Loose, colorful, happily twirled polymer beads popped into view this week.

Kathryn Corbin’s necklace starts with big textured peach-colored tubes on a thick cord.

In the center, bigger loops of random surface textures in springy colors overlap and crowd against each other. It’s a fresh and spontaneous look that kept catching my eye in Claire Maunsell’s weekend surface techniques class in Boston. What a great use for the samples we were accumulating in class!

Then Jean Rutka posted pictures from a weekend group event in Morrisburg, Ontario.

One photo featured thin extruded polymer strings that Lyn Tremblay twirled into flat round disks and strung into a fabric-like necklace. On her Facebook page Lyn shows a number of other fun designs that come to her when she lets the clay “speak to her”.

Is this fascination with easily twirled bits of clay a trend or just a reflection of the exuberance of spring?