The Nepali Bracelet

Twenty-something years ago, at a Nepalese stall at the night market in Hong Kong, I bought a bracelet.  Black cotton with silver beads; it was a wisp of a bracelet, so very plain and simple but the tiny detailing on the beads had caught my eye.  The lovely boyf didn't wear bracelets (that I can remember) when I met him, but one Valentines he was treating me to a weekend away, which warranted a nice present in return, so I bought him a black silk and silver bar bracelet from Links.  It was joined that Christmas by a leather cuff with the longitude and latitude of our house engraved onto a silver plaque and finally, after a rummage, my Nepali bracelet.  Everything in threes.  Time has taken it's toll though, the cotton has morphed into I'm not entirely sure what after years of shampoo and soap and wear, a couple of the beads have fallen off and it was so frayed in one spot that it was threatening to be lost.  It was time to replace it.

On of my failings as the mother of a soon to be teenage girl is my apathy towards the friendship bracelet.  I don't remember being all that fussed by them as a girl myself.  I'm not a fan of any of the unbelievably overly complicated kits that the 11yr old gets routinely as presents, the threads were just pinned to the knee of your jeans in my day.  And I'm certainly not chomping at the bit to finish off a half done bracelet just because she'd promised so-and-so that she'd make it.  I just didn't/don't get the point.  All that said, after a quick google and thanks to the great instructions by Fe at Rad Linc Crafts I found myself sat, Saturday night, with a two foot long plywood plank on my lap, far more thread than ever I needed knotted to a screw at the top of said plank and taped at the bottom, as per instructions, a needle and a bowl of rescued Nepali silver beads.

The making of was a bad-tempered affair: I unknotted quite a bit, the boyf looked nervous, the beads went flying once (thank you Megs) and the end result looks more homemade than I would have wanted but, the Nepali bracelet is back on his wrist and I like it just as much as I did the day I bought it.