A Pandemic Hat

This is my pink pandemic hat. The beautiful beadwork on the hatband was done by my friend Becky. Her work is incredible; so detailed, so beautifully done.

Inside the band there is a thin embossed copper label memorializing this as her work, a 2020 hatband, begun in cheerful circumstances together over a year ago, finished in isolation in a pandemic.

It was over a year ago and in another time that I bought a pink woven hat in the gift shop at Pecos Pueblo National Park, because who doesn't need a pink hat? It came with a leather shoelace and some plastic beads for a band. Not what a pink hat should have.

I think I might have mentioned it to Becky last summer, pre-pandemic, back when we could travel and visit and shop and she was here in Santa Fe. I might have said something about my pink hat needing an upgrade.

Because the next thing I knew we were at BeadWeaver on Old Santa Fe Trail, picking out the colors of beads I wanted for a hand crafted band. That was such fun together. She found a pattern of locking diamonds that was exactly what I had pictured.

It took her multiple tries to bead this hatband because we got some wrong size beads and I waffled on the dimensions a bit and then there was this pandemic going on.

And she moved houses in this time too, no small distraction. The beads went to Portugal with her last winter so she could work on the band there, but got chased back to the US with her as flights started canceling and chaos broke out.

Despite all that and despite what has happened all around us and changed our lives, the hatband was done and re-done, adjusted and re-worked, and then finally completed and mailed to me and . . .

. . .  it is perfect.

That is just beautiful work.