I've been given quite a few craft books to review and some of them are quite good but this one (Stringing Style 2) is great.  In fact, of all the other bead and jewelry making books I've got this one is the best and to prove it here's the necklace I made from its pages.
It's a bunch of green and green-brown pearls with greeny-brownish crystals strung between curved silver beads to make it look like a grapevine and I love it.

Here's a shot of it that isn't quite so subtly blurry (you didn't know that was a haute-couture photography technique did you? Well it is. Kind of).


The trickiest part is getting those curved beads because they didn't have any on hand here in town. Etsy is a great resource for that kind of thing.

Mine were slightly longer than the ones the book called for so I only needed 21 instead of 23 but you get the general idea.

Oh, and P.S. it seems to be warming up a bit. Maybe Spencer will get to have his ski meet after all.

And as for other artistic endeavors, here's a video I saw this morning that was not only interesting but fun to watch. I love new animation techniques--I think if I could have had my high school experience animated I would have retained a great deal more of the information.