The first of these I made from a piece of scrap beadalon and a large vessel that I liked, but didn't think quite good enough to sell. I have an image of it somewhere, and someday, no doubt, I'll post it.

This one is, iirc, third in the series, and was originally made for the second key to our car, when f2tE and I drove to NM to get zir cat, plus a few other assorted belongings f2 couldn't fit on the plane. Which brings to the unappealing name. Several of my pieces have unofficial titles that are not what marketing types would consider very effective—spider, or squid. My partner had one called ‘The Tick’, for its rather dire looking dangles.

My spouse is not at all into useless ornamentation, and tassels (which this technically is, I guess, if with only 2 fringes) that dangle and get in the way are particularly to be deprecated. I, however, like having something to grab for when rooting around my keys. Since the first version of this doohickey featured a fairly large vessel, that does indeed approach mouse size, with two long ‘tails’, I derived a certain amount of amusement by dangling it from said tails, like a dead mouse.

glass, beadalon, brass. 2012. This is the restrung version

Dead mouse, dead mouse, dead mouse, I said. Oh, the horror of useless glass doodads depending from one's car keys!

So that's where the term comes from. The idea is really quite simple: I had this chunk of stringing material, and I wanted a nice, grabbable object for my keys. Fold the beadalon over a ring, thread it doubled through the focal and whatever trim beads, split into two fringes and crimp the ends. If not a tassel, then you could think of it as an a necklace focal, again with a couple of fringes—a very simplified squid as it were.

Reverse. The bead, though off-centered in terms of its ‘drilling’ (that is, I failed to keep the mandrel parallel to the sides of the press when mashing) does at least have excellent (crisp anyway) and consistent floral trailing: I had a terrible time telling, when I photographed it, which side I'd already shot; and nearly forgot again why I had so many images while making the post, front and back are so similar.

The biggest problem with these things is that I haven't figured out how to make them heavy-duty enough for daily use: this one, after I gave it to a friend for one of the keys she keeps permanently in a door, attached it to her keychain, and it broke (to be sure it was strung that fine .015 beadalon). The original version of mine has also needed a restring, and I only use my car keys 2–3 times a month, if that.

But if I ever figure out that problem, then I'll start selling these things, and at that point, will have to come up with a cute, as opposed to mildly squicky, term.

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