Margaret -
Welcome! Good luck on teaching yourself through books. I
started about 4 years ago and decided after 3 months that a few
lessons would save me much, much, much time. I was lucky and
ended up in a class where I was the only student so I learned
faster than usual. Some of the things are hard to learn from
books!!! I now teach a very basic class at a local bead shop for
people that think they might be interested. The response was so
good I added another class just a little beyond basic. This
helped me a lot because I had to learn to answer students
questions. I highly recommend that you find a class somewhere to
speed up the process. Its much like golf - if you learn bad
habits they are harder to break.
Nancy B. Widmer @nbwidmer
Bacliff, Tx