Old Reliable

Hi there! I hope you had a great weekend. I fired a kiln-load of stuff today but none of it's quite ready to show you. I dug through my archives this evening and decided I'd show you a photo of my kiln instead. Ta da! It's a Paragon SC2, and it's been a great help to me since I purchased it, almost a year ago. For anyone thinking of investing in a kiln for metal clay work, I would recommend it. (Ironically, I primarily purchased it to anneal glass beads, and I never use it for that purpose...)

I actually took this photo at Tammy Powley's request for her new book Picture Yourself Creating Metal Clay Jewelry. It's kind of embarrassing, since you can see how untidy things are in our garage in the background, but I remember distinctly that we'd just had a snow dump, the Husband was out of town, and I only had a few spare minutes while the Short One was sleeping to snap the shot. Oh, well, it's definitely true to life. I wonder if Tammy actually used the shot? My copy of her book is en route from Amazon right now - more on this later, once I've had a chance to read it (I can't wait!). You'll note that I keep the kiln on a nifty rolling cart. Technically, we have a two and one half car garage, but the one half space is really taken up by a tool bench. The kiln does have certain requirements for being a minimum distance from any wall or flammable substance when fired - in our garage, that would have put it smack in the center of the doorway. As we enjoy actually being able to use said door, we had to come up with a different operating solution. Putting it on the cart so that it could be rolled into place when in use seemed like a reasonable compromise. Incidentally, the big plastic shoebox in the shelf underneath the kiln is filled with glass rods (COE 104!), mostly Moretti, for all of the lampworking I haven't been doing recently. Sigh. There's just not enough hours in the day. Do you feel that way, too?

On other fronts, The SO starts a Mom's Morning Away program tomorrow. He's reached the age where, for various reasons, I feel that I'm starting to hold him back by keeping him at home with me all of the time, so H. and I decided to enroll him in a once a week, half day program. I've been quite anxious about this since I found out that he made it into the class (it's very popular and participants have to go through a lottery process each session). While I have tried to explain to him over the past week that he's a big boy and will be starting "school" soon, I don't think any of it has really registered. I am expecting that both of us will be bawling around 9:30am tomorrow (hopefully, I will make it back to the car before I start). Any cheerful thoughts you would care to send our way around that time (Central Standard) would be appreciated.

Right, I suppose I should go check his bag and plan his snack for tomorrow for the hundredth time. Good night.

Sweet Dreams and Bead Blogging Linky Love

I have to apologize - yesterday's post was a complete mess. I ended up revising it about ten times. Ultimately, I decided that tying in the koi pendant giveaway to voting in the Bead Star contest was an invidious thing to do, so I've just turned it into a straight giveaway. You will have to email me to enter this time. (Scroll down to the previous post for details.) I was worried that people might be reluctant to provide email addresses to enter (although I swear up and down that I don't spam, I don't sell addresses, and I won't even keep the addresses past the contest deadline), but people have been entering, so I thank you for that! If you don't blog, you may not realize how much someone puts their ego on the line when putting together a giveaway like this. There's always the fear that no one will be interested enough to enter! I hope everyone who reads this (whether you know me personally or not) will feel free contact me about the giveaway, if you like the koi.

As far as the Bead Star contest is concerned, I was also worried about whether I could legitimately identify my piece and ask people to vote for it. Well, I noticed today that a lot of finalists have been mentioning their pieces on their blogs and in forums, so I decided "What the heck." (Of course, there was that little comment in my mother's voice - "If the other kids jumped off a cliff, would you jump, too?" - but I've decided that I've reached that age of maturity that I can ignore it. Er, don't tell the Short One I said so, though. Come to think of it, don't tell my Mom.) So, I revised the post to identify my piece as No. 17 in the pearls category, and I am now shamelessly asking for people to vote (see the sidebar)! The link I have provided will take you directly to the pearls page, where you can, ahem, vote, if you feel moved to do so. And that's all I'm going to say about that!

Right, on to more enlightening topics. Here are a couple new word charms I made recently. I made them specifically to go with these cute beads I bought from Rachel Place. The colors on these turned out a little closer to what I intended than the first batch - a little more pastel-y. I have one more set of word charms I'd like to make (to go with some Jangles beads, this time), then I intend to move onto some new designs.

Finally, I've been invited to join a group of talented bead and jewelry artists, called Bead Bloggers. I'm really honored to be a member! This is my first post on behalf of the group. So, here's some linky love to get you through the weekend:

About.com Jewelry Making
Learn to wire wrap your beads and add an extra little something to your jewelry designs.

Art Bead Scene
Wondering what's "in?" Trek on over to ABS to check out the trends!

BeadStyle Magazine
What did Cathy see and do at the Bead&Button show? Read about it and let us know what you bought there.

Jennifer Jangles Blog
Things are growing around here...

Katie's Beading Blog

Take a peek inside Katie's shopping bag!

