One of the things that struck me when we first began learning about Kaleidocycles back in 2016 was that these linkages were part of a history of human discovery, and we were late-comers to the party.
As you may know, we offer free access to the technical sections from both of our first books online here on our web site, and we plan to continue that into the future as we release the new books. Cycles in particular seem like something that interest us all; they cross many fields and some of the more interesting linkages also morph into flexagons and surfaces, which have many applications in materials science.
Tonight I’m posting a sneak peek at the introduction to our new in-process open-source Cycles technical chapter, and I hope you enjoy it. Tomorrow, I’ll publish free patterns for the Flower Face (beginner) and the Butterfly Net (intermediate) assemblies, and then next week we will begin the (also free and open to all) BatCycle bead-along for our advanced and extra-curious beaders. Your comments, feedback and photos will help us fill out this living document so that everyone can learn.
We offer these PDF downloads in two formats – pages or spreads. Please click on the one you prefer: I like Spreads, because they keep the book pages in in pairs as they appear in the printed books. But if you like to print out the pages to read, you may prefer the Pageslayout.
Please bear in mind that this section is still in process, and we welcome your comments as we create it and don’t mind about things like page numbers (they aren’t assigned until the book is actually on the press). In the meantime, let’s roll in this beauty, and make Cycles together.
Thanks to all who read our pages yesterday and sent in photos, ideas, or gave feedback. We had some wonderful additions, quite a flood of input from all over the world and I’m still sorting through all of it. It’s astonishing, really, how many people are beading with us and encouraging us.
I’d like to include some of the new material to yesterday’s release before we move on, so I won’t have a new update today, but we’ll see you tomorrow with new PDFs, including the Flower Face, the Butterfly Assembly, and (a special favorite of mine from this chapter) Sylvia Lambourg’s glorious Red Flower Face cycling bangle.
This is such a beautiful, simple idea; a fashionable bangle that folds into a cycling linkage. Sylvia made her triangles to 9 rounds, or 9 beads per side, and ended up with an 8″ bangle that is very flexible and softly draping. We have word charts for these but we’d love to see your petal designs as well.
Thanks to those who sent in address updates, but don’t worry about this too much. Don’t worry about anything! We’ll do a professional check of addresses (including a postcard mailing) before we ship, and we aren’t quite there yet. As always, if anyone is grumpy about the timeline, I’m sure you know what to do: just email me (kate@katemckinnon.com) to step off of the pre-order list and receive a full refund PLUS a complimentary digital download of the final book(s).
Personally I am sympathetic, I can hardly wait for cookies to come out of the oven. But somehow, I have done ten solid years here and am grateful for such a harmless and useful obsession.
The only thing I ask people not to do when they get in touch, email, or comment on our posts is to be unkind, because unkindness hampers joy and productivity, and at a time like this we really all need to stick together. When the news gives us anguish, we need to give each other love.
Greetings, beaders! Never mind the page numbers and don’t worry about typos (we have such a wonderful Edit Team and they will be on this like green on grass) this is a sneak peek of two of the patterns from our upcoming open-source Cycles technical chapter. Click here for a PDF in spreads. I’ll provide one in printable pages as soon as we finalize.
The Möbius Messenger Cycle is my interpretation of the Butterfly Assembly, a really beautiful intermediate Kaleidocycle pattern.
The Red Flower Face pattern is both a bangle and a cycle, and it’s one of my favorites from this chapter for its simplicity and knockout beauty, suitable for cycle beginners. We should have these through edit and finished up (including word charts and materials lists) in a few days, but in the meantime please enjoy the peek and I welcome your comments.
Wonderful news, the Warped Hex animation is up on our YouTube channel. If you want to try it, any six colours you love are perfect for the peyote quadrants, and we recommend that those who are learning use only one colour or theme for the 6-bead start and the increase lines.
We will follow this up with our Cycles chapter release, three beautiful patterns, and a BatCycle beadalong. Stay tuned! They will begin rolling in this afternoon, and continue all week. All month. All year.
And soon, we’ll have our souvenirs… the paper books. I’ll keep you posted and I want to send a huge thank-you out to everyone who is beading with us, who has contributed to our store of knowledge, who supported our team with pre-orders, who are cheering us on as we wrangle this mountain of delicious pages.
