bad beadage, no biscuit

[wombat1138]

Have been wrestling all week with an experimental festoon necklace pattern... actually, to make things even more abject, I've tried *three* festoon patterns in a row, and none of them have turned out well. Ironically, some of my earlier attempts from months ago were definitely better-shaped (the pic up here, frex). I'm deteriorating :b The real problem is getting the curvature right for both the main necklace strand and the down-dipping festoony bits.

The first recent one was a fairly dense "dragonfly" pattern I'd had in mind for a while, but the lower tier doesn't have any extra length and there isn't enough freedom to flex, so it's essentially a constant-width band-- at the final length for this necklace, the band just flips over about halfway down as if the dragonflies are caught in a downdraft.

The second one has more give, but the floppy festoon strands are too long and aren't weighted properly, so the ones on the side tend to curl up and flip over.

With this third one, I tried a completely different approach and strung the full length of the lower festoon loops with a single strand instead of trying to interweave a double strand all the way through. This way, I figured that I could get the festoon weights done first and worry about gathering up the loops later. It kinda worked in that I was able to try different lengths when adding the upper bridges for the main strand, but the floppy loops are still too long and curling over. I was flailing around tonight trying to reinforce the loops with various tertiary structures

The real problems, I think, are that the festoon loops at the side either need to be stiff enough to maintain triangular star-point shapes regardless of their angle of drape from the main strand, as above; or if the loops are flexible, they can't maintain the same symmetry as the center loop-- their weights need to be shifted down toward the center of the necklace when worn.

Gnar. I should just give up for now and try to whip up something easier (or at least along a more established paradigm) that will end up actually looking right, so I have something to photograph/list again. Otherwise it's just too dispiriting to keep thrashing around the beads all week and have nothing to show for it that I want to look at :b

--oh, and since the local JoAnn's just finished renovating and has been throwing discount coupons at me, I finally decided to buy some base-metal eyepins to see if my fang/magatama sandwich concept for the Okami Life Beads would work. I guess it looks okay from the side, when seen from a distance, but the overall assembly is just ungracefully thick and doesn't seem likely to work well for a necklace pattern or even earrings. Oh well, at least I also got a new pair of fine-tipped scissors. I should also get a small bottle of Goo-Gone to unstick my older pair which I've been unwisely using to cut packing tape, resulting in gradual accretions of adhesive all over the blades. Argharghargh.