pearls.jpg
As anyone who has kept up with my crafting blogs knows, I obsess. It doesn’t matter really what I obsess about, I’ll find something on which to focus all my free-moment-energies and there it is. After crafts in general, and then craft books, the newest thing has been beads. I started with the jewelry set I got at the flea market, I went on to looking for beads on Amazon (but not buying any), and about 2 weeks ago I moved to ebay. The problem with e-bay is that the sellers make it too easy for you, many of them include free shipping, and some auctions start quite low (as in one cent). Indeed, it was one of those one-cent auctions which got me. It was for a single Murano Glass Bead. What do I want with one bead? Who knows! But it was one cent, free shipping, and it was just too easy to buy it. I’m sad to say that there were dozens of more bids following that first one, and I’ve actually bought 32 (yes, that’s not a misprint) items. I don’t even know what those items are (beads and pendants, I assume), but I know that I have to quit! Now, someone take me to e-bay (or is it beadaholics?) anonymous.
Well, my first purchase came today. It’s a strand of 8mm white freshwater pearls, 55 in all. I’ve never had “real” pearls before, so I can’t really evaluate how good they are. They are definitely not all perfectly round, many seem more oval-shaped than round, and many of them have markings or some imperfection or another, but I guess it’s a way of telling that they are “real” instead of just “plastic”. In any case, I paid $5 for the strand (including shipping), so I wasn’t expecting museum quality. It took the pearls 10 days to arrive from Hong Kong, which really isn’t bad.