Bead-buying in January - or not...

January is a very, very long month. Who's with me? Christmas has come and gone, Hogmanay similarly, we've all given ourselves the proverbial beating around the head over failing our new year's resolutions already by this point, and *still* there's almost a week left of January. And it's all made just a little worse by the fact that January is followed by February. It would be so much nicer if January was followed by, say, June or July, rather than dreary grey February. Or if I lived in the Southern Hemisphere. My wee cousin has just moved to New Zealand for a year - needless to say, her 'toes on the beach' shots on Facebook are rather tortuous.

Another aspect of January that makes it rather stinky is that it is TAX month for many of us here in the UK. Anyone self-employed has to get their return in and pay it by the end of the month. Ahem. As if January wasn't bad enough....HMRC, you are just rude, quite frankly. I can't say I would like to be doing my taxes any month of the year, but wouldn't they be just a little less painful if I could sit out in the sunshine to sort them out? (What's that you say? I can do them in August? I can sort it all out 5 months early al fresco style? Do my tax return early and not leave it to the last minute?? Tax return...early.....?!)

So unfortunately, there has not been a lot of bead buying this month. Some necessary restocking purchases, but none of the glorious, hedonistic, I-must-have-those-beads-now, feel slightly guilty afterwards bead binges. I've not had one of them for a while, to be honest, but not even a mini-splurge has happened in quite a while. I've just placed a couple of bids in one of those very dangerous lampwork auction sites, but I have promised myself I won't go above my initial bid. Not much over, at any rate....! 

However, one exception I have allowed myself this past week has been the purchase of these absolutely gorgeous handwoven beads from Sally Thake Jewellery. 

You probably know that I hand-weave my own beads,  but did you know there are almost as many versions of beaded beads (as they are known) as there are bead-weavers? Sally has designed this self-supporting pattern herself using round seed beads and the relatively new two-holed superduo beads (those long, almost diamond-shaped beads) and they are just as smashing as they look. Stay tuned to see what these will become...

PS I may or may not have a couple more of these on their way to me....oops. January is almost over, right?