Eye Protection

This is one big eye bead:



which has become part of a chain of beads, including more eye beads large and small:



Eye beads afford protection and ward off evil. Blue is also a magic color, so a blue eyebead might just be the *best* eyebead. And then a Very Large Blue eyebead, well, it just might rise to the top of the Protective Amulet charts. The chain will be used to hang a harem lamp belonging to Cousin Joan, similar to this one which she gave to us:



Cousin Joan likes to travel. Sometimes, she travels to Turkey. She can be prevailed upon to bring back lovely things from Turkey, like the harem lamps, and also useful things, like these scary pile scissors:




Scary yes, but also scarce and hard to find here. There are not markets and bazaars selling tools of the weavers trade in my town. So we send Joan, of the cousin persuasion, off to the hinterlands. And in return, we sometimes make her things with her beads.