Talking Stick Bead & Chat

You're live. It says I'm live. I'm talking to myself, but it says I'm live. And I'm going to keep talking because maybe you're watching this on the replay and it'd be kind of boring if I was just sitting here. So. Hi, everyone. I'm Sandy Boucheron, Queen addition of. I'm gonna guess if you found this live, you probably are familiar with my channel. If not, I'm in Northern Ontario, Canada. I'm a proud member of Seine River First Nation in 3D3 territory, and my entire career and my YouTube channel are dedicated to Indigenous Canadian reconciliation. So just working together, getting along, understanding each other. No cultural appropriation, actually building real relationship. So YouTube keeps telling me, you need to do YouTube lives more often. So I wanted to do some beading, and I used to bead in front of my computer and watch a movie or watch a video. And I thought, why not do both? Why not jump on here, see if any of you have any questions or you just wanted to sit and chat with me while I'm gonna do some beading. I'm actually beating a talking stick. So if you. Oh, somebody's here. I don't know who's here, but somebody's here. So as I was saying, I'm going to be building beading, a talking stick. So if you're not familiar, it was. I'm not sure how many nations use talking sticks. I know Anishinaabe Ojibwe Nation definitely does. It was a conflict resolution method. So the idea is you had to stick. This one's quite long. There's a story behind why I'm using this one. But usually beaded decorated in some way. And the idea is whoever holds the stick is the one doing the talking. And no, they're not attacking. It's hold space so they can share their feelings. That when I heard that comment, it really hurt me, or I don't feel safe working here, or I don't feel accepted in this group, whatever the honest truth is. And they can hold the stick as long as they need to, even if they're sitting in silence or often holding back tears or crying. And then when they're done, they pass the stick to the other party and they owe that person the same respect to hear and listen their truth. Again, not attacking I statements, like the counselors love to say, talking about your truth, your feelings in a given situation. Now, why this particular stick? My son, if you saw the raffle advertisements, is starting on his entrepreneurial journey, and he loves woodworking which I love because my dad did it, my brother did it and now my son is and all self taught, which is amazing. And he got some new tools and he found some old like wood that was not going to be used for anything. And using whatever he had, he actually made this. He actually made this dowel. So as soon as I saw it I thought talking stick. And it was the first one he made. So I was like, I'm grabbing that, I want to beat it. So that's what I'm going to be doing today while we sit here and chat. And of course feel free to say hi in the chat. I would love to know who's in the room. I'm just going to be beating. If you have any questions, any comments, video you saw recently, if you've seen any of my videos, if you have questions about the beating I'm going to be doing if you do follow my channel or I guess if you. I don't know. Have I mentioned it in a video? That's a really good question. I don't know if I have. I have a permanent neck injury. I actually got hurt at work in 1991. Do I want to do the math on that? A long flipping time ago. And the curve in my neck is permanently gone. So holding my head like that, like the phone thing, that would be the worst thing in the world. The muscles in the front of my neck have been on vacation since 91. The muscles in the back of my neck are like pulling to try to hold my head up. So when I do this, it makes their job harder. And honestly, I discovered the hard way beating a talking stick. Even though this is light, super light, over time I will end up with the worst headache because of my neck. So my brother actually made this for me years ago. It's just, it's not fancy in any way. It's practical because what I can do, put the talking stick in it and then I literally just spin it as I beat it and I'm not holding the weight of the stick. So that's what I'm going to be doing while we sit here and chat. And I guess if you guys don't say hi or you don't have questions, I'm gonna figure out something to talk about. So next. Next. This is actually what I used to bead with this. I got it at a yard sale years ago. This is one of those, like for entertaining, you know, you put your fruits and veggies in here. So I love it because I can put different beads in different sections and if my project is multi colored, then they're all here and it makes it easy to do. Now I've had. This is so dusty and so dirty. You can see all these little pieces of thread. Thread that I cut off at some point. Wow. I just found a beading