Inspiration morphed

There are times I don't bead or I don't bead anything productive and then all of a sudden a beading streak will come along and designs and color ways seem to show up naturally.  Oddly these often coincide with being exceptionally busy and thinking no way you have time to design and then in the middle of that, it happens, you bead something you love.

The photo is of costume jewelry from a calendar, sadly I don't have the image and a Google reverse image search did not provide the answer (more on that in a minute)  I started out with this photo and had the idea to have fringe.  I had initially thought this was round, but I think it was actually a 2 dimensional piece.

I knew I wanted to use pearls in increasing sizes on the edge to create the curve and I had a stash of the new iridescent white ones which I love!

So I sat down and I beaded some craw elements with pearls on the edges and I connected them on the top and on the bottom and contemplated the fringe.....but as these things so often go, I decided on continuing the spines down coming gradually to a point.  The larger pearls were not part of the original plan, to the degree I ever have a plan, but when I added them in they were magic to me.

Now back to google image search.....you use google.com/images and upload a photo to find similar.  I didn't find the original photo in my search but I did find this.  Now if I had posted both inspiration photos and asked you to guess which one inspired my finished piece....well I'm betting this image would be the hands down winner.  And since I can attribute this one, I will, it came from here and is titled as men's jewelry.

I am also knitting....and kitting and packing to go on a 5 day knitting retreat with a dear friend, in fact my friend who goes back the furthest in my life, from my Massachusetts, and pre children days, which is a pretty long time ago!  We try to meet up once a year and last year it was this retreat.  It's with Unique Sheep who do magical gradient dyed yarns.  The retreat is in the blue ridge mountains of North Carolina at beautiful venue called Hawksdene.  We enjoyed it so much last year we decided to do it again!  Last year at the show and tell I vowed to have something show and tell worthy for this year, something using their yarns, and I have two!  Of course I am dwarfed by many who are much more prolific knitters than I am, but I'm happy that I have the two I managed to complete this year.