I love weaving beads, but you can't do everything (hard as I try...no doubt part of the reason why I do nothing spectacularly well). My friend and fellow board member Margaret Sutherland, in addition to the wonderful beadweaving shown here, also makes glass beads (obviously, since that's how we met:), fuses, knits, sculps pmc, and is an avid gardener. We have some overlap, here.

the wizard helped with blurring the carpet, which was too busy in the original photo, one reason this post took so long. It kinda makes the piece look like it's floating a cm or so above the ground, but he never really finished—this'll just have to do:)

She hosts a pmc/whatever get-together at her house twice a month, and I had an absolutely lovely time riding over there, because the route to her 7 acre ‘country’ lot goes along dirt roads, not yet too built up; it was absolutely grand to see wild geranium and giant? trillium, both of which were coming off their peak.

Aren't closeups fun? Love those opaque orange bugles...

I mostly futzed around, last time, but she alternated pmc and beadweaving, doing the latter while painted layers of slip in the former dried, so I asked her to let me display some of the seed-beady goodies she's been making on the site. She'd shown this favorite off a number of times, making it a natural for an introduction to her work. Pressed for some background, she said she liked the color, which she chose to cheer her up during the typically cloudy Michigan January, when she made the piece.

I love being a card-carrying member of the purple and green fan club, but it's awfully nice to find people who like orange, too. Note how the coating is wearing off some of the beads: Margaret thinks this adds an extra level of interest to her piece, which I imagine is a more healthy reaction than mine would be .

This shows a section at full resolution. Note wear of coating on beads, giving an extra visual punch via visual blending.

Glass beads, thread. Peyote stitched bracelet, 2005 by Margaret Sutherland. (And yes, she's agreed to release both the work and the images under the same creative commons licensing I use.)

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.