some questions, supply and other

Hi all,

as somebody asked about sterling silver, I have some questions too.

I found that for wire buying Monsterslayer is the cheapest source of wire, and I really like their large round coils. Is there anything cheaper? - Looking for half hard and dead soft, maybe some full hard wire in gauges between 18 and 26. -

Still looking for a reasonable supplier of really small plastic baggies, from 1x1" up. Having looked at FMG last night, if I include shipping (and assume that they would ship in a USPS flat rate box), can they be outdone? - I ordered some from Papermart but as I'm in USPS zone 8 the Papermart box costs twice as much in shipping as a flat rate box would. South Pacific and B.Toucan don't have all the sizes I'm looking for.

Ben Franklin stopped carrying Softflex. I don't string much but I finally bit the bullet and got over my fear of crimping and made my first crimps. Much to my surprise they're still holding (eye glass retainer, used about 16-18 hours/day). I don't trust the 'very fine' Softtouch they have (otherwise they started carrying Beadalon). What's a good source of Softflex? (0.024" 49 strand. May be over the top for a lot of things, but you know I'm a physicist ...)

And a non-supply question: I did a little bit more wire work (I'm not making a whole lot of jewelry right now, with a full time job, until last week taking care of a geriatric cat, house, yard, drilling seeds, seed business and bead store inventory there isn't a whole lot of time left), using craft wire because I consider them, at least, sort-of practice pieces: (I know that one is rather small, but I took it in a bit of a hurry, and I wasn't at home - where my light-tent is fiber glass roofing, and I do still rely on sunlight, but it's much better than most non- light tent setups - and I do still use a 2.1MP hand-me-down camera) and Is this anywhere near ready for 'the real thing'? Sort-of ad at the end: if anybody in the Hilo area is reading this, I'll be at the Glass Artist Fair at Hilo Art and Glass next Saturday, in case anybody needs jewelry supplies to go with their glass buys (something like 10 a.m. until pau, in Downtown Hilo, in/in front of the old Farmer's Exchange location).

Thanks, Maren HiloBeads: Beads - Beading Supplies - Hand-made Jewelry