needle. So there's the beading needle. Can we see? Hang on. I will try to turn this. Can you see the eye of that needle? It is tiny. It is flipping tiny. Now, I wear glasses regularly, but for these I definitely wear cheaters, the strongest magnification I can, which means I should not forget and walk off wearing them because I'll trip over my own feet. But anyway, so this is already here. These colors are already here. I wanted to show you. I'm going to set this aside for a sec before I accidentally knock it over. I have a been on the floor that stores. I was going to say all my beading supplies. It's not all of them, but like the core beating supplies. And I kind of wanted to show you. We're not gonna yawn here. The first thing I have in here. Look at this. It was a gift to me. It's like Christy Belcourt material design. Looks like it's beaded. And it's this clip. Cool little bag. It has like the square bottom. I have this in there because I just think it's absolutely gorgeous. I don't even remember where I got it or how I got it. I just have to figure out what I'm going to use it for. So I haven't figured it out yet, but I will now. Back in the day, we used these kind of containers for beads. You can attach them to the wall, which is kind of cool if you have a beading table. And the thing is, each one of these pop out, as you can see, and you just screw off the top, which should be easier than it is. Pop off. Pop off. Not screw off in there. You can separate your beads. I find this is really good for traveling right where you're just gonna take your supplies. So what do I got in here? Black. And that purple is really pretty. Purple's a healing color. Can I show you this without spilling it? Isn't that a pretty color? Might have to use that color. Wasn't planning on that when I pulled that out, but now I'm going to keep that handy. So then I have another one. Oh, this one's missing. Obviously that's where I'm keeping my orange feeds. Yeah, I like orange now. Another thing I bought. Found this ages ago at like Michaels where just. Ah, do not drop. I'm dropping them. Said do not. You can just buy a container and it's got all these different dowels in it and they're all different sizes. So unfortunately there's no way I'm making a talking stick under that. That's ridiculous. This is not bad. I like them thicker, which all the thicker ones are already gone out of this at the time. Like usually you buy a big dowel and then cut it down into the pieces you need. I didn't have a means to cut the dowel down so that's. Oh, someone gave me a thumbs up. Thank you so much. Say hi in the chat, please. I would love to know who's here. I'm going to continue showing. Oh, in front of me here. I already took it out of my bin. Is my beading thread. This is like the nylon type coated. It's very slippery. I love that. I know some people prefer the cotton type. I find the cotton type knots really easy. And here's another one and I probably should use this one because obviously I was using that one. So beading thread. Then there's another kind of container. So this one opens up in the top and it looks like a pie and it's got all the different pieces in it. I've got broken beads in there. I can see one thing I love. I don't know if you can see those. Yeah, you can. Those little sticks. I used to make mini when I taught at the college. I made mini talking sticks because I was teaching in the advocacy program, Indigenous law and advocacy. And I knew it was so important for my. My students to find their voice. And I know that when you're using a talking stick, often you hang on to the talking stick or you rub your finger on the beads kind of as distraction because you're terrified of talking or you're at least nervous, anxious. So what I did, I don't have any h. Oh yes I do. Hang on. I have so many interesting things on my desk. What I did was I made like little talking sticks and I put it on the keychain and I told my students to keep it in their pockets. And when they had to say something really important, they could slip their hand in their pocket and be hanging on to their talking stick. And no one had to know they were doing it. They didn't have to announce it. It was just them and creator. So I made one for each one of my students. And these ones are a little bit longer. I think I wanted to make earrings out of this Those that didn't happen, obviously. Hi, Patricia. Patty from Western State. My late brother and his wife have done beading, scrimshaw, leather work. I run some meetings. Should find a talking stick. Are you indigenous? If you're indigenous, you could use a talking stick. For sure. If you don't have the teachings, you shouldn't because it's not a craft project. That would be that cultural appropriation I talk about. I use. I raised my children using talking sticks. I definitely. I teach and I have gifted