Naughty Secretary Club
Brand new website, but no sales? Jen helps out a friend by bestowing a bit of the knowledge she has picked up from running her jewelry website Naughty Secretary Club as her full time job for over 5 years.

Snap out of it, Jean! There's beadng to be done!
Jean saw a dragonfly striking a pose and made a necklace in its honor!

Strands of Beads
Melissa visits the New York branch of Japanese bead store Toho Shoji.

Have a great weekend!

GIVEAWAY!!! and BEAD STAR Finals

Okay, okay, edited a THIRD TIME. This is it, though! Really!

Okay, for anyone who visited earlier today, I have edited this post a little TWICE. Here's the revised and now final version:

Well, I just found out that I have made the finals of the BEAD STAR Competition. I don't know if any of you have heard about this, but Interweave Press has decided to hold a jewelry design competition called BEAD STAR. There were apparently 1,500 eligible entries and out of these, 180 (20 each in 9 categories) have been selected for the finals. Now, voting is open to anyone with web access until June 18th. The top 5 highest vote-getters (1st, 2d, 3d and 2 Honorable Mentions) in each category will be published in the BEAD STAR annual magazine in December. I'm not sure yet whether I'm allowed to post a photo of my piece - if I get the okay, I'll put a photo up later. The piece is No. 17 in the pearls category. Please go here to see the piece. Of course, I would love your vote, too.

I thought it might be fun to hold a little contest of my own in conjunction with this one, and it's been ages since I held a giveaway. So, here it is : I am giving away the koi pendant above on June 19th. To enter, send me an email at strandsofbeads [at] yahoo.com (with the usual "@" replacing the "[at]"). (By the way, I will not do anything nefarious with any email addresses such as spamming, selling them or whatever - I don't even intend to keep the addresses, except for the winner's address, past the giveaway deadline.) I will pick a winner by random drawing from all of the entries I receive on the 19th. My one request is that whoever wins the bead send me a photo of what they do with it (whenever that may be), even if it's just to string it on a chain. Good luck!

Oh, and if you want to see what art beads I bought at the Bead & Button Show, please head over to my post at Art Bead Scene.

Thanks! Have a great day.

Once more into the breach...

This is kind of embarrassing, but I still haven't finished showing you all of the beads I found in New York City. I think this makes, what, a full week of new stash acquisition posts? Argh. It's just as well that the Husband doesn't usually read my blog (too girly for him, I think). Really, if I didn't love them so much, I'd just chuck the idea of showing you, but I do happen to like these, so I hope you don't mind another peek into my stash. There's a good bead store link in it for you!

As I was saying before, I am an Upper West Sider at heart, when it comes to Manhattan. And my local bead store in that fine city is Bruce Frank Beads. It has the advantage (or disadvantage, depending on how you look at it, I suppose) of being right next door to Cafe Lalo, that New York institution of mouth-wateringly fine desserts (as seen in the movie "You've Got Mail". Remember when Meg Ryan is waiting to meet Tom Hanks with the rose and the copy of Pride and Prejudice? That's Cafe Lalo. Actually, I loved that movie, since it was filmed in my old 'hood - it was fun to spot favorite hangouts. Anyway, where was I?). I bought my birthday cannoli there. So basically, you can buy your beads and eat cake, too (okay, that was terrible) in one trip. A perfect afternoon, in anyone's book, I would think. Plus, Cafe Lalo gives out terribly cool Toulouse-Lautrec matchbooks.

But enough about mouth-watering cakes and Toulouse-Lautrec. Bruce Frank Beads is a relatively small establishment that carries a nice assortment of beads. I always find a few focals that I really love whenever I visit. This trip, they had a basket of Chinese porcelain pendants. I'm not sure why, but I've always been a sucker for Chinese porcelain shards. The examples above are modern - they are neither Qing nor Ming dynasty and have no provenance in this regard. But, on the other hand, they didn't cost the earth and they are, to my mind, very colorful and attractive.

So, if you find yourself in the Upper West Side at any point, you'd do well to pay them a visit. (And if you're in the company of kids, yet another advantage of the store's location is the fact that they are right across the street from the Children's Museum of Manhattan.)

Thanks for visiting!

I Survived...

...the 2008 Bead & Button Show. I had a terrible allergy attack Saturday night and considered canceling, but ultimately decided I wouldn't let a slight sniffle (this is an understatement - my nose was draining like Niagra Falls, if you'll pardon the image) keep me from all of those glorious beads. It worked out okay. No one actively edged away from me (except one gentlemen, and this was understandable, as I was in the middle of a dramatic sounding coughing fit), and Diane Hawkey, being the nice woman that she is, offered me Claritin, Sudafed and water in succession, to help me get through the day. Enough about my sinuses, though.