Please enjoy one of our first free releases, a beautiful Flower Face assembly that is a bit unusual for a cycle and a fashion statement as a bracelet or bangle. This architecture was my idea for an easy Cycle assembly, and the colour pattern was designed by Sylvia Lambourg from France.
This release has word charts, a full materials list, and step-by-step instructions. Please make your own magnificent versions too, and be sure to send in photos (kate@katemckinnon.com) so we can include your work in the books.
If you intend to print the pattern and work from the pages, please choose the “Pages” layout, and print at 8.5 x 11, standard letter size. There is a picture of the bangle at actual size that can be cut out with scissors and tried on. (Click the blue words to access the PDF)
If you want to view on your screen, you may prefer “Spreads“, which will show you what the pages will look like in the book. Have fun, and please feel free to share this pattern with anyone you like – just remember to credit Contemporary Geometric Beadwork and Sylvia Lambourg. (Click the blue words to access the PDF)
I am thinking of you all, and I so miss our team getting together to work, edit, and bead in person.
We are all in a bit of crisis right now with the pandemic, America is having a contentious election, and this tough time is shredding all feeling beings. But I want you to know that behind the scenes here we are working hard and ready to rock with the first books of our cascade of new releases.
After we get through this next week, I’ll post a couple more public excerpts and patterns, and we on team can start talking about how to get the books printed and shipped during what seems to be an endlessly rising body count.
I know we can get through this. I hope you here in the US are all planning to get out the vote. Be well, please wear masks when you are out, and take care of each other.
We will ride again.
Please remember that all replies to these blog posts in your email post as public comments – don’t worry about your shipping address or anything else at this time – we will do a professional mailing list analysis, postcard send and email check before we print and ship.
And there is NO NEED to pre-order our books, ever – we print tons of them and they will be available everywhere. So don’t worry about that either. Hugs.
When last I wrote, I began with “we are all in a bit of crisis right now with the pandemic, America is having a contentious election, and this tough time is shredding all feeling beings.”
Since that time, it’s all true, and even more tragic. Over 300,000 dead, the pandemic at a complete overload level, and my countrypeople acting like they don’t know how to come in from the rain, people refusing to wear masks, acknowledge the election, continuing to do family gatherings. White supremacists with weapons in my city, your city, threatening, harming, harassing. There is so much dangerous behavior right now, and I simply don’t know how to look at Facebook and watch people proudly not wearing masks, flying around for the holidays… it hurts to see and I wish we had any type of working government that could pay people to stay home so we can beat this thing.
Half of the people I know and love work in the arts, the theater, they serve in restaurants or work in bars, they do child care and stage lighting and they run bakeries and bookstores, and they are all losing everything while the very very wealthy are making billions of dollars a day. It doesn’t have to be like this.
Our team is ready to go with our new work, but I simply cannot print the books until we can gather to assemble and ship (it’s many tons of books in many thousands of packages) and I just can’t let ten years of work go out as a PDF release, even to pre-orders, I’m sorry. We are just going to have to wait like everyone else while America falls quite unnecessarily into ruin, and then we will have to wait some more while we crawl out. I would guess it will be spring before we will be even able to consider gathering as a team to print and ship. In the meantime, I continue to work; by the time we can to to press I will likely have all four new books/projects ready to roll at once.
The crushing part of this is that while we wait, millions more will lose their jobs, their lives, their health, their shops, their savings, their houses, and their cars, their mental health, and their loved ones. Many of the artists we know and love are in peril, are depressed, are out of money.
You may have heard me mention before that I am currently in a three-year national service period. During this time of a complete lack of national leadership, it’s been difficult to interpret how we should comport our science and discovery teams. For my own part, I’ve used my art to try to bring change, and I’ve continued to work on our presentation so that our books and patterns and classes can support our artists.
Here is a street art piece I placed in an old metal callbox on Capital Hill in DC. It features a moveable action figure of the the late, great Ruth Bader Ginsburg raising her gavel next to a cage of “detained” migrant children with little silver mylar blankets. I did a whole series of pieces like this, moments of our heartbreaking times.
The river of glass tears represents the endless river of harm: stolen children, stolen land, disappeared women.The beads used were from the great John Bead donation; these are big silver-lined glass pony beads that tarnish in the middle; the sparkling tears will turn darker with time….as grief grows.
