Learning

I have such news!  I have taken my first lessons in macrame this week, and I'm positively twitterpated!  I have long admired the style of macrame I think of as South American.  I really am not sure where it originated, but I see quite a bit of this style from people from Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, etc.  The pieces I'm talking about are usually done with waxed cord and natural stones as opposed to the nylon bead cord I use and the glass seed beads.  The emphasis is on the knotting.  The style is less "fussy" than mine, maybe.  More natural, more organic.

I don't mean to imply that folks in other areas of the world don't do that style, because some certainly do.  In fact, my teacher is from Estonia.  If you follow the world of macrame, you may have come across some of the work of Percy Palomino Tomayquispe.  I don't want to filch any of his photos to put them here to show you, so I'll just give you this link to his Facebook page.  Prepare to be amazed.

Anyway, back to my story... we don't have a local bead store in my town (the nearest is about 150 miles from here) so classes for me would require travel.  And I'm a homebody (okay, some would make an argument that the correct term would be recluse).  Either way, I've never taken any macrame classes or any jewelry making classes either, so when Percy announced that he would be doing online classes, I jumped at the chance.  

Turns out I'm not the world's best student.  I asked Percy to teach me bezeling because I've never quite been able to get it down as well as I'd like.  Those two pieces in the photo above are my first two failures even after Percy's lesson!

Third time is a charm though, and I finally nailed it.  After a second lesson, I also got the back done to hold the cabochon in place.

It may not look like much, but I am learning and enjoying every second of it.  And even if I'm not the best student, I am a determined one!  I'm also thrilled to have such an opportunity.  I grew up in the TBI (time before Internet), so it is still a big deal to me that we can interact with folks from the other side of the globe with such ease.  What a learning opportunity.