An early start today as I’m filming a video workshop on beading pentagons. Personally I adore pentagons and find beading them really enjoyable. They're easy enough that you can lose yourself in the work, but complicated enough that you have to pay a small amount of attention and don't get bored. They’re much less common in the beading world than the ubiquitous triangle, but hopefully my continued experiments with them will change that. Over the years I have made pentagon bangles and a project I’m especially proud of, Geometric Secret, and a new one soon to appear in Beadwork magazine…

I think I have a soft-spot for pentagons as they’re not an immediately obvious, or easy, shape to bead. It took me a long time to perfect the actualities of beading them, especially working out the pattern repeat and how it can be used in designing; but also its limitations. I still have at home the scribbled notes I made in the back of a paperback book when I had finally perfected it and didn’t want that knowledge to disappear before I got home.

When planning for filming I have thought long and hard about every detail, tip, nuance and scrap of encouragement I want to say. I’ve also been busy using my new big, colourful beads to make samples which will hopefully make it all the more easier to see what I’m doing and talking about. I am eternally grateful to Carole Horn for introducing me to the idea of using these to demonstrate with.

I think the camera crew are just as grateful as all the steps I make are that much clearer, and using different colours, larger beads and working slowly always works for me in class and I hope that transfers well to these video workshops.

Before I know it, my policy of aiming to get it right first time has paid off and I finish a good 5 hours before we had expected!

After a nice lunch at Henry's I have the afternoon to myself to explore all that Fort Collins has to offer. I had planned on visiting the Art Museum to see the Dale Chihuly exhibit on show, but they’re not open today so I decided to take up the oft repeated recommendation of anyone who knew I had the afternoon off… a visit to a brewery.

It seems there are multiple to choose from in this small town but I plump for New Belgium and spend an interesting few hours learning all about their history, how they brew, their company ethics and green policies and the employee benefits. I’ve made that seem boring, but it was really fascinating and if the demeanour of everyone I met there is anything to go by, then more companies could learn from their policy of treating employees well, having some give and take and generally acknowledging that if you treat workers better, they’ll work better. I love their policy of giving everyone Valentines Day off- the concept of love being considered in the corporate world is a nice one.

After the tour, a small sampling of beer and a trip down their slide, it was time to head off back to the hotel. On my way I found a used bookstore and before I knew it I was in there and purchasing. I managed to leave with 3 books including one on perfume written by Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez. How could I resist a book which reviews a scent by saying ‘The bathrooms in hell smell like this. Aggressively, blindingly horrible, the worst part of fake grape flavour bolstered by the strongest artificial sweet amber concocted by man or devil. I want to cry’

Then it was a trip back to Al’s News Stand where I am extremely restrained and leave with just two magazines, one on coin collecting and one on living in New England.