I hope to be back with you soon, but I fear many of us have a hard winter ahead. I’ll be focusing on the health of our creative teams for the next few months; it’s so hard to live hand to bead to mouth.
As always, I greatly appreciate everyone’s support of the project, and if you pre-ordered any of our new books, you are first in line off of the presses when their blessed clatter begins. If anyone is weary of the wait, refunds are always immediately available. Just email me at kate@katemckinnon.com.
One piece of important news – we moved. When it became apparent that we won’t be able to work in DC again anytime soon (Zoom meetings are not the same as discovery teams gathering) we decided to prioritize CGB, and we moved to Savannah, Georgia, so I could more easily collaborate with Sam Norgard and the brilliant SCAD students during the ongoing pandemic.
Being in the same town will allow us to all work on big pieces together, even if we can’t be in the same room. So far so good – this is a beautiful old city and I’ll enjoy my time here.
Each of us can do our part to help end this nightmare – we can wear masks, wash our hands, donate to food banks and shelters, check on our neighbors and friends, and keep an eye out for those who are struggling. We must join hands in love and strength and grow toward a new spring.
I wish I could chat with you all, see what you are making. Please know that you are in my heart and mind as I burrow in and work. Good luck to you and yours, stay safe and I hope to see you at the other end.
In addition to care packages of beads from the donation from the John Bead Corporation, CGB is distributing financial stipends directly to artists. We have always done this on team, but while we are waiting to publish the new books, I don’t have the funding available to help enough right now and the need is great.
Contemporary Geometric Beadwork is a part of the UnLAB, the non-profit science team I formed with my partner, Charles Chase.
In 2019, we received official 501(c)(3) non-profit status with the IRS, and now seems a good time to mention that as any contributions to this fund are tax-deductible in the US (if your tax circumstances allow for the deduction).
Please feel free to share or forward our link, and again, thank you to all of you who have asked to help me do this; you are so kind. Like any US non-profit, our records of spending and giving will be publicly available at the end of each year.
100% of all funds received from this link will go directly to creators.
Thanks so much to the people who started off the community contributions to our Stipend Fund over Christmas – they really made a difference and spread a lot of joy. We’ll be continuing into the future to reach out in the field with materials gifts, to purchase work directly from artists, and we will be offering collaboration, community, and financial stipends for people who contributed to our books and/or have a tradition of working hard to share knowledge freely with the beading community.
CGB is a part of the UnLAB (our science team) and we are an IRS 501(c)(3) corporation, so donations from US citizens are potentially tax-deductible. If your employer has a donation-matching program, it’s quite likely we qualify, as we do research for the public good. I’ll also be personally matching donations to this fund with my own share of the book royalties.
We must support the arts and our artists right now, because help is not on the way this winter or any winter afterward. Because the need now is so great, I’m re-opening pre-orders for our new books, please, all are welcome to order. I always try not to take in any more funds through pre-order than it costs to print the books, but this is a special circumstance and I think re-opening the book revenue will make a real difference in what we can do to help. (Book purchases are not tax-deductible).
Click here to order books. Remember we don’t really know when we will be allowed to gather again to ship – it takes a whole team to pull it off. (Sorry for the bad link earlier, it’s fixed now.)
After the American pandemic and election settle down we will be able to re-gather our team, ship books, make new ideas, hug each other, have classes, and bead in joy. And we just can’t wait. It will probably be summer, and this is really hard to accept. But (thanks entirely to the free sharing of virus DNA by scientists) we have three vaccines now and we can always hope for Spring.
I hope you have a garden to work in, a kitten to hug, a dog to walk, dreams to tend, books to read, a library to visit, a walk you love to take, a nice view from your window, some positive things to keep your spirits up as we wait, furled.
Hugs to you all. Please stay in touch, keep me posted on how you are doing.
I was thinking this morning that the thread we bead with has a lot in common with the threads of knowledge and experience of our ancestors. The threads we cut to bead our piece bind together the separate elements of creation just as our experiences bind us into history, family, collaborations.
