Beaded herringbones

I recently splashed out on a copy of  The Beaded Bracelet by Carole Rodgers. I think I've mentioned my old love of working with seed beads before; I love their colours, and their size, and the fact that you can build up a collection of colours relatively inexpensively. My favourites are Japanese Miyuki beads - the colours are gorgeous and the beads are fairly consistently sized so they're easier to work with than some others. I don't always love seed bead designs, and have made my fair share of exceptionally ugly creations but you can't have everything!

Anyway, I spent a happy few hours sitting at the table in my parents' kitchen last week while my girls played with their cousin, learning various new stitches and playing with beads from my stash. One of my favourites was this bracelet with a bead mix called "Vineyard" in tubular herringbone stitch.

If you look very closely you can see the beads sloping together and apart, hence the name I guess. I used some brushed silver spacer beads and made it marginally tighter on my wrist than I usually do - but it's a very soft and forgiving piece and I barely even notice I'm wearing it. Fast becoming a favourite here!