The show actually seemed a touch on the quiet side (this is all relative - there were a decent number of visitors, but it just wasn't as crowded looking as I have seen in past years), but this could have been due to issues involving inclement weather. I was told by several exhibitors that Saturday night, during a spate of heavy rain, flooding and tornado warnings, the show closed the convention hall and did not permit anyone to leave for a couple hours. Of course, if one has to be trapped indoors with the threat of tornadoes outside, I'd imagine one would rather do so while surrounded by beautiful beads, but I'm sure people must have spent a few uncomfortable minutes. As it was, my beading buddy Carolyn and I were worried we'd have trouble getting into the city on Sunday, but we ended up having no problems at all.

I have to say, it was a really enjoyable show. I had the opportunity to catch up with Diane and Melanie Lukacs of Earthenwood Studio (and finally managed to see some of her Steam Stone beads, although many had already been sold. They are even better in person!). I visited long-time favorite bead artist Michele Goldstein's booth and ordered a copy of Kate McKinnon's new metal clay book (she was sold out by Sunday). Incidentally, if you have not seen Kate McKinnon's work in metal clay, I highly recommend a visit to her website. I aspire to be her when I grow up. I also met and had a lovely conversation with Andrew Thornton and Jessica Wiesel at the Green Girl Studios Booth. Really, just having the opportunity to visit and buy beads from artists who are normally scattered throughout the country is wonderful.

Anyway, this is what I acquired by way of stones at the show. If you are wondering whether perhaps I was a touch feverish to be so unusually (for me, at least) restrained in my purchasing, let me say that the art beads I purchased will show up in a few days on Art Bead Scene. I'm quite happy with these beads. The strand at the top is called solar quartz - I had never seen it before. There were both rough cut slices and faceted versions available, and I decided I liked the faceted ones better. The strand at the bottom is multicolored sapphire - the beads are so dainty and unlike my usual style, but I fell in love with them the minute I saw them. The stone in the center is a baby geode that has been cut, polished and drilled through. It is far more brilliant in person - I had trouble capturing that in my photo. Finally, I purchased more elongated teardrop onyx beads from a vendor who also does shows local to where I live.

Oh, and Melanie told me that she actually saw someone wearing one of my koi pendants at the show. To whomever you are - thank you so much!

Obviously the show has a lot more to offer than just shopping. Once the SO is older, I hope to take a few classes myself, including Jennifer Heynen's ceramic class, which I understand was wonderful this year. If you haven't attended the Bead & Button Show in the past, but would like to learn more (including show dates for next year), you can visit their website here.

Thanks for stopping by!

Daisy, Daisy Give Me Your Answer Do

I've been looking for these glass daisy beads everywhere for a while now, and I finally did find them in the Garment District. Yay! I hopped a cab for my second trip down there during our vacation, thinking, for some reason that it would be faster than the subway. Silly, silly me. Half an hour later, we were stuck in traffic on 37th Street, heading back to Toho Shoji, when I happened to look out of the window. Lo and behold, we were passing a big bead store! I made a mental note to come back to the street, as we inched about 50 yards down the street, and - oh, look, another bead store! And another one! At this point, I told the driver he could just let me off right there. It turns out that the one block contained six separate gem and bead stores. Plus, there turned out to be another one right around the corner (where I found the daisies). Yes, it turns out that the Garment District sure is a nice place to browse around if you're a bead enthusiast. I was so busy with these stores, I never made it back to Toho Shoji or to M&J Trimming (which is sort of a mecca for notion hunters, if you've never heard of it - well worth a visit, and they have lots of interesting stuff on their website, too) which was also just a couple blocks away.

Well, you'd think that all of that beady goodness would be enough for me for months, but I'm still planning on wandering around the Bead & Button Marketplace on Sunday, barring any unforeseen circumstances. My beading buddy, Carolyn, and I only spend about 3-4 hours wandering the floor - we never manage to cover the whole place - but it's definitely a highlight of the year. Not to mention getting the opportunity to meet up with other beading friends. If you are going, too, I hope to see you there. If not, have a great weekend.

The Eyes Have It

Well, I said yesterday that I'd be talking more about the Garment District today, but in fact, I didn't buy the above in the Garment District. The glass eyes and small ammonite fossils are from a store on the Upper West Side, which is where I lived when I lived in the city. (The one thing that has always amazed me about NYC is, for being one of the best known metropolitan areas in the world, how provincial at heart the residents can be. You're a West Sider or an East Sider or you live in the Village or SoHo or NoHo or any one of the other many neighborhoods into which Manhattan is divided, and that pretty much characterizes how you live in the city and the 20 block radius in which you tend to hang out. This is a bit of an oversimplification but not by much. In my humble opinion, of course.)

