearls necklace

There are more than this. I think 13 total? I was playing around with them and I thought they looked pretty cool like this. I am so looking forward to finishing the project. I’ve committed myself to seeing it through, regardless of how it comes together. :p  It was tedious though. I need to set it aside and work on some easier projects for a few days. I was hunched over for such a long time working on this. When I got up from my chair I experiences the worst round ligament pain I have ever felt. It seems you just can’t push a pregnant body as far as you think you can.