A Looming Mystery

Last Saturday was a day full of mystery.

Seventeen of them to be exact.

That's the day when seventeen of Erin Simonetti's bead looming students gathered at bead-mecca and home-away-from-home, Bead Soup in Savage Maryland.

Unbelievably, Erin had prepared a different mystery bracelet pattern for each participant, custom-designed to our interests, loves and hobbies.

We had no idea what our bracelets were going to be so there was no choice but to select our beads and start beading row by row.

Here is how my mystery started out...just piles of beads and a chart telling me how much of which bead goes where...




I was so excited.  I loved the colors already especially the blues and purples.

Here's what my design looked after the first six rows...

We bead from the center and down one side, flip the loom and then bead the other side.
Here's what my mystery looked like after two more rows...

OK.  At this point, the staff at the shop are telling me..."O my gosh, you should totally know what that is.  The black gives it away!"  How about you?  Can you guess?

All over the room, you could hear people trying to guess their designs as they beaded.  When I heard someone thought theirs might be a naked fireman, I tore myself away from the "next row syndrome" and walked around.

This is Mickey and you can already see what her bracelet is going to be...

Eunice is from Hawaii and she had some of the brightest beads of the day...

Here you can see the beginning of a blue koi with hibiscus and plumeria flowers.  Beautiful.

Lisa has a Pomeranian dog...

and Beth loves the beach and being by the sea...

Erin spent lots of time snooping on her students' lives online using social media sites such as Facebook.

Here's my bracelet after a few more rows...

Can you guess yet?  I couldn't.

My seat mate Lynda's pattern had three huskies.  Erin remembered that she had once asked for help in designing a husky pattern.

You can see 3/4 of one head on the lower half...rotate the pic 90 degrees counterclockwise and you can see it better.

Anna loves to knit and crochet.  You can just see the handles of a pair of scissors and a couple of balls of yarn appearing on hers below...

And Betty loves to embroider and sew...

Emily is our resident golfer...

And Maureen loves tree frogs...

What I enjoyed even more than the mystery of each design was getting to learn something new about each person in class.

Most of them didn't realize I had this blog until my pattern started to reveal itself even more...
Now can you guess?

At this point, I could see that the pattern probably said "Plays with Needles"...

Can you imagine? Creating seventeen different patterns for one class...each one unique? For those of you who have taught before, you know how much work it is to teach one pattern, let alone seventeen!

And the shop? Well, they were equally as wonderful for selling delica beads in one gram bags so that we didn't have a huge expense to purchase the beads that Erin used in our designs. What shop does that?? It was really a day full of gifts.

Here's our Maven of Mystery, Erin Simonetti.



It's not really a fair picture of her because I took it when she was a bit choked up. See...the class just really was grateful for the amount of work and effort she'd put into making them a personalized pattern and they had just told her so.

Personally, I like the teary-eyed shot because it tells you how much heart and soul she put into creating a marvelous mystery day for each one of us.

She is one of the most generous teachers I have ever met. She loves beading on the loom, she loves her students and it feels great to be taken under her beautifully-beaded wing.

Thank you Erin. It was one of the greatest classes ever.

And thank you Bead Soup for embracing looming, stocking seed beads and creating such a wonderfully supportive and stimulating environment.

Now, here's the mystery finally revealed...



For those who read this blog through a reader, you may not recognize it. So here you go...

It's patterned after the header of my blog! Now I can't wait to finish it.

Erin has written a detailed post about the day with the final finished patterns of each design on her blog here. Go check it out.

And now for the solution to another mystery. If you emailed me in the past week or so and haven't heard back from me, I was out of town. I'll try to reply as soon as I can but it may take a few days.

Happy Monday everyone!