organizations. Talking sticks. But without the teachings, you definitely shouldn't be using one. That's kind of like all those people that make dream catchers and don't know the teachings. Reducing it to a craft project. I wanted to show you something I'm playing here. You can slide this top and it opens so you can pour out whatever beads, or you can close it for travel. This one's so beat up. Oh, my God. I've had that since I was married. We split up in 2003. Is that right? Yes. That gives you an idea of how long. Okay, so we have. We're still unpacking here. Oh, this one's pretty much empty except for one container of hard to see light, light pink. Can you see it in there? Not a color I normally bead with, which is probably why I still have it. Whoa. This one said. Oh, I know what happened here. Either my clumsiness, the cats, the grandkids when they were little. Whatever. Look at this. Nice night in the mirror. Now, sometimes I like making things with just random beads and, like, creator decide where they're gonna land. So that's kind of cool. I'm not doing that today. Oh, hello. Look at this one. I have enough thread. We're gonna be good for threat. Oh, I. Yeah. Now I'm gonna get thread all over and the cats are gonna try to eat it, and that would be very bad for the cats. So I have to stay on top of that. Oh, Patricia. Yes. Indigenous white. Presenting, however, learning my language. Oh, good. All good if you know you're indigenous. Too cool. Too cool. Okay, now these. I can't remember when I bought them, but they're definitely not as old as the other containers. I think these are super cool because look, it's a case of little pill jars. And this top cover comes off, and then you end up with all these individuals. So, like, if you're traveling and you need red, take this with you. That's all you need. So I have a bunch of these. You can see there's a whole bunch of Empty ones in here. I keep saying I'm going to empty out those other ones and get rid of them and memory lane trip. I guess I hang on to them. So let's see what colors I got here. So these are the blues. There's grays, blue and green. That one's full. Now this one. Ow. That was money. Oh, there's the rest of the orange. I obviously bought a kilo of orange when I used to do a lot of feeling beating the four colors. Black, yellow, red, and white. I definitely bought by the kilo. And then accent colors. I used to teach beading at one point, too. And that's where this one comes in. It's the. The bronze or gold color. The gold and the silver. Aren't those cool? Those are. Oh, and there's a little pale cream color, which obviously not enough to do a lot with. It would take some thinking, some planning to do that. Now the problem. Did you happen to see white, black, yellow, or red? I saw yellow. Okay, we got. Whoa. Blue and the green. I saw yellow. Got yellow and red. Okay, we can do this. Here's yellow. There's red. Actually a couple yellow and this. Yep, red's kind of half. Okay. Now I'm terrified. I like to do a white base. That's obviously not going to happen unless I have. I don't know if any beaters are watching, but I don't know about you. I always buy. I don't know what this is. Size 10 beats. I don't know. I don't think it's 10. But for some reason, when I buy black in that size, they always come out smaller, which can totally up a beading project. Do I just make it red and yellow? That would be pretty dramatic. I could throw green in here. That's pretty. Wait a minute. That's a traffic light. Did. Wow. I think I have to work on my decolonizing. Yes, those colors go together on every traffic light we've ever seen. Oh, my God. I can't believe I did that. I think I have to run into the other room. I think now I have some white in my tray and some black, but it's not going to be enough for this. Boy, oh, boy, oh, boy. What am I gonna do? I have to have more beads, obviously. So guess what? You got to entertain yourself for a sec. I gotta run into my living room. Don't laugh at my short. It. Are my shorts cute? I did not find any white or black beads. There's a teaching here. You know that, right? So mentally, ego, my decision was always to use black or white base. That is not an option. But does that fall under creator telling me to use other colors? Now, I could definitely throw orange into this mix because God knows I have enough orange. Okay, so there's orange. I'm not sure if I want to use. This one's almost empty. I'm not sure I want to use. I have two different color greens. I have dark green and light green. And then this light light. Light blue and a gray. I'm not crazy about the gray. Well, I guess Crater's driving this bus. So what do we got here? I got light blue. We got gray. We got yellow and orange. We got green and red. This is the deep. No, that's the lighter green. And then we also have this darker green, slightly different. And I think that's