Over The Hump with Hemp

Greetings Weaving Friends!  I have had a difficult time with “re-entry” after my knee surgery.  No matter what I did, I was very tired all the time. I tried resting, pushing myself, smiling a lot and pretending I was fine, letting myself feel everything and even crying too.   I was the dreaded….”Unproductive”.  It wouldn’t go away!  I stopped in at my shop for an hour or two here and there and was simply overwhelmed.  I wondered if I would ever feel “normal” again.  Even as my knee improved…I got out of bed, then off crutches, then walking with a normal gait, then not in pain all the time…My life seemed to be more difficult to manage.  But slowly, the real me has been re-emerging. My life seems to be coming back on track.  I guess I am “over the hump”.

And guess what….I am back at the loom!

While I was on leave, we started carrying hemp cord at Poppyfield Bead Company (my bead shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico).  I have never worked with it before and on one of my post-op visits to my shop it captured my attention. I like mixing opposing elements, and I wondered how the the natural organic texture could blend and contrast with elegant glass beads.  In keeping with some skills I picked up during my last experiment (see post), I decided to warp with hemp cord and weave a combination of two-holed Czech beads, hexagonal delica seed beads, and fire polish beads.

Working with a variety of sizes of beads can be tricky.  It took me several attempts to figure out how to keep the sections aligned.  Two 3 mm fire polished beads should combine to take as much as space as a 6 mm bead.  But there are other factors that come into play, and they don’t.  So being flexible and willing to “undo” and make adjustments is key getting the “mosaic” look I wanted.

Finishing this will be the next challenge.  Stay tuned!