When we cut the thread to complete a piece, we do not sever the connection of the thread to itself; the spool of thread was born as one strand no matter what happens to it later. In that way, each piece from a spool is related to every other piece, and each piece by a maker connects everything the person created with the raw sources of all of the materials, the tools….
When I look at a piece of furniture, I always try to find the little stamp or tag that tells me where it was made, maybe sometimes even where the wood came from. It seems important somehow. Where does the sand come from that creates my Japanese cylinder beads? …
Thinking of thread, I also wonder what impels Bowerbirds and Weaver Birds to do their jobs with fiber, knowing intuitively where to begin, how to end. So many thoughts arise about how knowledge is shared and stored, and also I feel that these birds must be considered a part of our community .
Here is a snippet from the BBC showing the mad skilz of the Weaver Bird. I doubt I could do this job without being taught.
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Stay safe tonight, and please, stay home if you can. I’ll be working on the CGB web site for the next week, so if things go dark or email bounces briefly, hang tight.
The Tailor Bird uses balls of fluffy plant fiber (like the loose fiber bundles called roving) to sew leaves together to make its nest. By cleverly using its beak as a needle, it draws the bundle along through each hole it pokes, leaving a woven thread behind.
I love the way it tugs the thread snug, but not too tight.
I marvel at our kinship, and I would love to share with the bird some of the things my people have done with needle and thread to see if it has interest in collaborating.
I realize that most existential and practical human questions are essentially pointless; the natural world does not care if we solve or accurately measure it, or if we can write our own DNA on a chalkboard or name our creator. But colour and pattern, ways of stitching, those are important and I think the birds would enjoy new ideas if their lifespan, time and safety permitted curiosity.
When I spoke to Sam Norgard on the phone the other day, out of the blue she mentioned one of her colleagues who collaborated with a long-lived African parrot; they are equals when making work and both are deeply enriched by the collaboration.
I think of crows that use mayonnaise lids to ski down rooflines, ride on the backs of boars, know which day is trash day on what street, steal trinkets and then give them as gifts to others who impress them.
I expect that male Bowerbirds would enjoy our beadwork, because they are primarily focused on original beauty; this flower, that nut. They can see which fig is most delicately rounded, which blossoms are most intensely coloured, most deeply curved… they collect in series and arrange their exhibits with care and deliberation in the hope of seducing a mate. Each Bowerboy is an individual artist and builder.
Surely at some point a Bowerbird has slipped things with holes onto sticks, or threaded them onto string. They have probably woven little sweaters out of flowers still on stem and we just didn’t catch them doing it. Excuse the small bit of bird sex here at the end of this one (but also, the feather star, wow!)
There are many different kinds of Bowerbirds with so many different looks; a search of YouTube will entertain endlessly.
It is almost incredible to me to type the date. I cannot fathom that the pandemic is still ongoing, or that there are people who are too selfish to wear masks, stop gathering, and take it seriously.
Our plan continues to be to go to press as soon as enough of our team is vaccinated to gather to do the jobs associated. It will be many tons of books, a month of work, an entire roomful of books in towering pallets, some will have signatures, personal notes, enclosures, there will be big boxes, individual envelopes, bead kits (we’ll offer these at press time) and it will be intense. We will be sending books around the planet, stocking beadshops, bookstores, and Amazon Global (only at full cover price, as always) in addition to filling our modest store of pre-orders. After the month is over, it will still be a full-time job to keep the shipping current. We are all excited, eager.
As always, anyone who does not want to wait can have their pre-order refunded – I never mind this, I simply thank people for their support. All who asked for refunds will still receive complimentary digital copies, as we greatly appreciate all of you. Just email me at kate@katemckinnon.com if you want to cancel an order.
I will be surprised (and crushed) if we aren’t vaccinated by summertime. Honestly, I don’t know how much more of this we can all take. The losses have been crushing, lives, businesses, hopes, futures, savings. So many of us are hanging on by a thread, torn in the heart from seeing so much racism and hate, violence against the innocent. We must do better. Personally, I am so affected and shocked by what I have seen in just the past months from my countrypeople alone that I have re-dedicated the rest of my life and career to putting forward those whom others oppress.
If you’d like to read more about what I am working on, here is a summary. I doubt I’ll be seen much in the next few months, although of course I miss you and I deeply wish I was more connected to the many of you who feed my heart and soul. The messages of love, support and discovery that come through always make me happy.