Anyway, getting back to the eyes and fossils. I bought them at Maxilla & Mandible, a store which is kind of an institution in the neighborhood. As the name suggests, you can get a variety of bones, including full skeletons, there, along with fossils, shark's teeth, other natural history oddities and, well, things like glass eyes. Fittingly, it's located a block north of the American Museum of Natural History, and it's been around for a yonk's age. I liked the colors in these glass eyes (they are normally used for taxidermy), so I picked up a couple to fiddle around with. And I'm always a sucker for polished ammonite, and these were such a nice, small size. I'm sure you'll be seeing all of these in my jewelry in the future.

Speaking of ammonite, my post for Art Bead Scene is up today and includes, among other things, an ammonite box clasp. Please go here to read it.

Thanks for stopping by!

Nothing to Wear??

Some people worry about what clothes to wear to a formal event. Lately, I've been thinking about what jewelry to wear to Bead & Button this year. Silly, eh? I may have mentioned this before, but I am more a process person in my jewelry making than anything else. I usually have difficulty wearing the pieces that I make, due to the fact that I tend to dress like a soccer Mom these days - tee-shirt, jeans and leather sneakers. (And I've given up wearing any jewelry at all when I'm with the Short One - ie, most of the day - after several rather expensive mishaps. The Short One is surprisingly gentle with my jewelry, but we do end up suffering from accidents more than I would like, due mostly to my toting him and his still-extensive bag of paraphernalia around with me.)

Having looked through my extensive drawers full of necklaces and deciding that I had nothing to wear for Sunday (the day I and my beading buddy Carolyn traditionally visit the B&B Marketplace), I set out to create a simple necklace just for this day. I decided I wanted to wear a koi pendant, but in a way that wasn't terribly decorative. I had picked up some nice heavy (about 6mm diameter) leather cord at Toho Shoji which I felt would work well. I made a couple of end caps for the cord and mocked-up this necklace tonight (the ends are not actually epoxied in yet, and one of the caps needs a little repair).

This is actually the pendant from that big piece I made for competition in April. I did disassemble that necklace - I've turned two of the links into earrings already, and I think the focal works very nicely here. The silver end caps give a nice finished look to the cord, but at the same time the piece as a whole is simple enough to go well with the usual tee shirt and jeans without looking ridiculous. Anyway, if anyone sees an Asian woman wearing this necklace at B&B on Sunday wandering around in a daze, clutching a handful of beads, that'll be me. Please do say "hi".

On other fronts, I've been meaning to mention this for a couple weeks - I've been invited to be a guest editor for Art Bead Scene this month, along with the uber-talented Jean Yates. Of course, I'm going to look like a complete amateur next to Jean with her polished and witty posts (not that I've been, y'know, fretting about this more than ten times a day or anything), but I'm going to give it my best shot. Jean has an inspired review of Jennifer Heynen's book Ceramic Bead Jewelry on Art Bead Scene today. My own post will appear later this week. Oh, and by the way, the theme for the Art Bead Scene Challenge this month is "Pearls of Wisdom". Why not enter?

Back to my exploration of the Garment District in NYC tomorrow. Thanks for visiting!

I Lost My Mind at Toho Shoji and It Never Came Back

So, as I was saying yesterday, we had a great trip to NYC, and I had a great 40th birthday. It's odd - I wasn't expecting to feel any different on the day, but I really did, a bit. I wasn't depressed at all, but I felt a little introspective, with a sort of, "Wow, I actually made it to 40" kind of feeling. Anyway, I celebrated by taking a really long, luxurious...nap. I'm sorry to be such a walking cliche, but I entered middle age with a great desire for a little extra sleep. (It may help to put things in context if I tell you that the Short One celebrated my birthday by not taking any nap at all that day.) We had dinner with my folks at one of our favorite Japanese restaurants, Haru, and later in the week I ate lunch at my absolute favorite restaurant, Gobo, a sort-of Pan-Asian vegetarian place.

As with most trips these days, we tend to plan our itinerary around the SO. So, we admired the polar bears at the Central Park Zoo, visited the Manhattan Children's Museum, played in the big playground in Central Park, visited FAO Schwartz and did other SO-friendly things. However, this trip I did have a cunning plan involving beads, too. In particular, it involved leaving the SO, while he napped, with the Husband during the week (who had gamely agreed to this beforehand) and trotting down to the Garment District to raid, er, visit the local bead and notions stores.

When I started my career after graduating from law school, my first job was in Midtown Manhattan, very close to the Garment District. For anyone not familiar with Manhattan, the Garment District is just that - the fashion center of the city and home to many of the world's great fashion houses including fashion jewelry designers. The appeal for neophytes like myself not directly involved in this industry are the many wholesale/retail stores that service and/or revolve around it - store upon store of notions, fabrics, jewelry and...beads. Back then, I was not a beader at all and never set foot in any of these stores (although I did attend the Swarovski sample sale each year, that only involved finished jewelry). What a waste, eh? So, I thought I'd rectify this lack in my background this trip and make some small attempt to canvas the area. I had the address of a single store in my possession - Toho Shoji - whose brightly colored plastic flower beads I admired in BEADS2008, as a starting point.