it. Two of these blue, Two of these green, two yellow, two gray, two orange, two red, two green. Oh, I had an extra yellow out. Well, that's going to be interesting. I don't have as much red as I should. As much as the others. This could be interesting. I'm gonna go for it for I. You know what? You know what happens in every single case, Even if. Especially if it's not the colors I would normally use, it's going to end up matching perfectly the logo colors or the First Nation colors or the agency colors, or even the personal colors of whoever ends up with this talking stick. So that's in creator's hands. I'm not making this for me. So what do you think so far? I see some people, I see some thumbs up. We're gonna get this party started. Need some thread. Where did that tiny little needle go? Over here. Now, hopefully. Oh, I gotta put on my. Take off my normal glasses and put on my ridiculously strong glasses. Yep. I wanted to make sure that sometimes these needles are so thin that sometimes the eye is broken. And that is never going to work. This is the hardest, longest part for the people that think you should use like a needle threader. Most of the needle threaders I've seen are too big for these needles. I need a dark background. I will use my phone. Tada. Whoops. Don't fall back. Ta da. Done. Now the eternal Find my scissors. This is the other thing. If you don't have sharp scissors, it causes the thread to fray. All these scissors are awful. It causes the thread to fray, and then you're going to end up with. With even worse problems. What I was going to say is the big debate. Single thread or double thread? Yes. I'm Sticking that on my shirt for a minute. In this case, I use single thread. Personal preference. I just. Single thread works for me. I find double thread. Knots up. Well, that was not good. Knots up too often. I'm just putting the knot in the end of my thread here. And I can hear Nana the Elder, who taught me, Elsie Quantummans, telling me not to make my knots so damn big to trust. Yeah. Okay. So now I'm sitting at a computer desk. It's not exactly made for beading. I want. Which color do I want to start with? Well, you know what? I'm gonna go in the order they appeared. I'm really letting Crater drive this bus. Well, that's not gonna work, is it? Oops. I'm trying to make some. That's weird. There is no rhyme or reason to these colors, and I keep going back to the way they originally showed up. So now need my tray. That's what I was trying to make room for. And I'm going to start with this pretty blue color and see where that gets us. I don't pour out a lot, only because I'm a natural Borden clutch. And I know how many times I've. Wow. Looking at the monitor through these glasses is something else. I know how many times I've knocked my beads over, and losing a little bit of a color and losing the whole thing is totally, completely different. Oh, I got seven people in here. Patricia said hi. Other people say hi. Let me know who you are and where you're. You're coming from. If you have any questions about my work or what I'm doing, I'm actually making a talking stick. This is not going to be done today, I'll tell you that much. So what I'm going to do right now, putting the beads on the needle, I have to figure out how many beads I need to go around the talking stick. And it has to be an odd number for this to work. So give me a second. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. How exciting is it for you to watch me count? Nine, 11. That's 11 beads. It's like, in not even an inch. I think 13 would be an inch. And. Well, we're gonna put 11 down on the thread. 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21. Okay, so just for curiosity sake, so there's 21 beads. If I take it, trying to wrap it around to see if that's enough, that's about half the talking stick. I was thinking 42 beads or 41 beads, but we shall see. So that's 21 22, 20 0, 24, 24 5, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31. You guys are quiet. Feel free to talk. Let me know. Do you do beadwork? Do you own any beadwork? Have you bought any beadwork? Were you gifted any beadwork? Oh, we're getting closer. That was 31. It's not going to get into the first 40s. Okay, 31. I'm going to try two more. Going. Try four more. So that brings me up to 35. Yeah, that's as tight as I want to go. So you put it around and then you put your needle through the first bead. That's harder to see than threading the needle. I might have to get stronger glasses. These are really old glasses. I. I don't even know if they're that strong. Okay, let the games begin. Okay. Yeah, that looks pretty good. Pull it nice and tight. There's a little bit of room, and the beads are going to space out a little when you do this second row. So I like using leaving a little bit of space, but not too much, obviously. So now I'm doing peyote