The last time our beadwork team gathered was November of 2019, and I remember it as if it were yesterday.
The innovation that sparkled out of our last days together (and the many gatherings on all of our science teams that came before) continues to inform my days, my thinking, and my writing. The one thing I can take away from this time of pandemic is that I have been given the gift of retreating deeply into our work, and doing my best to spend this time making it, as I hoped it would be, a series of matching, related and relatable works. Don’t worry about keeping track of what you ordered, if you are one of our pre-orders. We will be sending the full set to the early pre-orders, and offering everyone on the list the opportunity to add kits or extra copies (at their pre-order prices) before we ship. No need to think about it now.
Also, don’t worry about your mailing address- we’ll do a professional address correction run when we go to press, and send out postcards, make sure we have you.
After arranging our material, this is what we have:
The CGB Technical Manual: CGB Volume III Volume III will be a reissue of the innovative stitches, techniques and ideas presented in CGB Volumes I and II, with the additions of all of our new discoveries and tools such as Deconstruction, Exploding Sets, the PodCast Bead, and the Casting Spine. I will not be reprinting Volumes I and II, but we will continue to offer them digitally. I just don’t believe in spending the paper, plastic and resources to propagate incomplete information. Now that we know more, we must do better.
Anyone who wants to can sell their copies of Vols 1 or II online easily, as they are collectors items now, and amusingly searchbots show prices of available copies at many hundreds of dollars each. Obviously the project could make a goatload of money just endlessly printing and selling these first two books, but I believe we can do better by new beaders by including the new ideas. It’s just cruel to send people by the long road when you know the shortcuts, I won’t do it.
The CGB Pattern Book This book evolved, as it had to, to include discoveries made in an endless, exhausting, exhilerating stream between 2016-2020. Unfortunately I was hit violently by a car in May, 2018 (while crossing a street in Boston) and I had a head injury that took over a year from my ability to progress, but when we were able to begin writing again, the ideas were even more intense. This is a pure book of patterns to represent the span of our discoveries. Julia Pretl’s frame-by-frame animations of the PodCast, Warped Square and Triangle were gamechangers for our presentation. Have you seen them on our (free) YouTube channel?
Contemporary Geometric Beadwork: A Photographic Retrospective This is a hardcover, large format coffee table book that features full-page photographs and discussions about hundreds of beautiful, one of a kind pieces. It will be current as of the date we go to press, so KEEP SENDING PHOTOS OF YOUR EXTRAORDINARY GEOMETRIC WORK. We still have months to get exceptional new photos added. I had originally planned the photo book as our third volume, but it’s nicer this way.
The CGB Academic Textbook Geometric beadwork is now in the official curriculum at the primary and university levels, thanks to people like Claudia Furthner in Austria, and Sam Norgard in Savannah, Georgia. When we left DC before the riots, one of the main reasons we chose Savannah to relocate to was because Sam’s institution, the great Savannah College of Art and Design, is based here. Students in both locations have made amazing work. Our textbook will be a fantastic elective for science, engineering, math and architecture students, and (we hope) part of a core curriculum for art, design and textile students.
So, this is our timetable, this is my structure, and let me add my strong hope for your continued health and resilience during this difficult time. Please stay safe, be kind, we will ride again.
beadwork in photos by Kate McKinnon and Sylvia Lambourg
I read with eagerness that I and my US team will finally qualify for COVID vaccinations as of May. This is great news and I hope it comes true. I hope that all countries and all people can have that lifesaving option by then as well.
I miss you all very much. Sadly it remains impossible for me to navigate the cognitive dissonance in our society right now, so my best option while people are figuring out who they want to be is to keep my head down to make sure that our upcoming releases are as integrated, beautiful and as spare and clear as possible. I am eager to show everyone what I have assembled! To my Edit Team (you beautiful people) if the vaccination news is true, expect fat edit manuscripts on your desk again in April. We will print and ship the absolute minute we can all assemble again.
If you’d like to pre-purchase a set of books or donate to our Artist Stipends account (we have been giving working stipends and shipments of beads to fellow artists) you can do so at our shop: www.cgbteam.com. There is no need to pre-order the books, though– we’ll be printing a warehouse full.
