This week, the post lady delivered a small box that was stuffed to the brim with beads from the Czech Republic, almost 6 kilos of them, which is over 12 pounds! There were four lots of mixed beads, which means that they have to be sorted, and it is such an entrancing task that even Marcel spent some time separating different colors and shapes. He does colors and then shapes; I do shapes and then colors. (Each of us organizes according to our own lights. I did graduate work at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, and one night, one of our profs brought in a bag full of things which she dumped out on the table; our task was to group them in some way we found coherent. I don't remember what was in that bag, but I do remember that no two arrangements were even remotely similar!) And the more time I spend sorting the beads, the longer I can postpone the inevitable stressful moment when I have to actually put them into as-yet-unidentified storage boxes.
As I'm handing this mass of glass beads, of course all sorts of ideas are coming to mind, and I'm also discovering some new shapes and techniques. There is one bead that seems to be a slice, glossy on the flat sides, matte on the outside edge. There are also some big-hole beads which will go with the chain mail. There is a terrific assortment of crystals (which I almost never buy - the Swarovski craze has completely passed me by) which has serious possibilities. I really like these mixes, because I get to see some new things that I might not order otherwise.
This batch of glass rectangles would make a super long necklace designed to be worn twice or three times around the neck ... a lot of the transparent ones are two-tone ...
And this is a kilo (2.2 pound) of black glass beads - they only have to be sorted by shape, and it appears at first view that a lot of the shapes are crystals ... black is one color that never seems to have very interesting bead forms (or maybe I just don't know where to find them!)
These are the beads that I ordered individually by color and shape - because of the plastic bags, you can't really see much, can you! However, I don't want to open the bags until I'm ready to log the beads in to my database and put them in their plastic boxes, particularly since the invoice only has numbers and no description. But I think it's obvious that there are interesting colors in the bunch ... the two that strike my fancy right away are in the photo below - on the left, those are Baroque Balls in red, black, and gray, and on the right, black glass hearts with copper dots on them (I bought a number of heart beads - it is one of my favorite shapes). 
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