Counting

I've been making great progress on the beaded bag for Kristyn's wedding. I am past the half-way point, meaning I have completed 70 rows of k2, sl 6 beads, repeat 16 times... and I've finished 18 of the next 70 rows of the second half. This is good because we now have a shower date set, which means I have a deadline. If I didn't have deadlines like Christmas and birthdays, I'd never finish anything (and those don't always work for me anyway).

So the bag is really getting heavy, and after stringing my 5th hank, I started counting. I figured there were 100 beads per string, 10 strings per hank, and I made it halfway through with 4 hanks. So 10x100x4=4000 per half, or 8000 beads total. Doesn't that seem like a lot of beads? After that calculation, I counted the number of beads per string and discovered there are actually 300 beads per, so triple the total to 24,000. Is that normal? Granted, it is a nice size purse, not an amulet size but an actual evening bag, so I expected a lot of beads. But had you asked me, even after stringing them all, I'd have guessed in the neighborhood of 1500 to 2000. And this is why I never come close in the contests where you have to guess the # of pennies or jelly beans in a jar.

I hope it won't be too heavy!