Well, I entered Toho Shoji one afternoon with the intention of checking things out quickly before moving on to other stores and emerged two hours later in a daze, clutching a bag full of beads and leather cord. It turns out that the store is a branch of a Tokyo-based bead store. To be precise, it is one of three branch stores outside of Japan and the only one that operates outside of Asia (the other two branches are in Hong Kong and Shanghai, I believe). New York being New York, this meant that when I entered, the store was holding a class on beading in Japanese. Indeed, most of the clientele at the time I visited were Japanese (although I did spot one or two young men wearing chic glasses and black clothing chatting with the employees of the store). I felt for a moment as if I were back in Tokyo (a city in which I have, alas, not set foot for nearly twenty years), and it was a wonderful feeling.

The photo above represents just a small sample of what I ended up walking out with. I love these beads - they are colorful, they are light and they are not terribly expensive. I accumulated so many little individual bags of beads on my tray that one of the sales clerks came up and asked me (politely) what exactly I was planning on doing with all of it? In addition to the cheerful plastic stuff, the store also has what looked to be an extensive selection of seed beads, a very large variety of truly lovely Japanese Tensha beads and a wide variety of metal beads and findings. Even though I spent almost two hours at the store, I actually only managed to cover two tables. I'm dying to go back. If you live in the Tri-state area, I highly recommend a visit to Toho Shoji - they are located at 36th and 6th Ave. If you don't live in the Tri-state area, many of their beads and findings are orderable through their website.

Anyway, my cunning plan for the trip was partially foiled by my overwhelming desire to nap, but I still did manage three separate trips to Midtown. Although I intended to go back to Toho Shoji later in the week, I ended up getting distracted and visited a bunch of other stores, instead. But more on this later. (I have to say that it was a quite profitable trip for both the SO and me - when we packed up our bags before heading home, the spare space in our luggage was equally taken up by toy safari animals and beads.)

Thanks for visiting!

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends

Hi, there. I hope everyone had a good week last week. I don't know if I mentioned this or not, but I actually spent most of my time off in New York City. We had a great time (the Short One in particular, made out like a bandit), and I have a lot to tell, but before I get to all that, I wanted to stop for a bit today and say "thank you" to a few people.

My one year anniversary for working with metal clay passed last week. After procrastinating all month, on May 28th, 2007, I decided that I wanted to enter the Art Bead Scene Challenge for the month, the theme for which was "Ophelia's Garden". Even though I had made only made a whopping four beads (the first of which I actually ended up using in my design for the challenge necklace) with metal clay and hardly knew what I was doing, I decided that it would be perfectly plausible to execute a full necklace using the material in three days. I finished it just a few hours before the challenge deadline, and that was the start of everything that's happened for me over the past year, including this blog that you are so patiently reading.

I've met a lot of people and made many new friends during this year, which has been a wonderful experience. One of the things that has constantly surprised me is how generous, friendly and supportive the beading community is - the artists, authors, designers, editors, etc. who have so generously given their time to a newbie like me are too numerous to mention. I say "thank you" to all of them and am extremely grateful. However, there are a few people and/or organizations I would like to mention particularly as having had a great impact on my first year in jewelry and bead design:

The editors of Art Bead Scene. ABS gave me the initial inspiration I needed to get started working with metal clay. For the first several months, I designed almost exclusively around the ABS challenges. In fact, two of the pieces in the July 2008 issue of BeadStyle were created specifically for ABS challenges. Thank you so much to Heather Powers, Melanie Brooks Lukacs, Tari Sasser, Cindy Gimbrone, Elaine Ray, Lori Greenberg and Virginia Miska - editors past and present of ABS.

Sarah Moran. Anyone who reads this blog knows how much I love Sarah's work. Sarah happens to live in Oklahoma City near where I spent part of my childhood. She is completely sympatico and has patiently listened to me rabbit on on various beady topics for some time now. My current jewelry design sensibility has been greatly inspired by Sarah's work.

Beatrice Killeen of Fried Peas. Another favorite lampwork artist of mine! (Check out her beautiful stringer work when you get a chance.) She always made time for my beginner lampworking issues. She has also quietly (and often without even mentioning the fact to me) promoted my work on her website for the past year.

Melanie Brooks Lukacs of Earthenwood Studio. Back in the early days, before I even knew what an art bead was, I traveled up to something called the Bead & Button Show (on the recommendation of a friend of mine who owned a knitting store). Since I was a knitter and not a beader, I resolved only to buy buttons at the show (and I actually kept to that resolution, belive it or not). While there, I met a nice couple named Melanie and Chuck who were selling really beautiful ceramic buttons, among other things. I bought a heap of them, kept the business cards they gave me, got on the Earthenwood mailing list and checked the website from time to time (which eventually led me to Art Bead Scene, as Melanie is one of the founders). The amount of support I've received from Melanie, as I tentatively tested out the beading waters last year, so to speak, has been staggering. As just an example, this blog exists primarily because she encouraged me to start one.

