Textiles and Bicycles

I made this last night after acquiring all my necessary supplies at a bead store in Dupont Circle and after spotting this necklace in a catalogue of a major chain store that shall remain nameless because I’m kind of embarrassed for shopping somewhere so…generic. I blame having to go to an office in DC. People dress pretty conservatively here and it seems to grab people’s attention when anyone even kind of steps outside the suity box, which isn’t really a good thing when you’re at work.

So here it is. The color is a little off, it’s more of a lapis blue than the turquoise it looks like in the picture. I haven’t strung beads and made a necklace since I was 12. And I didn’t completely know what I was doing. So the clasps are kind of screwy and required an emergency Etsy buy of brass bead tips (which are these fantastic devices that hide your knots, keep them more secure, and generally make the process much easier). So it’s not actually completely finished and will have to be restrung when I get the bead tips, but it’s functional right now.

I like the idea of seeing something in a catalogue and figuring out how to make it instead of buying the thing, which in this case is almost definitely made in China. The China thing is even more important to me these days as the Chinese government trashes the Dalai Lama. It seems shocking that this would be an advisable political move for them considering the worldwide, deserved adoration for him, but apparently invoking the strong nationalist identity of the Chinese is working among the domestic populace and they do in fact seem to agree with the government. That a group of people can be condemned for peaceful protest in the face of persistent human rights abuses against them is something I simply cannot understand.

Unfortunately as a normal American without much political power my identity is little more than consumer, so the power of the purse will be my vehicle for expressing myself.

I have never really made a “nice” necklace so this kind of proves it’s more possible for most (if not all) of us to substitute our ready-made purchases with home- and handmade stuff (not to mention I saved more than $50). And I learned from a coworker the other day that fabrics sold in the US are almost always made in the US because of tariff laws, which do not apply to ready-made clothing. I haven’t checked this statement out, but it sounds like I’ll be sewing a lot more than I have been.