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Knotting flowers from desert roots
Fernanda is, by her own admission, not someone who finds it natural to share her story publicly. She is private in the way people who do serious creative work tend to be. The work carries what she wants to say better than words do.
She is a painter first. Macramé is what she reaches for when painting is out of reach - which makes it, paradoxically, the art form she has built a business around. Both require the same quality of attention: sustained, patient, quiet.
When she makes a mistake in macramé the only option is to go back and undo the knots, however many, however far back. Sometimes she has made the same mistake ten times in a row and kept going. The work demands that kind of patience, and she has built it over years of practice, not temperament.
What is unusual about how she works is the intention she brings to each piece. While her hands are moving, she thinks about the person who will receive what she is making. She prays for them. This is not a private detail separate from the craft. She considers it as much a part of the piece as the thread itself.
She gives a lot of work away. She always has.
Knotted from memory, blooming in Halifax
The piece people reach for first
These are the simple ones. Fernanda spends more time on the intricate work, the forget-me-nots she really enjoys, the pieces that take the longest. But the three flower earrings are the ones that go first. Every time she has been to a market, someone has chosen them. The blue ones especially.
She uses beeswax thread sourced from a company in Mexico she knows and trusts. Each earring is hand-knotted from scratch, small enough that people at the stall assume they're plastic before they pick them up. They are not. The detail is just that fine.
A Heartfelt Note
Thank you for appreciating it, and for buying it.
When I start a new piece, I always begin with a prayer for whoever will end up wearing it. And whenever someone buys a piece, it makes me happy because I get to meet the person I was praying for. I know that might sound unusual. But it felt worth saying.
Every piece takes longer than you might expect. Some earrings take six hours and are only finished after undoing and redoing many mistaken knots. The thread I use comes from Mexico, from a place I have visited, worked into something I hope you find beautiful.
Philomena was a saint who was very difficult to stop. I think about her when I work. Her strength, her conviction, the flowers that have always been associated with her name. I want each piece to carry something of that.
If you came to a market and picked something up: thank you for looking closely enough to see what it was. And if you are buying for the first time: every piece was made with you in mind.
— Fer
