Ojos de Dios

I found a pinterest these incredible complicated Ojos de Dios (God's Eyes) and I couldn't resist.  So I cut a couple of chopsticks in half (... with a steak knife), got out my stash of size 3 perle cotton, and set to weaving.

Not quite as neat and professional as the ones at Honestly WTF, huh?  They are constructed by starting two traditional ojos and then weaving them together to make the eight spokes.  That's the part I had trouble with, weaving the two together with the turquoise thread; no matter how many times I did it, I couldn't get the thread passes to lie properly.  I think it would have been neater if the spokes were flush with each other, and indeed when I poked around on the interwebs I found that the artist who inspired all of this, Jay Mohler, often notches the sticks so they interlock at the center.  That was beyond the capabilities of my steak knife, however.  I plan to pick up some wooden swizzle sticks/cofffee stirrers, which are nice and flat, and try with them.  I might also try gluing all four sticks together from the start, rather than weaving and attaching two ojos, and see if I can weave the
same patterns.  (Although in that case, maybe having thick spokes would make it easier for the threads to go under the spokes I'm skipping ... hmm ...)

I did have popsicle sticks, which are nice and flat, but too wide to work with eight spokes.  So I tried six:

I also reversed some of the weaving with each color, to play with the negative space.  This one makes me think of a rose.

Some people use the process of wrapping the thread around the sticks to meditate on God, but I can't say I was meditating on anything more than making sure the threads lay properly.  Ojos de Dios are also placed in homes to bring blessings, which we could certainly use.  They now hang with a large painted Sacred Heart milagro and a glass "evil eye" charm.