Regarding why it's busy, I'm thinking of it using heraldic logic. The old how busy are your arms question. How many colours (in this case 4) how many charges (or patterns, in this case the central chain, the ladder or horizontal lines on either side of that and the vertical stripes on the edge, making three) and that total (7) gives you the number of elements in your heraldry. Anything over 5 (I think it was) is considered "busy". I like to translate this idea across to other design projects. In this case, I could have gone with fewer elements (either all ladders or all vertical stripes or all chains) or I could have gone with fewer colours (though that was right out in the original request). So I think in wanting to use every trick in my inkle weaving book I may have over-complicated it. I'm happy with how it turned out, though I was a little worried when I first started working it up. It's just more busy than anything I would wear. I prefer not to have anything that takes too much attention away from my beads ;)