stitch. So it's. Put a bead on, go into the second bead. Put a bead on, go into the second bead, and go around the row like that. The first row is the absolute hardest because the beads aren't set in their pattern yet. After a couple rows, you could freaking drop it and it wouldn't matter. But at first, this is where the beginners get frustrated. This is where the colonialism comes out. When I'm teaching beadwork, you can see how we've been taught that you can't fail or that, you know, if you're carrying insecurities and failing makes you feel even worse. And some people get absolutely frustrated if it doesn't work. And adding to that, if there's someone in the room who is done beating and they're doing great and someone else, like people start to feel stupid, right? That's where we always go. Because that's the insult that's been used against us so often. And, yeah, it gets. It gets ugly. And, you know, I try to remind them of the teachings and to be kind to themselves and to give themselves grace, be kind, you know, just patience. Give yourself a chance, right? You've never done it before. Some people hear me, some don't. That is says everything about their path, right? And the chance. It's not judgment. That's commenting on the lack of opportunity they've had to heal I mean, we're so busy trying to raise our families and feed them and whoops. That happens every now and then. Thread got caught on my dish on that corner of my beading tray and pulled this, the needle, right out of my hand. See, for me, this is already getting easier because I'm about halfway around the row now. I have never done anything in this color. Patricia. I am working on a jigsaw puzzle that's. Now, see, that is so interesting. I. Nothing personal, Patricia. I would rather die than do a jigsaw puzzle. I find them migraine inducing. My mom used to love doing them and always did them. I know lots of people that enjoy them. I'm not one of them. And I also know there are some people that would rather die than attempt what I'm doing right now because they would find it super frustrating. And that's why self awareness is just the best. Self awareness is, of course, hand in hand with self acceptance. You do. You boo like you do. What. What works for you. So thanks for chatting with me, though, Patricia. I absolutely appreciate it. Are you guys having fun? Staring at the top of my head. Just realized that's not very exciting, is it? I will show you as soon as I'm done. This row. Now, the one thing you can see, Imagine. What was it? 35 beads to go around, right? So that's 300. Come on. That's 350 beads to do 10 rows. So for one, it tells you how small these beads are. For two, it tells you, like, the one thing I love about beading. After I get through the first row, the one thing I love about beading is time disappears. Like, I can be sitting and beating. I'm not even kidding. I've done this a hundred times. Sitting and beating. And I look up in, like, six hours have passed, and it was like the world went away, and it was just me and the beads and whatever music I was listening to or whatever movie I was watching, and that's it. Like, I. I love it. It is a total de. Stress, You know, I am not. I haven't been beating, which is why I was kind of excited to do this today. Not kind of excited. I was definitely excited because you became my excuse to sit down and do some beading, which I was really pumped to do because I used to love doing this. This was a normal weekend thing between my. The fan is blowing my hair, which is getting. I'm almost done the first row. These last couple beads are really tight together. There we go. Patience. No, got caught again. Whoa. Now I've got a knot in my thread, which is another. It's like Christmas ornaments, right? Getting them knotted. Okay. Do not fall down. Good. We're good. We're good. There we go. Yeah. And I believe I have one more. And then we're all the way around. Trying to see, oh, there is a mistake. And that's part for the course. It wasn't. Remember, I said odd numbers so that it would work out even, and it wasn't going to work out even. And it was like, that means I didn't go every second bead. At some point, I skipped over two beads. And then it's exactly what I did. It's only a couple beats back, but this is the foundation row. And if you don't get it right here, bad things happen. Well, it's just you end up over compensating every row after that. So it's going to go into that one. It's going to go into the two. Two, one, two, one, two, one, 2, 1. We're good, we're good. But. To fix that Boo boo, I had to take my needle off. Whoops. Where's my phone? Need the black background again. I had to take the needle off thread, which means I get to thread it again, which is another exercise in patience. If you are totally stressed out and rushing to do everything, this might be something you should get