Monday, July 18, 2011

I seriously hate beads.

I hate beads.

I've been working on my pattern for the Little Loki scarf:

Look at that. Look at that beautiful graphing, the straight lines of beading.

Then I counted the number of beads I would need. 772. Gah.

See, I went to visit my friend out of state two weeks ago, right around when everything went pear shaped (I won't go into it here, suffice to say Elvis was the last in a series of really bad incidents.) I found the perfect beads for my project there, Miyuki 6/0 Galvanized Duracoat seed beads in light smokey pewter color. See:

They're perfect. Perfect I tell you. But I bought them before I plotted out my scarf, before I came up with the finished pattern. How many Miyuki beads has Surly Knitter got? 480. At best. Bloody hell.

And how many shops in Surly Knitter's town do you think carry Miyuki 6/0 Duracoat Galvanized Smokey Pewter seed beads? NONE. And how many of the five shops she called do you think offered to order them? NONE.

That's right; of the five one didn't carry Miyuki at all, so I can hardly blame them, but the other four knew I wanted that color of that style of that size bead. They have relationships with the vendors. And none of them offered to get me more. I had no idea the bead business was so good at the moment they can just toss paying business out the window like that. And the only on-line store I've found thus far that carries them requires a $25 minimum order. Sucksucksucksuck.

Oh, well. I guess I can try to find some other 6/0 metal seed bead, somewhere. Then I've got $17 of Miyuki seed beads to offload. Maybe someone on Ravelry will want them.

I wonder what other type of bead I can find....

3 comments:

Kate said...

Oooh beads! Shiny! :-D

Perhaps the bead shops have a minimum order or somesuch nonsense which stops them offering to order small amounts of beads. But even so, it's still rubbish customer service when you may have turned out to be a bead buying obsessive who will end up getting their children through college. :-D

*may still be smarting over a yarn shop which refused WHEN ASKED to order in more of a colour because it was "too much hassle"*

Marigold said...

Are these the ones you need?

http://www.firemountaingems.com/search.asp?skw=miyuki+pewter

They only have 50 grams pkg in stock, which is way more than you need....

Silver Phoenix said...

Eh, I fixed it. I wish I could have used my Miyakis -- they're absolutely perfect; they're all evenly round and the same size precisely, plus as metal they aren't likely to scrap off their finish if they rub together in my scarf -- but I'll live.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with my Miyaki beads. Maybe I'll keep them, make another beaded thing.