Jennifer Kelly of CaliGirl Art Glass. Together, Beatrice Killeen and Jenn are the Hollister Hot Heads. Like Beatrice, Jenn does lovely things with glass. One of my favorite necklaces I have created ("Java Jive") uses a really beautiful set of beads I purchased from her. It will be published in Step by Step Beads in January 2009 (yay!). I originally met Jenn through Beatrice. I was trying to find out more about working with kilns and metal clay, and Beatrice told me I should contact Jenn. Despite the fact that I was a complete stranger, Jenn gave me a generous amount of her time answering questions about annealing glass and firing metal clay, and we've gone on in a similar fashion since then.

Rachel Place of Sugar Toppers. I met Rachel through the Art Bead Scene Challenge Flickr group. It turned out that we have very similar tastes in beads! Rachel is a talented lampworker in her own right. In fact, I'm working on a necklace using her beads right now. We've been beading and Mommy comrades for the past year. Rachel designed the lovely banner that you see above on my blog.

The editors of BeadStyle Magazine. I had a lucky break early on last year, in that the editors at BeadStyle accepted several of my pieces for publication right off the bat. Since then, I've had my fair share of rejections (believe me), but those initial acceptances gave me the confidence I needed to continue designing for publication. Call me shameless, but I still can't believe how beautiful the Gallery spread in the current issue of the magazine is.

Debi Cogwell, aka the Palm Tree Queen. When it comes to humorous lampworked beads, Debi's are definitely at the top of my list. Two of the first beads I purchased from her were a couple of Hip-Hop bunnies (and I mean hip-hop in genre of music - I didn't realize until the Husband pointed it out, but one of the rabbits is grabbing his crotch, with real Attitude). Debi was always generous with lampworking tips as I struggled my way through trying to design my own beads.

Lezlie Belanger of Canterbury Keepsakes. I like pretty much everything that Lezlie makes, particularly her sweets beads. Lezlie was also very generous with her time whenever I had a lampworking issue. She even once offered to anneal my beads for me before I bought my kiln, when I was having problems with bits of stringer popping off of my early beads.

There are many, many more people I could name here (and many people that I have met more recently, that I am just now coming to know). As I say, I can't believe what an open and friendly place the beading community is. I should probably also say that the opportunity to start making beads and jewelry really only arose after the Short One arrived (the hours I kept in my former job really prevented me from trying out a lot of this creative stuff), so I have to thank the SO, too.

To cap everything off, I just received notice today in the mail that my entry for the Fire Mountain Gems 2008 Beading Contest has made the cut and will be considered for final judging next month. My goal this year was to reach the finals in one of the contests I entered, so I am extremely happy. (Please wish me luck for the next stage!) Creatively, this has been a great year for me, and I can only reiterate how much I appreciate the help and support of my friends.

Thanks for listening. Tomorrow I'll have a photo from my trip to show you. Have a great day.

Ornament Thursday - Insectica

Back from trip, extremely disoriented, what day is it?

Well, I wouldn't buy that one either. Sigh. My apologies to my Ornament Thursday friends - I had less access to the Internet than I expected while I was traveling and was unable to post the links as promised on Thursday. Regardless of the day of the week, however, these projects are wonderful! The theme this month is Insectica. I did not participate myself, as I was too busy coming to grips with middle age (more on this later), but please do follow the links below - or visit the Ornament Thursday blog - to our group's wonderful projects. As for me, I'm back home and will resume the usual drivel on Monday. I hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Art Bead Scene
Dragonflies are all the rage, art beads & brass combine in a 1920's inspired necklace.

Beading Help Web's DragonFly Anklet
Make this cute anklet for summer in just minutes!

Hali Chambers

Humblebeads
Flying to a fashionable ear near you, a free project from Humblebeads.

Katie's Beading Blog
Make a fun little winged thing from a handful of wire and beads.

Linda at Make It Mine magazine
Make your own dragonfly top--check out the instructions and video!

Savvy Crafter-
See some cute as a bug pins over on Candie's blog....

Swelldesigner
You'll get butterflies when you see this summer-inspired necklace with butterfly pendant

The Insects are out
Insects are crawling out and about at http design this month as Helen and Michelle get clay happy with some cool designs.

fromichelle
Insectica

Gone Fishin'

I'm not addicted to the Internet - I can quit any time I want to. Yeah, the Husband guffaws when I say that, too. I just finished reviewing a contract for one of my projects, and I thought I'd give myself a break and do a little last-minute blogging.

The advance copy for the July issue of BeadStyle arrived in the mail today, and I've been sitting here admiring myself in it all afternoon. Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad, but I must say that BeadStyle gave me the royal treatment in this issue. I have the entire Gallery section to myself - a two-page spread with three of my necklaces, including the one containing the focal piece, above. (The gorgeous ceramic shell beads I used in the focal are Terra Trinkets by Earthenwood Studio.)

