Loosen Up

Once upon a time, back when I owned a bead shop, I was talking with some of my business partners and fellow beaders about tension in beadwork. We talked about how getting just the right tension was important for pretty much any beading project. A few of us joked about how tension in beading was related to personality, at which I quipped, "Well, I always bead really, really tightly - so what does that make me?"

Working through this project for the Bead Soup Blog Party on Saturday (yikes!), I realized that working with a tight tension is not conducive to a good triple spiral rope. Really. I've been trying so hard to control where the core beads line up, and how the spirals lay against each other... The first few sections of this rope were so frustrating, I almost wanted to give up.

Then, lo and behold, for some reason this morning, I decided to back off on my tension.

I could feel the difference in the beadwork instantly! Instead of fighting with each new core bead, they just sort of stacked up on top of each other neatly. The little set of spirals around the core stopped fighting each other, too.

And, sort of miraculously, the headache I had been fighting all day disappeared, too.

So, yes, maybe I'm reading too much into this, but with all the life lessons that I'm learning lately, maybe the next one that my beads are trying to teach me is to back off and loosen up a little. Stop trying to control everything (control freak that I am) and just sort of go with the flow...

Those little beads of mine are so smart, sometimes.