Several years ago, my uncle gifted me a bead loom kit. Seeing the actual tools used to make bead jewellery got me excited. I couldn’t wait for my holidays to start using it. My mother and I read through the manual and she assembled the loom. I drew out an elaborate design on the drafting paper provided with the kit and had begun imagining a bracelet on my wrist!
It was only once I had drawn the grid for the design of my bracelet and begun weaving each individual bead into the loom that I realised the effort that is involved in beading.
I have always found it difficult to haggle with street vendors selling these kinds of bracelets. Having tried it out myself, I don’t even think of negotiating.
This one with my initial is one of the handful of bracelets I weaved on the loom.
I love my gypsy-like, bead bracelet. I love it so much, I’m dedicating an entire blog page and several photographs to it!
A few days back I was fiddling around with a bead necklace… err… bracelet… Its just a really long piece of thread with lots of tiny beads.
We belong together!
All the beads are unique in their own way… Some are broken, some have cracks, some which have holes in weird places, and some which have strange shapes. In short, its made up of rejected stuff a.k.a junk!
A few of us in college had gone to a local market and we found a hawker selling these, dirt cheap…
Up close and personal
One look at those beads, and it was hard to resist… I immediately wrapped it around my wrist.
I loved it!
And then it broke – what else could you expect from a piece of junk.
In search of the next bead
But then, I loved it so much! So I repaired it, adding a few other beads from another broken bracelet.
Since then, the bracelet has been my constant companion. Wherever I have gone, its been with me. I’ve lost count of the number of times its broken. And the number of times
She strings sea shells...
its been repaired. But every time it’s been repaired, a little bit has been added to it – a few forgotten beads lying in the corner of the cupboard, beads that had fallen out of old dresses, and beads that had even been ripped out of fancy wedding invitations!
Standing out of the crowd
Not all of them were old, some were new, like sea shells, bright seeds collected during one of our holidays…
Panchayat
There is nothing orderly, symmetrical, or perfect about the bracelet, yet, to me, it looks beautiful…
As it was being repaired for the umpteenth time, I decided to photograph the imperfect, pretty little beads. I’d borrowed my brother’scamera. I don’t know much, except that it had a special lens, which had a fixed focal length. I clicked a few times, and the result was horrible! That was enough to scare me.
Odd one out
If the camera wasn’t intimidating enough, I realised I had no clue how to go about taking the pictures. So I just switched to the auto mode and let the camera decide everything else!
Galaxy
All the photographs here were taken by the camera! Hope you enjoy the photographs.
Cheers!
Imperfectly perfect!
Since I rely on material distributed over the internet, it is only appropriate that I do the same… The photographs here may be used for non-commercial purposes. A simple credit would be appreciated 🙂
Musings of an eccentric mind 