Monday Project

Whilst cleaning over Christmas, I managed to misplace my Tibetan mala. It's much easier to keep track of chanting with it, so on Saturday I wandered over to the craft store in Idaho Falls (Michael's; we used to have a branch outlet of it here in Pocatello, but it got bought out, and the new place isn't even a quarter as good). I found some decent wooden beads, and even lucked into a sale. Instead of $4 for a fourteen-inch strand, it was $3. Overall, including the beads I have leftover, it cost me about $13. I did wind up wandering over to the local excuse for a craft store after getting 99.9% done, just to get some beads with a larger bore to finish it off:




I had planned on using the disc-shaped beads every 36 or so, but it didn't look like I had quite enough round beads to make that pan out. They're currently every 12, though I think I could have gotten away with every 18. It's kind of nice to have a marker to go past on the mala. When I had to restring the other one (which will probably show up this week now that I've made a replacement), I put a knot every 36 beads for the same purpose.

I wound up using green garden twine to string it...primarily because I couldn't find my plain white cotton string. Naturally, it turned up a few hours after I was done. ^/^ Anyway, here's a closeup of the twine:



It adds an interesting color, even if it is a bit rattier than string would have been. To close it off, I tied a knot, then unwound the twine, rewound halves from the opposite ends together, then wound both of those together, put the larger bore beads over it, tied another knot, and frayed the end. Finally I put a drop of glue in each of the knots. The unwinding/re-winding wouldn't have occurred to me if I hadn't run across a show on rope making at some point in the last few months. I have no idea how well this twine will hold up, but I'm pretty sure that my finishing will hold together for a good long time.