into. Because if you can't handle it, you should probably ask yourself, why. Why? If you want to. If there's one thing I've learned, I wrote a poem about it ages ago. If you want to slow down time, don't rush through it. Actually slow down. If you notice every second, you get more out of every minute. If you notice every minute, you get more out of every hour. And if you notice every day, you get more out of a life. Right. Okay, so I'm back on the beating train here, unfortunately. And I say that total honesty, unfortunately. I can already feel this in my neck, which might be. Which probably is a combination of things. But anyway, so that's what it looks like after the one row. So now what happens when you go through the second row? You're kind of filling in the holes. That's why it gets easier, because the beads have lined up. Now it's more obvious which bead your needle should go in and where the bead should land. So now things go a lot faster. And I will show you what it looks like after I'm done. This row. It's a little bit looser than I would like, but guaranteed, it's going to tighten up, especially if some of those other colors. The problem with using so many. Oh, I know what I'm gonna do. Ha ha ha. Because one of the challenges, if I did like a solid section of blue and then a section of red and the section of green and went through all the different colors. Colors. What you run the risk of is if the beads are a slightly different size, then your work's going to be tight in one place and loose in another, and you're not going to be happy with the results, I'll tell you that much. That is why so many patterns for these kind of things are diagonally striped. Because then every row has one of the color beads. So if they're different sizes, it doesn't matter because every row has the different size beads. So there's an insider trick for. You gotta be careful there. This is interesting. I wonder who's gonna end up with this talking stick. And I think every. Well, that's not true. Sometimes I get asked to make a talking sticks for someone, but I would say most of the talking sticks I've made or gifted away or whatever, they were made first, and I had no idea who they were going to be gifted to. So that's kind of cool. So I wonder who's gonna get. Oh, the beads are already. I can feel them tightening up. Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. So. So you can see we're coming up on 42 minutes. Well, that's not true. I kind of walked you through my bead supply in the beginning, and it definitely gets a little not. I don't want to say it gets fast because. Yeah, I don't think. I don't know if I'd ever describe beating as fast. Fast. Just got to be careful here. The ties from. I want to make sure that the tie ins from when I started. Whoa. I just hit my microphone. Hopefully I didn't just deen you. That would be terrible. And there you go. The second row. Isn't that cool? Now you just keep beating. Just keep going round and around. Now what am I going to do. If I want to. Okay, I'm gonna do four rows of this blue to be like the edging color. And then what I'm gonna do is I am going to alternate all those colors. I'll put them into my tray and I will just do gi. And then I'll just do one in each row and that will be. It'll be a very happy talking stick, which I kind. Which I kind of like, because a talking stick is to bring peace to End the conflict. Right. Which is where you find you're happy after you resolve the conflict. So what I'm gonna do, hopefully. Whoa. Hold my needle out again. What I'm hoping I will have time to do. I should. If I bead really fast, I'm gonna show you the row with the all the colors in it and then we will just continue. Definitely faster, definitely tighter. Yay. And again, I can't believe 45 minutes have gone by now. I can see how six hours disappear if it, if talking to you, introducing you to it and doing three rows took 45 minutes. So that's why you don't buy indigenous beadwork for 20 bucks. Because of the effort, the time, the patience, the love that gets put put into it by indigenous artisans. Because the idea is you're not supposed to be beating angry, you're not supposed to be beating with negativity. You think good thoughts and you enjoy the process. And then that joy goes into the item you're making and that the item carries that and the person who receives it gets to enjoy that. So like I said, it's way more than a. A craft project. It gets reduced to a craft project when non indigenous people do it because they don't know the teachings or even. Or they trying to steal the teachings, which is a whole other problem. And the negativity. So there's three rows, One more row of this and then I will do the multi colors and then that'll be it for today. I was planning on doing an hour. Sorry Patricia, I didn't see your comment. Picking berries, weeding, jigsaw, puzzling, etc