(Please remember that if you reply to this blog post in your email, your reply will attempt to post as a comment. To email me personally, please use kate@katemckinnon.com.)
This week, I’m working on the chapter(s) featuring our Casting Spine, a tool refined to perfection by Joy Davison and our small group of passionate devotees on team. Just like a PodCast Bead, worlds emerge from its simple edges.
Each of the three golden Spirals shown below is the same piece, grown from the silver Spine.
You can see from the simple rearrangements how easy it is for a sleeping spiral to suddenly become energetic and spring into action to behave like a Slinky, grow a skin and become a tube, a funnel cone or a helical Whatnot, or take a new twist pattern and become a ribbon-candy sort of a river that stores energy (!) and can be ruffled or captured. We have some incredible examples of these basic ‘states of being’ to show you.
. . .
beadwork by Kate McKinnon
Be well, and thank you for your patience while we all breathe our way through this. This is a hard time on all feeling beings and I wish you peace and productivity.
Greetings! I’m happy to say that we expect to be back together as a team soon, as we are all now getting vaccinated and should be able to travel, etc. by June. It will be so much fun to print and ship our new books together, to bead together again as a team, and share the discoveries and questions we have stored up over this long year apart. It will be a great joy to laugh together again.
If you would like to catch up on the project from my point of view, I will be giving an hour and a half talk for UCLA Monday, April 5, at 12:00 noon Eastern time. The lecture comes at the invitation of Victoria Vesna and Jim Gimzewski as a part of their Art|Sci Center’s DESMA 9 Art, Science and Technology Lecture Series. Click this link on Monday to listen live.
Photo by Hans Va, The Netherlands. The promo image that they chose for the talk is one of the beautiful wearable eggbox pieces created by Dutch artist Floor Kaspers. On Monday, I’ll be showcasing many extraordinary pieces like this created by the CGB team and our colleagues.
Good news on all fronts, as more of us on team are getting vaccinated every day and we can begin rescheduling things like press runs, book shipping, workshops, beadalongs and team meetings. I still think that enough of us will be able to gather in July and August to print and ship the Pattern Book & CGBVolume III, and Sam Norgard, Kathryn Shriver and I plan to finish up the textbook this fall. If you are on our pre-order list, please don’t worry about address updates yet, we will be professionally checking our mailing list before we ship and we will be sure to be in touch with you to be certain we are current.
One of the first things we have to announce is that the long-awaited BatCycle Beadalong is coming. Join us right here, on Facebook and Zoom for the free, comprehensive BatCycle pattern release. I will present the linkage, show the parts, walk you through the pattern, and for the month of May our team will be available to help everyone who wants to make one.
This is an example of a BatCycle that is almost (but not quite) closed up- amazingly this is the same piece, just in 18 different orientations or folds. Even if you are a cycle wizard, I think you will be astonished by some of the things I have to show about what this linkage can do.
BatCycle kits are available, and they are a fundraiser for our Fellowships and Stipends fund. They have 16 unique colour blends and are made up of all of our favorite, most luscious beads. Find them here for $120 each. The kits have enough beads to make two complete BatCycles, and a great deal of variety is possible by combining the colours further or in different ways.
The BatCycle linkage was designed /discovered by Claudia Furthner. It is similar to a Kaleidocycle, but uses Warped Hexagons in addition to triangles.
The BatCycle kit, with softly blended colours in beautiful finishes. Beads are Miyuki Delica size 11 cylinders, and size 15 rounds in two different shades. Please see kit page for description, or visit our science team, The UnLAB, to learn more about our Fellowships and Stipend fund.
Workshops just posted – please sign up if you’d like a slot – we will be teaching ALL techniques from ALL books at BOTH sessions. Click the links for more description. Limited accommodation available on site, please email kate@unlab.us for more information, or to hold a slot for you if you’d like to sign up, but would like to pay later.
These sessions… we talk about them for years afterward. Words cannot convey the joy in fellowship and discovery we find.
Gold collar up top, Kate McKinnon, eggbox tile Karen Beningfield (with contribution of squares from other collaborators) and bangle at bottom beaded and designed by Capitola Bradshaw as a variation on a Debra Schwartz design from the new books.
