More peanuts

As is often the case I'm a bit slow to catch the trend, but once discovered I'm having a really good time with peanut beads.

This is the book piece I just completed and it's beauty shot that goes in my notebook with the illustrations supply list and text.  Of course it's just a little snippet, cropped to show you some detail without giving away the piece....

The peanuts have so  much substance!  So much in fact that a gram check, more about that in a minute, reveals that there are only 21 of these metallic peanuts in a gram.

I didn't use to do a gram check....until I had a kit come up short.  You see there are substantially different numbers of beads per gram depending on the material used.  I know, seems obvious now that I say it, but I used to do the math, you know, 9 units wide by 14 rows of right angle weave equals 154 beads, multiply by 20% to account for culling or spilling, and then divide by 120 the average number of size 11's in a gram. Well...a gram check reveals there are about 70 beads in a gram of gold seed beads.  And metal beads, well even less.  So now every kit begins with a gram check of the seeds to be used.  I'm trying to be smart and compile a library, but really there is only so much I can keep track of.