Macrame!

It was only a matter of time before I discovered the intricate patterns and designs that can be made with micro-macrame.  I stumbled on some beautiful work by people like Sherri Stokey at Knot Just Macrame, and video tutorials by Macrame School on YouTube, and knew right away that I wanted to try it.

I have tons of beads in my stash already, so all I needed was the right cord.  I bought several colors of hemp and bamboo cord and also C-Lon Tex 400 cord.  It comes in a bunch of gorgeous colors.  Rather than burn the ends of cut cords to prevent fraying (I fear setting fire to my hard work), I bought some Dritz Fray Check Seam Sealant from Amazon for $5.  I debated buying a dedicated macrame board, but decided to just repurpose one of the blocking mats I had purchased a few months ago when I made my son an afghan.  The pins go in easily and, as an added bonus, the notched sides that are meant for connecting the squares into a bigger blocking mat are great for holding cords out of the way.

Supplies

My first project is the Casual Diamonds bracelet from Knot Gypsy Designs.  It was labeled as good for beginners and came with some instructions on how to do the basic macrame knots.

The larks head knot was pretty straight-forward for me, but the double half hitch gave me some trouble at first. I think I was expecting the first half hitch to be, well, more knot like.  It seemed to look like I was just looping the cord.  With a little more practice, I began to see how to cross the cord through the loop and my double half-hitches began looking more like the picture.

This particular pattern calls for size 11 seed beads as well as two colors of size 6 beads.  I ran into a couple of hiccups here, but easily solved. The C-Lon cord I was using was just a teeny bit too big for most of my size 11 beads.  Fortunately, Toho makes a size 11 bead with a slightly bigger hole-- the Takumi.  I dug out a tube of these from my stash and it was a perfect fit..... until the cord started to fray a bit at the end.  For awhile I kept snipping the end of the cord to get an unfrayed end, but this is, for obvious reasons, not a long-term solution.  I unscrewed the cap from my Fray Check and dipped in the ends of the cords.  Once it dries (about 30 minutes, but I just set it aside overnight), no more fraying!

It's coming together!

The bracelet design calls for a button clasp.  I love buttons.  To me, they are like tiny works of art, a surprise pop of whimsy if you will.  Anyway, because I was kind of cobbling together the colors of cord and beads I wanted to use, I didn't actually have a particular button that matched.  Time to shop! It's the middle of January, but I am feeling summer right now.  The blue and green beads in the design are reminding me of my Hawaiian weekend a couple of months ago.  The coral cord feels beachy, casual, walking through the sand in bare feet, a sarong, a macrame bracelet on your wrist... you get the idea.  I love Czech glass buttons, but this bracelet seemed to be calling for a shell button.  I have some mother-of-pearl buttons, but that wasn't quite right.  What I found was...

Buttons!

Beautiful, right?  They are made of coconut shell, I think.  Anyway, I bought one in every color offered.

Now, I should know better to have found the button before I started so I could properly size the loop at the top as the instructions suggest.  My beautiful shell buttons will have to wait for another project (which I think I already have in mind) because they are too big.  Never fear, I found these other buttons that look like sea glass, that fit just as well with the beach vibe and, importantly, fit through the loop.

More buttons!

And now my first macrame project is complete!

Ta-da!

This is My First Post

Hi!  Thanks for visiting my blog.  If you are like me and obsessed with all things beads and fiber, then I hope you will enjoy reading about my adventures.

It all started two years ago.  Well, if I really think back, perhaps it started when I was little, learning how to do cross-stitch and rug hooking alongside my sisters.  I loved having a project.  Life took me this way and that, and projects fell by the wayside.  I learned to knit about ten years ago, and made a series of ill-fitting sweaters.  There was something lovely, though, about leafing through pattern books, browsing the local yarn shop, and the hypnotic repetition of the stitches.

I was hit with the nesting bug hard when I was pregnant with my daughter (my second child), two years ago.  Not in the sense that I wanted to clean house or organize the boxes of baby supplies I had packed away after my son was born.  Rather, I wanted nothing more than to crochet little booties, dresses, and hats for my yet-to-be-born baby girl.

With a stash of baby clothes in place, I turned to larger projects.  One of my crochet books had a gorgeous pattern for a cozy wrap sweater in a luxuriously soft fabric.  I though, what a perfect Christmas gift for my mom!  I headed to a yarn store during my lunch break and carefully selected a beautiful yarn in deep purple.  It was expensive, but I knew it was worth it.  I worked for weeks and weeks.  Finally, it was done.  I slipped my arms through the sweater to check the fit.  Horror of horrors, it was a train wreck.  Obviously, my gauge was incorrect, or I had inadvertently added stitches, or both.  Unless my mom had suddenly grown extremely wide shoulders, there was no way it would fit.  I fought back tears, stuffed the offending item in a box, and tried to erase the memory.

Now, simultaneously with this misadventure in crochet, I was home with my newborn daughter.  She is my second child and I was feeling much more comfortable getting out of the house with her than I did with my son.  Anyway, every day I would bundle her up in the baby carrier and walk down the street to grab coffee or a few groceries.  Along the way was a bead shop.  At first, I didn't go in, I just looked in the window and wondered how one went about creating jewelry out of beads.  I couldn't get it out of my head.  Then one night/very early morning, as I nursed my daughter, I typed "making beaded jewelry" into the search bar and unlocked a passion.

The old familiar joy of studying patterns and designs, browsing local shops, and the quiet busy-ness of creating came flooding back.  I learned to delight in the process of picking colors and shapes of beads, and build, millimeter by millimeter, something unique and beautiful.  I ended up making my mom a pearl bracelet and set of earrings that Christmas.

Beading, crochet, tapestry weaving (I'll save that story for another post), have all become great sources of comfort to me.  There are still the projects that don't quite turn out, rows and rows of work that need to be undone, but through the frustrations I have found the steady and slow progress of creating to be incredibly rewarding.

There is an incredible community of bearers, weavers, crocheters, and other artists online.  Many have offered projects, tutorials, advice, and encouragement to me either directly or through their own blogs and shops.  With this blog, I hope to add my own contribution.

A beaded daffodil I made for my mom for Mother's Day 2013.  The bloom design is from The Beaded Garden by Diane Fitzgerald.  The daffodils are in memory of my grandmother (my mother's mother), a beader and crocheter herself.