Stacked and Loaded

Like most of you yesterday in the Mid-west and the East Coast, we had a snow day.

Jack got his wish and a day off from exams and Jim came home from work around Noon.

While the snow blew around outside, Jim and I spent the afternoon binge-watching Breaking Bad on Netflix and I did something that's needed doing in a looooong time...

I numerically sorted all my delica beads.

I know.  Not only did we have Polar Vortex II but perhaps hell froze over as well.

For years I've used the old plastic-baggie full of plastic-tubes method of storage...

And yesterday I migrated to this new, space-saving, stackable method recommended by Erin Simonetti (I posted about Erin before here and here)...

I was lucky to find these stackable containers online at Joann.com and on sale.  Check it out here.  Erin has also had success ordering them from Walmart.

As I work through many of Erin's loomed designs, we have been using small numbers of beads with many colors.  Though a kit is provided through the Bead-Soup store, I was wasting a lot of time and money by not using what I already had.  The only problem was I didn't know what I had.

Now I do.  Erin places the containers on the inside of the loom as she's working.

Picture courtesy of Erin Simonetti's blog heading

No need to pour beads out onto a mat or anything...you just bead directly from the container.  When you want to travel, just re-stack the containers and off you go.

I am all set and ready to go for our Mystery Class in February.  I needed to order a couple of beads to make the scarf for my snowmen so I'm waiting for them to come in.

Another snow day for us here and I am working on Japanese embroidery today.

Happy delica day!

P.S.  A few of you asked about the looms we were using in yesterday's post.  These are looms that Erin's husband makes and, as yet, they are not commercially available.  I know that Kathy Fritz at Bead Soup is looking for a supplier to make the looms so when ordering information becomes available, I'll let you know.

Evernote

I am WAY too excited about this tool not to share it with you!

My brother told me about this new tool a few days ago and I can honestly say it has changed my life! And it's free!

I am busy organizing in many areas of my life right now and this is one tool that has already become invaluable in just three days.

It's called Evernote. It's an application that allows you to remember everything! Basically, I can use it to "clip" anything and save it to a file.

For web browsing, it allows me to clip pictures, articles, emails, .pdf files, patterns, you name it!!

AND, it remembers the url source for that clipping. You can type notes, use a scanner, take a picture and send it to Evernote. The potential for this tool is amazing.

If you're like me and you have saved patterns, ideas, quotes, pictures, etc. into files on your hard drive, this tool allows you to tag the items, put the clippings in files so that they're retrievable AND you'll know where they came from!

Here's a screen shot of a search I did this morning, preparing myself for my January bead journal project:

I was searching for ideas for beaded snowflakes.

In just a few minutes, I've clipped three free patterns and three photographs of other's work I found inspirational. Having tagged each note, now, when I open them, it tells me the source for the document and I can access it from any of my computers/devices. (Note the little elephant and "clip to evernote" in my toolbar...this makes clipping a cinch!)

Here's a .pdf I found for a beaded crystal snowflake I'd like to make...

If I do decide to make it, Evernote keeps track of the source web page so that I can give credit to the site for the information.

On another note...

Here's a clipping of a scanner that scans directly to Evernote. As I clean up the millions of magazines I have piled around here, I'm interested in scanning those into Evernote as well...

Now that I have started using it, it's uses seem unlimited and exactly what I've been looking for! I have the version for Mac and iPad, but there are versions for Windows and all your mobile devices.

It's BIG...right up there with Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, Amazon...that BIG...

Have fun!

And thank you, brother John!! (Soon, you'll be thanking my brother John too...!)