Norse Beads

I went to a bead making yesterday at Ragnar and Kadlin's. This was one in a series of experiments about trying to do it in the way the Norse did, about a thousand years ago.

Aislinne walked me through the first couple that I did. I ended up making four beautiful beads -- well, I thought they were beautiful -- but they all cracked. In fact, the group of us (five, in all) tried to make about 30 beads, and all but two cracked. We're not sure what we're doing wrong.

Aislinne was providing Ragnar with some ideas about parameters that we might want to change (one at a time, of course) for later experiments, as we let the fire die down.