Before I made a stand to do beaded crown sinnets with, I first did it by hand and then made a foam tool. This is the story of the foam tool.

I'm taking one of those massive open online courses from Coursera, in particular, the Design class and foolishly decided, as my class project, to work on my current obsession, making a beaded sinnet stand. As part of my class, I'm supposed to gather 5 peers who are experiencing the same problem and interview them (among other things, that will be revealed to me as the class progresses). So, I need your help for my class! More on that at the end of the post.

I wanted to do something both knotty and beady, generally decorative and it would be best if it were wearable… I’ve had a project in mind for a few years now that is mostly just a name, plus a vague idea of fringe to go with the knotty and beadedness. Time to execute! Or is it? Best to sample first. I had the idea that I wanted the fibre base to fill the beads fully as possible but still thread through without too much angst and bought some yarn accordingly (it’s about the same size as 6 strand embroidery thread). Black because everything goes with black. Then with whatever beads were in my crafty backpack at the time, I went with the kids to watch them do their extracurriculars and sample. Strung in multiples of 8 because I was doing a 4 strand crown and wanted to see if any interesting patterns were going to emerge. After all, why should kumists have all the beady fun? 8)

So, I had this scrap of wire in my wire working box (cutters, pliers, cup burs, etc) and it was… 20cm long or so. What had I originally cut it for? What had I cut it off of? Dunno, but is it long enough to do anything with? Often when I’ve got some cord scrap in my hands they will do what they so frequently do: flower knots, button knots, double connection, double coin, etc. So, this little bit of wire, could I tie a flower knot in it with some beads? How would it look with such a small gauge of wire?