Greetings! For those of you beading with us the May who want one of our special BatCycle kits, this is the last week to get one. I wish I had more time to make and ship kits right now, but it’s just me until we can gather, and my time is all about the press runs for our new books (on schedule to hit the press in July and ship in August).
The BatCycle can be made with any beads; there is no reason at all to buy our kit other than to enjoy it and to support the CGB Fellowships and Stipends fund, which is what pays for everything we do to bring people together and support our artists.
On May 1, I will release the full pattern along with a YouTube class that shows how to assemble the cycle, and both are free to all. You can absolutely use beads from your stash, and I’ll publish a materials list this week when I get the kits out. If you miss the live session on May 1, no worries, it will live on YouTube for free forever, and our team will be online helping on Facebook during the month of May.
Thanks to all of you who have bought kits orsigned up for our November and December workshops– each of them are half full at this point so if you are thinking of coming, especially with a group of friends, please let me know so I can hold you some slots.
In October (if borders are open and we are all vaxxed) the research team will be together in Spain, and in January both the core bead team and the science teams will be at MIT all month to teach the January term. So these two are our only public workshop slots until next year.
Preparing for our beadalong is simple. No specific beads are needed, although we like to use size 11 Delica cylinder beads for our geometric beading. The number of beads needed to create assemblies depends on how large you choose to make your pieces and parts. For learning, we recommend small side counts, like 8 beads per side. Our YouTube tutorials for the BatCycle forms are beaded to this size (see below).
Do you have enough beads to make 2 small Warped Hexagons and 2 small Triangles? Then you have enough beads to learn the linkage. There is no need to accumulate large piles of 16 colours of Delicas… you’ll see. The things that are best to learn and practice first are how to make a Geometric Triangle, and how to make a Geometric Warped Hex. Luckily, we have step-by-step tutorials on our YouTube Channel, free to all!
Many of us prefer using round beads to join our elements into cycles, but cylinder beads or other shapes or sizes of bead can be used for this too. I strongly encourage you to watch my tutorial and view our pattern before choosing your beads for the project.
Please share these animations as widely as you like, they are free to all, a gift from Julia Pretl and CGB.
Animation by Julia Pretl for Contemporary Geometric Beadwork
The one thing that makes them easiest to learn is using beads that are all the same size and shape. More expensive beads are usually also more precise, but even the best Japanese round beads are very affordable, and can absolutely be used to create and join geometric work.
Your completed triangles and Warped Hexagons can have any number of beads per side, but for simplicity of assembly, they should all be built to the same number of rounds / beads per side.
This is how we count beads per side- we count the beads that make the increase lines on the side that they are on. For example, in the Triangle screenshot from the video (above) the fourth round is in the process of completion.
It doesn’t matter which of our polygons you are beading, the method of counting is still the same. Conveniently for your counting, when you are beading with one-drop peyote (one bead per slot in peyote spaces) the number of rounds beaded is the same number as the beads per side. (Should you choose to step up to two-drop or other placements, the round count and the side bead count will be different.)
We will broadcast live (just for fun) on Facebook and Zoom, but there is no need to attend live. The video and the pattern will be available, free to all, here at the Book Blog, and will be posted on Facebook, and shared freely by all who attend.
If you plan to join on Facebook Live, please sign up to join at this link. A Zoom link will be posted here, there and everywhere the day before, for those of you who prefer that portal.
The time of the live stream is 10 am, EST, and our team will be around online to help people for the month of May.
As a personal note, I really appreciate all of the emails, messages, etc. asking about what/when/how/where, and that everyone is still so excited about our release after all of this deep time working in the shadows makes my heart sing. My God. I am so lucky. Unfortunately, though at this time I am also the only person (quite literally the only actual human being) doing this work, sending out kits, making demos, finishing book pages, scheduling workshops, sending out stipends, arranging the press run, answering messages, filing tax returns, gathering a team, making their travel arrangements, you get the idea. It is extremely challenging, and as yet still unpaid (we are all volunteers until we publish and ship) and I love you very much. More than you can guess.
Try to be patient on the cycle beadalong, and wait for May 1. No kit is needed, no special beads are needed, and I really look forward to connecting with you on that lovely day. Stay safe when you think of BatCycles, I tell you, it is a strong and powerful form. Do not wander while contemplating its mysteries.
