These are my early attempts at beading, I think they date back to 2001 when I was living in Hamburg. My friend Rosemary was still living in Goa* and supplying me with beads she bought at the local markets in Goa and in Bombay, where she reported that beaders sit on the ground in front of their shops beading so fast that they have a second beader sitting there and handing them the beads while they work. Anyway - I'm not a fast beader - I'd combine the Indian beads with Czech and vintage beads I bought in Hamburg - and vintage seed beads I bought in a shop in L.A. (the sparkly purple ones). The bracelets and the cross are stitched/sewn onto a rough muselin cloth and then sewn onto a fabric in a matching color, usually silk. 
Beads bought in India are interesting, they're actually much more difficult to use on account of the fact that they are quite irregular, i.e. a lot "sloppier" (and those really are quotation marks!) than, say, Czech beads. The holes in particular are very irregular so that you never know if the needle & thread you are working with is going to fit through the whole - in fact you never know if they're going to crack while you work with them - or worse yet, if they're going to crack after the piece of jewelry has been completed! They're a heck of a lot cheaper, too, so that the beads for this kind of a bracelet can end up costing 13 cents. The very small emerald green and pink beads on the lower bracelet, however, were vintage Czech, I bought them in a beautiful store in Hamburg (Everglaze) - and they cost about 10 bucks. They spiff the bracelet up.
*Now Rosemary and Joss are no longer living in Goa but in Schliersee - a beautiful Bavarian lake/town tucked away in the mountains near the Austrian border - where she is writing a series of novels (guess who the translator is??) whose heroine is a Bavarian detective who travels the world to solve/write about crimes and mysteries and such. The first one takes place in - you guessed it - Goa, and selected chapters will soon be featured on this blog. Stay tuned ......
Frühwerke von mir, 2001. Die Perlen sind aus Hamburg, Goa und Los Angeles. Bunt gemischt. Es macht Spaß, Armbänder zu sticken, aber meine tragen sich nicht gut. Besonders nicht, wenn man am PC arbeitet, und das tut ja heutzutage fast jeder. Die Perlen kratzen dann bei jeder Armbewegung an der Oberfläche des Tisches und brechen ab und geben knarzende Geräusche von sich. Außerdem habe ich damals gelernt, dass es schwierig ist, Armbänder zu fabrizieren, deren TrägerInnen man nicht kennt; meine jedenfalls sind abewechselnd viiiiiel zu weit oder viiiiiel zu schmal. Meinen Cousinen in Chicago waren sie zu schmal, den Kolleginnen meiner Freundin Ruth in New Jersey waren sie viel zu weit; diese mutmaßten "women in the Midwest seem to have wider wrists ......".
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