can be meditative. You are my excuse for taking time to sit down and do puzzles. Well, you're my excuse for sitting down and doing beating. I know all of those things are meditative. They're just not for me. Back to my self awareness comment. They work amazing for the people that they work for, but there's nothing wrong with acknowledging they don't. Beating works for me. Totally works for me. Oh, I should have said technically. Was that the third row? That was like two and a half. You'll see what I mean. And you saw that when I showed you because it would have been two and then really bumpy because I haven't filled in the beads yet. You'll see after this one that every little row has three in it now. Which means I gotta do two more rows ish before I add in all the colors. I don't know if I'm going to be. It'll be close to the hour. I don't know if I can do it. That's. That's a lot in 10 minutes. And I'm definitely not going to race to do this. That would take the fun of the beating. That's not what you're supposed to be doing. And I know what I should be doing next time. The end of the talking. Stick should be resting in that stand that my brother made for me so that it's not bothering my neck. I always start by holding it because the stand gets in the way in the beginning. But once it gets started, there is no excuse. That's what the stand is made for. So I should be using it. Hopefully my brother doesn't see this. Otherwise he's going to be going, what are you doing? Why are you not using the stand? It's right there. You brought it out of the cupboard. Now I'm giving myself help. Three. Okay, let's keep doing this. It gets so much easier after you get, like the four rows because now it just holds itself in place. Now you just gotta put the beads in where they go. I'm kind of. Now that I've decided to do the diagonal pattern with all the colors kind of. It's gonna look pretty. And I'm kind of excited to see how that plays out. So I still could have done it with three. Gotta get away from those rigid rules, Sandy. Decolonize. Decolonize. See how I said it holds itself together? I pulled so hard, I pulled it right off the stick and now it's back on because it's holding its shape now. By the way, this is the stitch. You see people with beaded lighter cases. This is the stitch. I actually, years ago, I'd have to try that again. I used this stitch. I don't know when I beaded it on, when I had to have been something quite round. Anyways, afterwards I took it off and I squished, squished it like as if I took this off and squished it flat and then sewed the ends, the bottom together. Long story short, it became a beaded eyeglass case. Then you can slide your glasses into. I thought it turned out pretty cool, especially because I actually drew a picture into that one. So that was kind of cool. Oh, four thumbs up. You guys are like super sweethearts. Just, just amazing. So for those of you who wonder how I de stress doing my reconciliation work, this is definitely one of the ways been doing this for many, many years. My ex husband and I used to do this every weekend. My brother and his wife would join Us. And we'd sit around and we talk and we'd laugh, and we drink ridiculous amounts of coffee and was just the best, the absolute best. But then life changes, and people go on different paths, and I don't know about you, but at different times in my life, I consciously had to decide what do I want to take into the next chapter with me. And sometimes I left things behind that I shouldn't have liked beading. For many, many years, I didn't bead. And then I realized how much I missed it, so I picked it back up. Not because, you know, a partner expected me to, but because I wanted to. This is going to be okay. I'm loving this color now. Didn't really appreciate it in its little bead container, but how we doing time? 53 minutes. Not that I have to finish right at an hour, but I. I figured hours long enough. But I do want to do that row with all the colors. And it looks like now I will have time because I'm just finishing up the row before four. We'll have to take some seconds to put those beads into my tray, but then we will be good. Okay, almost done. Coming up. Up on the end. I want to make sure not to go into the next row. And you may not know where it starts, but it's pretty obvious to me when you're staring at it. Much closer. Come on. One more bead There. So there's the four. So now I'm going to set this aside for a sec. I have the blue in my tray. Next comes the green, which I'm actually going to mix with the blue because I don't have enough spaces in my tray. Okay, that's the green. And then next comes pretty bright yellow. I love this yellow. This yellow reminds me of sunshine. I love sunshine. Okay. Blue, green, yellow. Yeah. And then it goes next to the cloudy gray. I guess it's a kind of. Now that I'm looking at it, it's more like a tan brown. I have no idea why I have that color, except I think I was grabbing a whole bunch of colors. And then we're going with orange. I really don't want to do this, but I'm gonna do this. Okay. Oh, there's two different color oranges in there. It's gonna drive me bananas. Okay, then we got the red, my deep red. My colors are the autumn colors. So the red and the orange and the deep brown. Not that brown. And then we got the hunter green is the last one. So 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. 