The issue also arrived with the actual necklaces, at least one of which has been at the BeadStyle offices for almost a year. It feels good to get them back. Of course, because the Short One believes that all packages arriving at the house are presents for him, I did have to do a little negotiating over everything when I opened it, but ultimately the SO, in his usual capacity as my stylist, simply demanded that I try on all of the necklaces and offered color commentary.

The necklaces in this issue of the magazine are three of the first six necklaces I ever made from PMC. I was so excited when I finished each one of them (let's face it, given my current finishing rate, I'm still excited when I finish anything). Although I like to think that my work has been evolving over the past year, I am still proud of these pieces. I hope you will take a look at them once the issue is available on newsstands, starting June 3rd. Thanks very much to the editors of BeadStyle Magazine for giving me such a wonderful opportunity. And thank you for your continuing support.

The Short One's nose has been dripping copiously all day, but he doesn't have a fever, and he's been quite cheerful. I gave him a new box of crayons as a consolation and he descended upon them with cries of joy, happily spending most of the afternoon, on and off, coloring with them, arranging them in piles, taking them out of piles, stuffing them back in their box, taking them out of their box, etc., etc. They are currently scattered all over the living room (the SO is reasonably good at picking up and clean up time, but some days are better than others). I suppose I should go pick them up myself and put them in order for playtime tomorrow morning.

Okay, that's it from me for May - I am officially out to lunch. I just closed down my Etsy store (to re-open June 1st), and I'm signing off here. Toodle-loo! Have a great Memorial Day weekend. See you in June.

Brainstorming

The theme for the Art Bead Scene Challenge this month is "Mother Earth." I decided to sit down tonight with a pile of beads and brainstorm for a bit. I'd love to get one new stringing project completed to enter the challenge before the end of the month and, as you can see, I have some beautiful materials in my stash that meet the theme (or at least I think they do). The ceramic art beads were made by two artists. The gorgeous organic round pendant (feel free to click on the photo above for a close-up of any of these beads) was made by Mary Harding. The extremely powerful animal spirit beads were made by Diane Hawkey. These beads have been sitting in my stash for way too long - I'm dying to do something with them. Initially, at least, I've set out a strand of petrified wood slices, some faceted prehnite and two beautiful strands of amber that my Dad gave me for my birthday last year. Color and texture-wise, I think these stones work quite well, but I may end up having trouble with scale if I try to combine these beads. I'll have to think a bit about the best way to tackle this.

I can't believe how busy life has been the past couple days. I've actually had a kiln load of silver ready to fire for a couple days, and I simply haven't found enough time to do it (I don't like to work in the garage this late at night, if you're wondering why I'm not doing it now). We took the Short One to the local children's museum on Saturday and, sure enough, he's started coming down with a cold tonight. As much as I try to keep his hands clean when we visit places like this, it just doesn't seem to help all that much. The first night is always the worst, and he's definitely not sleeping well right now. Sigh.

Starting at the end of the week, I'm going to be taking a vacation until June 1st. I decided that I would relax and enjoy my official entry into middle-age. I will be posting links for Ornament Thursday on the appropriate day but, other than that, I'll be kicking my feet back a bit. I will definitely be back at the beginning of June, though. I'll try to come back tomorrow to post, but there is always the possibility that I'll be too busy twitting the Husband about being 40. I don't have much longer to hold the high ground on this issue, so I feel that I have to make the most of it while I can!

Thanks for visiting.

A Little Mischief

Well, it's technically Monday where I live, and I actually did manage to finish something new tonight, so I thought I'd go ahead and post it. Although I've used quotations in my jewelry before (eg, "Something wicked this way comes"), I've been wanting to create some individual word charms. I'm a big fan of word charms and beads generally and have a short list of favorites. You can find lovely ceramic word beads and links at Earthenwood Studio and Jangles, for example.

When I sat down to think about what I would want to express in a word charm, I had some difficulty settling on a topic. I thought about doing a set of tranquil, abstract words, like "Truth" and "Beauty", but these didn't seem to jibe with the type of pieces I've been making lately (and frankly, with the Short One getting more active by the day, "tranquil" doesn't really describe our house very well, at the moment). So, in the end I just had to be me. Well, actually, these were slightly inspired by one of the people I live with (I'll leave you to guess which one). Here's a little set of Mischief charms. I decided to add some color to these by coating the charms with a thin layer of tinted resin. I have a list of other words and short phrases I'd like to try, but these three seemed to want to go together, so I made them first.

By the way, "wag" is not intended to mean the back and forth motion one associates with a dog's tail (although it certainly could be used that way, I suppose). It's a reference to an older use of "wag" to refer to a prankster or a wit. The word shows up in Shakespeare at intervals. I believe that Falstaff refers to Prince Hal as "sweet wag" in Henry IV, Part 1.

