I
am fascinated by small, shiny objects.
Preferably with a hole
drilled through the center.
In
other words, beads; glass, pearl, crystal, round or square,
two-holed and triangle-shaped, if I can string it, I can make
jewelry out of it.
I
caught the beading fever the same way a lot of people
do. One day I saw a picture of a pretty beaded bracelet, and said to myself, I can do that.
Little
did I know, it was peyote.
Stitch,
that is, peyote stitch, a versatile beading method once you
understand it. Which I finally did after about six months of
trial and a lot of error.
String
an even number of beads, the directions said. These beads
are your first two rows.
See
what I mean?
And
that's even-count peyote stitch, the easiest kind; there's odd-count, circular, tubular, two-drop rows
with increases, or decreases...
But
I persevered. Pig-headed, some have called it. Encumbered as I was
by the lingering effects of countless hallucinogenics gobbled in my
misspent youth, I was still determined
to make a bracelet like the one in the picture.
Beading
magazines cater to a rather genteel set, and rarely bother to
mention peyote stitch history. Examples of peyote stitch have been
found in Ancient Egyptian artifacts, but it is primarily
associated with the Native American beadwork that decorates
objects used in peyote ceremonies.
I
have never used peyote, but my peyote stitch "aha moment"
came in the memory of an orange sunshine dawn.
These
beads are your first two rows.
Oh. Now I get it. It's
not supposed to make sense.
Throwing logic to the wind, I learned how to do peyote through sheer determination; peyote stitch, that is.
Pig-headed, some have called it.
But I am still fascinated by
small, shiny objects.
And
they said all those years of eating purple microdot were wasted.