1, 2, 3, 4th, 5, 6, 7. That's it. Okay, now do I only put seven times two is 14, and there's 35 beads. Seven times three is 21. I could do three of each color. Four wouldn't work. Seven times. I'm using an adding machine. Is 28. Oh, sometimes four is 28. And I had seven times. Five is 35. Didn't I have 35 beads? Duh. How long did it take me to figure that out? Okay, so if I do five, it should work out perfectly. For some reason, I don't think it's going to, but we're gonna try. Okay, so I was doing the blue, so I'm gonna do five green. I don't know if I want to do that. I really wanted to. I don't think I'm gonna do that. I'll show you what I just want to do one of each, and then it'll wrap like a ribbon around the talking stick. Okay. Come on. That was the blue, then the green, then the yellow, And then the brown. And what you do, when you go to the next row, you decide if you come up on a yellow bead, do you want the bead before it to be yellow or the bead after it to be yellow? And that way you decide which way the spiral spins. That might have been confusing. You'll see what I mean when I. Oh, there's different color reds in there, too. That's okay. That's okay. This is going to be pretty. I like this, and I'm glad I decided just to go. So I'm going to do one more row so you can start to. I gotta spin my tray here so you can start to see the color pattern. Hi, Lori. So do you make the thread longer than you think you'll need? You may have gone over this at the start. Nice color color. Excellent question, Lori. No, I don't. Because if you make the thread too long, it's actually kind of knot like crazy. Like this thread, I make it about arm's length. Something that you know, just the length that you're comfortable with, that it's not going to knot up all the time. To do a stick this length, you're changing yarn many, many, many times. There is no way you could make the thread long enough to do the entire project. So. And I know some people, and I probably did it too, when I first started beading, is they try to make the thread longer because they're scared of having to change the thread. And going through the process of doing that, then you end up with the thread so long and knots all the time, and it's an exercise in frustration. It's less frustrating to do the change the thread process. In my mind, you just get comfy with it like anything else. You do it enough times, it's no big deal. Right? Okay, I'm coming up on the colors one more time. Oh, I went over an hour. Sorry, guys. But I'm gonna determine if the needle goes into a green. Then I'm putting the green bead on. Remember I said you decide if it goes before or after. Mine's gonna go before. So the next one has to be the yellow. And then I'll show you this in two seconds and then I'll let you go. I just wanted to have, wow, there's a thread in here and it's making it difficult to get the brown beads. Okay, there. Brown. Whoa. What's stepping me? Orange, not black. I need a trade that has way more. Well, if I'm going to do multi color projects like this, I could have chose less colors. I can't blame the tray for that. And then red. And the last one is. Oh, that green. Whoa. That would have been a mistake. Almost came back to the other green. I forgot I had this beautiful hunter green down here. And then back to the original blue color. So now I'm just going to show you this how it's starting. Hopefully you'll see. So it's hard to tell, but the colors will. You can see two, maybe back up, go forward. Two yellow, two gray. They're starting to spiral. And the more I do, the more they will spiral. And then that ribbon is going to end up going around. It's going to look gorgeous. I hope that wasn't boring for you. I hope you enjoyed this introduction to making a talking stick in the beading process. I definitely enjoyed it. And thank you for giving me the excuse to sit here and bead for an hour. I needed it and I hope you enjoyed it. Here's another project I was doing ages ago. Look at this. Just all different. I'm going to have to finish that one for sure. Wow, that one's tight. That's not moving anywhere. Love that. Anyways, beating, beating, talking sticks. I hope you enjoyed it. Until Monday when I do my usual video. This is Sandy Boucher, Mishko Paganankway, and thank you so, so much for joining me today. I love you. Bye bye.