Not all beads are created equal

I went to start a new project yesterday and needed to match a color size  6 seed bead to use as the base.  Lets talk about beads for a minute.   First of all size.  Seed beads come in a variety of sizes the four usual ones being size 15, 11, 8 and 6.  The smaller the number the larger the bead.  If they come smaller than a size 15 I know my old eyes wouldn't see them and forget using a needle, I can barely string the 15's!   Larger than a size 6 and they're generally plastic and called pony beads.

From left to right, size 15, 11, 8 and 6 Toho round seed beads.  I've laid them over a needle so that you can get a perspective for actual size.  

Seed beads also come in a variety of shapes, round being the most popular/useful but they also come in cylinder shape-generally going by the trade names of Delicas or Treasures, Hex, Square, Triangle, Bugle...and all these shapes come in the same range of sizes although Bugle beads are generally measured by their length.  

I touched on this a tiny bit in a previous post but not all beads are of good quality.  Does quality matter?    Well, you decide.

The beads in the bottom picture are beautiful colors and would have worked nicely in the project I had in mind and I thought perhaps since I only needed them for the base, which would be covered up with lots of pretty embellishment that the wonkiness wouldn't matter.  But the shapes were so widely varied even if all the holes were the same "size" that the resulting ladder base was a real mess.  So I'll save these for a project where uniform shape doesn't matter.  They'll probaby sit in the box on my shelf collecting dust til I'm long gone and my kids go through my stuff and shake their head at their batty old Mom who collected everything.....