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I made a sunny necklace, and it is adorable. Hello! Hello, little necklace.
In college, I worked at a bead store, where I logged many hours with a pair of tweezers organizing mixed up beads. You’re bored just hearing about that, aren’t you? Wrong! Sorting beads is crazy satisfying. Like cleaning out your purse, or painting your toenails. When you’re done, that one little corner of the universe is perfect again. Then you can take a nap.
Mighty Girl 
Beautiful! What kind of beads are those? (I dabble, but am an amateur, certainly.) Great color.
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The large ones are frosted glass, the small ones are dyed quartz discs.
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“You’re bored just hearing about that, aren’t you?”
No, no! I went through a beading phase just after graduating college. (Probably to vent anxiety about employment prospects). I had complicated boxes and organizing systems – it was OCD fun, but definitely FUN.
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i know, i know! the satisfying thing is so, well, satisfying!
my husband often askes if i want a drinking straw attachment to add to our vacuum cleaner as that would be even smaller than the regular tube attachment i use to clean a goodly portion of our floor.
i’ll start out using it to suck up a cat hairball in one corner and before i know it i’ve done the entire house using just the tube thingy. but damn, that floor looks good and i feel so satisfied.
i also consider watching the show ‘organize this’ as foreplay.
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oh yeah, and maggie, the necklace is awesome. i love seeing and hearing about your fun things.
next step is for me to start doing some.
tomorrow maybe.
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as a former bead store-worker myself, i couldnt agree more!
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i totally get that. i get that same feeling of satisfaction from untangling string and strangely enough, proactiv commercials.
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Oooooooh I always love to do the jobs that every one else avoids due to their mind numing factor. The feeling of achievement when your done almost better than sex…..almost.
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Gorgeous necklace!! I need to make myself another necklace. It’s been too many days since I’ve beaded.
I love love love organizing my beads. My favorite part of buying beads is figuring out where in my organizer they belong. Do I sort by type or by color?
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The necklace really is beautiful and while I’m not usually into crafts, this looks like something that is completely doable.
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a-the-fuck-men.
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Sweet necklace. I have a jewellery making friend and I pine over her assortment of stones and treasure each piece. You have inspired me to dig out my beading stuff with my boys tommorrow. I need a new Mommy necklace! http://www.snickerdoodles.typepad.com
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I hear you on the anal retentive, I mean, organizational skills. I find extreme pleasure in scrubbing the tough areas of the kitchen floor with a toothbrush.
Same kind of pleasure is derived. The end result is a neat and tidy universe. Inside my kitchen, of course.
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This is so pretty! I want to make one. Hmm.. maybe an afternoon activity to do with my little sister who is visiting today. And I think that I would find sorting beads immensely satisfying, too.
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All this talk of organizing and sorting is giving this librarian a hot flash! It’s the perfect profession for those of us who like things just so. Beauty necklace Maggie!
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God I love organizing my universe one corner at a time. I so get that.
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I feel so normal right now. It’s good to know I’m not the only person who purposely cleans the super messes because it feels so gratifying.
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I spent an evening sorting tiny beads for an art project once and that night I had the craziest fantasia-like dreams EVER… I swear processing all those bright colors flipped a wacky switch in my brain…
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Want!
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I have always always always wanted to make my own jewlery. Perhaps I should go check out the new bead shop in town…
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I have a confession to make…
When my mom took me to the playground (when I was all of three years old) I wouldn’t run around or play on the slide.
I would sit, in the sand and pick up teensy little seed beads that someone once spilled.
What can I say – some of us were born weird 🙂
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I can imagine sorting beads would be therapeutic. Sort of like a zen garden. My mom is a retired kindergarten teacher and she used to let her students (and of course me) sort buttons. It’s not only fun but educational!
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The bead store completely overwhelms me.
I take my little tray…
…I’m making a necklace, no a bracelet! No…a necklace. Screw it, bracelet. I want browns (fill up tray with brown beads) and silver dangly things….no….I want black and browns (add black beads)…maybe orange would work too (add orange beads)….sit down. Make bracelet. Realize that I took 300 too many beads.
So by now you may have gathered I’m the asshole that dumps all the beads in a panic so nobody knows I can’t estimate how many beads fit on a freaking bracelet.
I just had a minor panic attack writing that.
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Organizing beads puts me into a total trance. I cleaned out all the compartments of my own bead box recently, reorganizing by color. After I was finished, my boyfriend told me that the stirring and dropping noises of the beads had almost driven him crazy.
My favorites are the seed beads, which you can pick up with just one fingertip.
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What is it about this post that made me feel so totally sympatico with you, right in that instant?? I’ve always thought I must be nutso to feel that sense of…RELIEF when something is properly organized. This past Friday, my older child spent the night at a friend’s house and my husband and I staged an Extreme Room Makeover for her 13th birthday–we’re having Baby #3 and needed to put the babies in the teen’s old Big Room and put the teen in the former nursery. Bought her a loft bed and tons of Ikea goodies, and kept it a secret for FOUR MONTHS. I swear, really. So, we have roughly 8 hours to make it happen. Keep in mind please, I’m 23 weeks pregnant and we have a toddler sleeping in the port-a-crate…er, crib–downstairs in our room during the whole of this ordeal. And our teen is, well, MESSY. Like, super crazy messy. There was some CRAP behind all that old furniture. But 8 hours later, after vacuuming and re-vacuuming and organizing and Ikea-izing and making the closet JUST SO, dude. Did I feel CLEANSED. Sat an extra 20 minutes in her new purple armchair at 12.30 in the morning just to admire the clean sense of organization and satisfaction. And then I went to bed.
And NOW, I realize this is the first detailed account I’ve written of the experience, and that I’ve put it off because somehow I couldn’t quite capture why it made me feel so complete. Thank you, Maggie Mason. For today, you completed me… Off to add my comment to my own blog!
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