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Susan Tucker - The Hare in the Moon
Category: Body Adornment.
Body of bag: even count tubular peyote; bottom flap and side hinges odd count flat peyote; sculptural peyote to cover the bead in the tassel. The strap is bead crochet. The hare’s footprints are depicted on the back of the bag.
My fascination with the hare in the moon began with Sir David Attenborough's television series "The Natural World." One of the shows was about hares and the stories that surround them. I was captivated by the idea that many cultures see not a man, but a hare in the moon.
When I read about the theme for the Second Delica Challenge, the image of the hare in the moon immediately came to mind, although I at first dismissed it because I didn't feel ready to enter a competition. The hare was stubborn though, and wouldn't rest until I had brought him to life.
I had a difficult time finding information about these stories. Although a lot of books and internet sites make reference to the hare in the moon myth (particularly the Chinese version where a white hare lives on the moon and grinds the elixir of life), finding the stories themselves took some work. The image I had in my mind didn't fit the Chinese tale, so I kept looking and finally found what I wanted in the children's department of the local library, in a wonderful book by Susan Milord called Tales of the Shimmering Sky. The author relates a story told by the Shan people of Burma to explain the monthly lunar cycle. The story goes that the moon is a silver hare that lives in a round box. On the night of the new moon, the box is shut. Each night, the hare pushes open the lid of the box a little more. On the night of the full moon, the hare jumps out of the box and can be seen on the moon's surface. The hare then gradually replaces the lid until the box is closed once more. Then the process begins anew. The front of my bag shows the hare on the night of the full moon. The back shows the hare's footprints.
I am forty-five years old, and have been beading for about six years. I have always done some kind of craft (knitting, crocheting, sewing, to name a few), but none of them really captured me the way working with beads has. The slow, meditative quality of beading soothes my soul while the huge variety of color, size, and finish and the endless design possibilities appeal to my creative side.
I have taken a lot of classes, particularly at Star's Beads, in Vienna, Virginia (www.starsbeads.com). I also have learned a lot from my large collection of bead books and magazines. Two books that have been pivotal in my development are Creative Bead Jewelry by Carol Taylor, and Creative Bead Weaving by Carol Wilcox Wells. Creative Bead Jewelry was the book that first sparked my interest in beading. It is filled with interesting projects and work by a variety of designers. Creative Bead Weaving is my off-loom survival manual. The instructions and diagrams are easy to understand and follow. Whenever I need to learn a new technique (for example, uneven flat peyote stitch), this is the book I turn to.
I designed my amulet bag using Beadscape software. It was my first experience with computer-aided design, and I found it easy to use, although I barely scratched the surface of the program's capabilities. I did not scan an image, but placed beads in a grid according to a sketch I had done of a stuffed hare. The spherical shape of the moon gave me some trouble, as did the hare's hindquarters. (My first rendition of the hare looked like a caffeined-up cartoon character!)
I began the body of the bag using Brenda Whitehead's starter strip method (www.bwhitehead.com/lesson1.html). This was well worth the extra work, because it produces a very even tension right from the start, and removes the problems associated with the first few rows of circular peyote stitch.
I knew early on that the strap would be Delica 3.3's crocheted with pearl-stringing silk, a technique I learned from Carole Horn at the Bodacious Bead Show in 1998. The silk gives the strap a wonderful fluidity. Attaching the strap to the bag was another design challenge. I had seen a bag of Carol Wilcox Wells' that used little peyote "hinges" to attach a corded strap, and I combined that idea with strung Delicas to attach the two.
The tassel at the bottom of the bag is a wooden bead I painted to match the yellow beads. I then peyote-stitched over it and attached fringe to the bottom.
My goal in entering the competition was to design, complete, and enter a piece. It was very helpful to receive the judges' feedback (sort of like a private critique.) This was my first competition, and I am thrilled to be included in the book.