Sunday, January 6, 2013

New Pattern: Morning Coffee Molecules

My newest pattern, the Morning Coffee Molecules, is now available on my website.
The pattern is easily the longest one I've written, clocking in at 30 pages and 85 photos and illustrations. It describes how to render, in beadwork, the skeletal chemical structures of just three of the over 1000 compounds present in your morning cup of coffee; caffeine, caffeic acid, and trigonelline (right-to-left in the photo above). As I mentioned previously, skeletal structures are a shorthand way of drawing a chemical compound. Here are the skeletal structures of the three beaded molecules above:
In writing this pattern, I first chose to describe how to weave the structure of caffeine, because, let's face it, it's just so cool:
For the other two structures in the pattern, I picked compounds that are both present in coffee and mostly aromatic like caffeine, which makes them flat and therefore more accurately-represented with this technique of beadweaving as compared to a more dimensional molecule. I also chose molecules considered unrelated to caffeine for some variety in this trio of beaded compounds. The second structure is caffeic acid, which, unlike its name, indeed looks quite different than caffeine:
For the third structure, I chose trigonelline, a smaller compound which is a relative of vitamin B3:
All three compounds have a connecting seed bead that can be strung through a beading wire, or through a jump ring as shown in this pendant:
The Morning Coffee Molecules pattern is available exclusively at beadorigami.com, and I should have kits for this design ready in the coming weeks. What's your favorite coffee flavor?

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