I don’t know if I’ve shared here before how hysterical crafting makes me. Kind of like Scrabble. I had a mother who was really into crafts, and really quick to call my feeble efforts crap. I also have a father who takes Scrabble very seriously, who’s quick to tell me, “you don’t understand the game.”

So I don’t dig either activity particularly.

But I have one daughter who really needs to do crafts. She is restless to learn knitting, crocheting, origami, whatever craft you can put in front of her. She got an Indian bead loom for her birthday, and innocently asked if we could work with it this summer. I panicked inside, but I opened it up and dove in. Have you ever seen how tiny those beads are? I began to break out in a sweat. I suddenly lost patience for anyone small as I concentrated on reading the instructions.

Trying to get the tension just right on the loom nearly drove me crazy, not to mention trying to actually weave beads with it. This thing was made for 8 year olds? She kept saying things like, “This is way too hard for me. . .” Hours later, my daughter had long since moved onto another activity, I managed to finish her 4 bead pattern bracelet. The moment had come to remove it from the loom.

The design I’d precariously woven on the loom fell apart in my hands. It was a loopy, stringy tangle of beads. My daughter donned a lopsided smile and tried to wear it anyway. She told me that it was ok, Mommy, it’s still pretty.

It would be weeks before I attempted the bead loom again. This time we tried a more complicated design–I thought I’d try to write her name with beads. I drew the design on the graph paper myself. (The first time, I’d had her design the bracelet).

I carefully measured the elastic and strung the loom. I wove the needle and thread over the elastic for every row of beads. Her wrist is so tiny, I only had room for her nickname (3 letters) and a couple stars on the bracelet. It was a thing of beauty. I was proud of myself. Then I tried to take it off the loom. The same result as the same bracelet. We both agreed to leave the bead loom alone indefinitely.

What did we learn from this experience? Maybe I should google bead weaving?

Next craft: origami–can you say confusing?