Last night I had five smart, creative women gathered around my big table, with food and beads and monofilament spread out before us. We were attempting to make these beaded rings, which seemed like a simple enough project for a night like this — a clear tutorial, a project with a lot of definition but still enough room to make it your own; not so messy or involved that we couldn’t eat and chat and get to know each other. We’d all done some beading before, if not peyote beading. I actually worried it might be too simple and prescribed. Then the supplies arrived.

I thought maybe I would be the only one it would all seem impossibly tiny to, a function of my having been spending so much time with big knitting needles and bulky yarns. Alas, I was not alone. See those black specs in the left half of the photo? Those are the Delica beads. On the right? Cracked pepper, for scale. The needle is no bigger than a piece of sewing thread, so imagine how small the eye is. And even working with contrasting stripes, as we decided to do, it was still difficult to get your head around the process in the first few rows. In the end, results ranged from one ring very nearly completed to one thrice aborted. The one in the photo is mine, and that represents about 3 hours of work.  But I’ve got it figured out now, and I will prevail!