That may make no sense at first, but with the backstory it will, believe me.
It's actually rather simple.
Eight years ago I bead loomed an Edgar Allan Poe portrait pendant after my own design and made a small polymer clay raven for it. I called the pendant "Nevermore" and was immensely proud of how my raven had turned out.
I always wanted to make another pendant, but my polymer clay days were over. So I looked for raven charms online every, now, and then, but never found what I wanted or needed.
This year, however, I stumbled upon the cutest lampwork beads by Christiane Imkamp, tiny crows sitting on a pumpkin or a cactus. I asked Christiane if I could have just crows and much to my delight she said those had already been on her list. A few days later she had listed them in her shop.
Of course to me they were not crows, but ravens, and they looked just perfect.
After der Dekan moved in, I decided to give my bead loom a break because I didn't trust the little beast around open bead cups. I still don't and if you had just seen him tear down my clamp rod and curtain from one window and knock over a storage box to get to my lacrosse ball, not for a massage, but to roll it around the wooden floor - great noise in the middle of the night - you would well understand why.
The little master "has spring" as I call it which makes him even crazier than he usually is. And it being night, he can't even watch birds now.
I had underestimated him completely, I have to admit, and now it has been two years that none of my looms has been touched, except for putting them back in their spots on the Stairs to Nowhere after der Dekan has knocked one down once again (no worries, my beloved JaLa is locked away safely).
But once my ravens had arrived, I couldn't ignore the itch in my fingers any longer. So I gave dem Dekan - and of course Gundel - something to eat because that is the best way to get him out of the room and then locked myself in with my loom.
Can you believe that I was nervous at first? It showed in my mistakes on the first few increases and decreases when I went through the wrong warp gap, but I quickly got back into the flow of counting and looming.
Then the pendant was finished and I could get to re-weaving each thread back into the loomwork. It was just as meditative as ever.
At first you have a whole bunch of threads (72 in this case, to be exact) getting in one another's way, and then there are fewer and fewer, the piece looks cleaner and cleaner, so satisfying ... it's hard to explain, but you probably have your own things that make you feel this way.
Finally he was in my hand, Mister Edgar Allan Poe, and it felt so good.
All he needed now was his little Nevermore - again.
