Glimpse at my Beading Table...

Look!  It's a post about jewelry-related things!  Because, believe it or not, I actually have been quite active when it comes to learning new techniques and creating new designs...  I just haven't been feeling too inclined to write about it, considering the morass of November.


But!  November is behind us, and it's time to share a little of what I have been doing recently...  


Such as pearl knotting.  


Recently I took it in my head to learn how to do this very traditional technique.  But what, you might ask, is pearl knotting?


Well, this is pearl knotting:

My second and third attempts--one with real pearls,
the other with Czech glass beads with a blue iris coating.
My first attempt was certainly not so... uniform.

As the name suggests, it's a way of stringing pearls by hand-knotting them on silk thread.  


This particular method is very traditional.  After all, pearls used to be so valuable that it would be tragic if a strand of them were to break.  As they tumbled onto the floor, they might get cracked, or even lost forever. But, by putting a small knot in between each pearl, this fate could be averted; if the strand broke, only one pearl would fall off.


...Besides, it just looks classy.


And so, that's one of the many, many things that I've been doing recently.  To date, I have successfully knotted two such strands (the first attempt doesn't count).  I like the way that these necklaces drape--very elegant.  I hope to incorporate this into more designs to come, if for no other reason that I simply enjoy doing it (even if it is rather time consuming... that is a lot of little knots).