Go with your gut!

Yesterday, while teaching a kumihimo class, I started a kumihimo rope with Czech lentils. I love lentils, but have never used them in kumihimo before.

Here's what I learned: the lentils do not automatically fall into position with the widest part of the bead facing outward. Not sure why I thought they would, but I did.

After I had braided about an inch, I checked the forming braid, and discovered that it for the most part the lentils were lining up as I had assumed they would, but in a few places it looked like a bead was missing, or turned sideways - and this is where the lentils had oriented themselves so that their widest part was inside the rope instead of outside. For every 15 or so that line up correctly, 1 or 2 get in there backwards. It was an interesting look, but not what I had envisioned.

Two thoughts occurred to me as I contemplated starting over (mind you, I had only braided about an inch at this point):
1) It's an interesting look - it adds texture. Let's leave it!
2) I don't want to freak out my students AND look like I don't know what I'm doing by sitting here and taking all this out and starting over!

So I kept braiding, thinking "It will look cool once it is longer."

I kept on braiding, finishing about 5 more inches during class. I took a break for lunch and checking e-mail, then decided to work on it a little more. I looked at my 6-inch long braid, with its catawampus beads, and wasn't all that happy with it. But I decided it was "interesting" - there's that word again - and decided to go ahead and finish it.

You know what was talking here? Fatigue. But I didn't recognize that (because I was so tired!). I worked on the kumihimo for about another hour, and went home for the evening.

And proceeded to stew and overthink the whole thing, and reached the decision this morning, driving to work, to undo the whole thing and do it "right" this time. The freshness of a new day helps a lot with clarity of thought!

This is not even the first time that I have not been happy with a beading project, but convinced myself that if I just "made it longer" it would magically look better! You'd think I'd learn to trust my first impression! It's a lot easier to take out 1 inch of a doomed project than 7 inches!

Here is a pic showing the crooked beads:

The red arrow shows one of the crooked lentils, and the blue arrow shows a gap amongst all the other well-behaved lentils; the gaps was created when one lentil decided to line up completely backwards in the braid, with its widest portion facing inward.

So I will click "Publish" on today's post, and head over to my workbench and start unbraiding the crooked braid, untwisting tangling threads and bobbins, and start over! I don't mind at all (although I'd rather have done it correctly to begin with!) but I swear it takes longer to take one apart than to braid it - what with all the tangling!