Good morning! I’m looking forward to this coming Saturday, May 1, when I begin teaching the fascinating BatCycle linkage in a class that’s free to all. Links will be posted here on the Book Blog, there is an Event Page on Facebook that you can join, and the video and pattern will be archived and posted here as well so there is no need for anyone to attend live. It’s just fun to see you all. A Zoom link will be posted separately here and on Facebook tomorrow.
The first video in the series will begin at 10:00 am Eastern Time (USA) this Saturday, May 1, and it will explain the linkage, why I think it’s important, and what we hope to do with it. Some of it will be a science and engineering discussion, because the Contemporary Geometric Beadwork research team is part of a larger science team as well, and we call our group The UnLAB. It’s important to explain to our collaborators in science as well as in beadwork what we think this morphing structure can mean when translated to other materials.
After that, from 10:15 – 11:00 am, I’ll show how the pieces and parts are made, how the basic module is assembled, and how the modules are then hinged together to create a cycle. Although the linkage appeared very complex to us when Claudia Furthner discovered/created/was infiltrated by it in 2017, we studied Warped Hexagons, cycles and assemblies for long enough to demystify the process.
Anyone can make this linkage, if they can bead individual triangles and Warped Hexes. And with Julia Pretl’s bead-by-bead animations, they can. This has been my dream since we started this project… to be able to teach these intricate builds and forms in a clear and simple way.
Above: a BatCycle with one set of triangles installed, beadwork and colour design Kate McKinnon, architecture Claudia Furthner 2017
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Bead Assortments Mailed Out Last Week
Sample BatCycle Bead Assortment from April mailing: 14 colours of Delica 11/o cylinders Two different colours and styles of size 15/o bead – both 15/o Delicas and 15/o rounds
Above is a sample bead assortment from the stack of 80 I mailed out last week in response to our Fellowships and Stipends fundraiser sale (thank you all). Each assortment has 14 colours of Delica size 11/o cylinder beads and two different types of size 15/o bead to experiment with joining elements together. You do NOT need this many beads or colours to participate, but it can be handy to have at least six colours if you want to make colour-blocks in your Warped Hexes like I did in my demo.
Join beads are a matter of preference – not everyone likes (or can see) size 15/o beads, and so I included two different kinds so that we could compare the tiny, expensive (and sometimes fragile) cylinders with sturdy, inexpensive rounds. I love the look of Delica 15/o beads, but they can be tricky. (In the photo above, #11 are steel-grey Delica 15/o, and #13 are Czech rounds). Joins can also be made with size 11/o or other beads, and 11/o rounds are a simple, affordable and easy choice. Round seed beads are in fact so affordable that I always try to choose the best, so that they are the most regular in size.
If you received an assortment, or if you would like to round up any of the same beads, the bead numbers are:
Beads Used in my Pattern Book Demo
Here are a few sample pages from the book pattern that explain how I created the units for this demo (these pages are not final, please excuse any typos). I wasn’t happy with the wear of the finishes on some of these beads (like the matte fuschia) and so I made a few changes for the packets I mailed out, and will probably sub them out in the final book pages. But here, have a look:
As you can see, the BatCycle is built from six Warped Hexagons (mine were all identical) and 6-12 triangles (the final set of 6 can be put in at any time, or never). I used colour-blocking for the hexagons and the first set of triangles, so it would be easy to track the relationships of the elements in the finished piece. This is a great way to learn – I would consider using at least six different colours, so you can do this with your hexes:
The most important thing to know about Warped Hexes (after how to create them) is how to manipulate them.
The six photos above are the same Warped Hexagon manipulated into different stations. As the hexagon’s segments are rotated around the center ring, the colours change position relative to the folds. We are using our Warped Hexes in “taco form”, or folded flat as in stations 1-4.
WIth a simple rotation, the taco form rapidly gives way to a PodCast form, then back to a taco. Make a Warped Hexagon to 6 or 7 rounds and practice this rotation until you feel comfortable with it. If you bead too tightly, it might be difficult. If you bead too loosely, the hexes may not have much spring.
If you practice rotating your warped forms as they are being built, that also helps make sure that there is enough thread to rotate. So I encourage tight beaders to stop every few rounds and take a few spins around to be sure the builds are still flexible.
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