Happy Monday everyone! Thanks for visiting.

A Word about Links and my Blog Policies

Hi, I'm just dropping in for a quick administrative message. I had to delete a comment from a nice reader earlier today, who was telling me about a great idea for a treasure hunt for young kids. She included a hot link in her comment to a website with which I was unfamiliar. Unfortunately, I've had a problem with people leaving bad or dubious links in my comments recently, and I've decided to ban hot-linking in the comments for the time being. I am terribly sorry about this. 99% of the comments I receive are wonderful, legitimate messages, including the ones with links, and I love to hear from readers (I sometimes feel that I'm writing into a void - it's ALWAYS nice to receive comments. I used to be a chronic lurker, but now that I know how important they are to bloggers, I'm afraid I tend to blabber on too much on other people's blogs). However, the 1% bothers me, and I would hate for anyone else to have problems with their computer because they clicked on a bad link in my blog.

I hope you will all understand. To Jennifer, who left the comment earlier today, please accept my apologies. I know that if I left a sincere comment on someone else's blog and found that they summarily deleted it, I would feel hurt. I really do appreciate your comment, and I love your clever idea for a children's game. I used to do treasure hunts with my father all of the time when I was a kid, and I loved them.

Thanks so much. I hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Green Girl Studios

I've been meaning to show this piece off for ages and keep forgetting to take a photograph. This is from my personal collection. A while back (last year), Cynthia Thornton held a giveaway on her blog at Green Girl Studios, and I actually won. This Green Girl necklace was created by Cynthia's brother, Andrew Thornton. You may be familiar with his work from the various lovely pieces he publishes in publications such as Stringing Magazine. I've always loved his style, but one of the things that impressed me in particular was how delicate this piece is in person. It's extremely hard to convey that through photography. Anyway, I tend to be a person who enters but never wins random drawings, so I was quite excited to have the opportunity to add this necklace to my collection. (I have not yet worn it, as, given the Short One's great love for and great taste in and great desire to play with nice jewelry, I have felt it best to keep it out of the way of temptation. One of these days, though.) Oh, and I'm assuming that most of you are already familiar with Green Girl Studios, but if not, for goodness sake, stop reading this and click on that link above! The pewter and silver beads they create are simply fantastic. I have a number of Green Girl Beads in my stash and hope to acquire more next month at Bead & Button.

On a final note, you may have noticed I missed blogging yesterday again. I've decided to stop mentioning these instances, as I feel it's probably tedious to keep reading my lame apologies about my failure to keep up my end of the blogging contract. Henceforth, I will do my best to continue blogging M-F as was my original intent, but on those days when life gets in the way, I hope you will excuse me. Thanks! And thanks for visiting!

Ideal Motherhood

When my father was visiting last weekend, he gave the Short One among other things, a Mr. Potato Head. Before the SO was born, I had actually picked up a Mr. PH and stashed it away in the closet as an emergency children's birthday gift. I'm the kind of person who hoards gifts and cards in the event they will be unexpectedly needed. I have the feeling that most women do this to some extent though, no? It makes the Husband tear his hair out - he hates the additional clutter. (We will graciously pass over those instances where H. has raided my hoard in need of a birthday card or anniversary card at the last minute.)

Anyway, as with so much else in the house, the SO has gradually annexed all of the children's toys I had stashed away and has been happily playing with most of them for some months, including Mr. PH Senior. Sadly, when we opened up Senior earlier this year, we were disappointed to discover that the box contained only one set of eyes, ears, nose, mouth and arms. There was basically no choice for a child to make when assembling his potato, except for placement of the various features. Apparently, I had picked up the Potato Head Lite version, without realizing it.

With the arrival of Mr. PH Junior, who was accompanied by a whole suitcase of features and accessories, our days of woe have come to an end, though. The SO has been happily creating original works of potato art on a daily basis. Although he had mostly subscribed dutifully to realism in designing his pals, after I mentioned that he didn't have to stick to two arms and ears, etc., he ended up letting loose his creative spirit. Most versions of Junior now come with additional arms. Frankly, I feel that the SO has created a picture of ideal motherhood with this potato. Many a day have I thought to myself that I could really use a pair of extra arms. This one even prudently has a second spare on top of the other four, just in case. I feel that this Ms. PH can probably handle an active toddler and vacuum the house, wash the dishes and do laundry all at the same time, without breaking a sweat. I'm envious.

Seriously, though, one of the fun parts of being Mama is having the opportunity to play with toys again. Perhaps it says more about my level of maturity than anything else, but I really enjoy rediscovering childhood favorites with the SO. It is also a great source of inspiration, both directly and indirectly, for my jewelry design. I was inspired to create my dragon beads after the SO and I spent time reading fairy tales and stories about dragons.

As far as Mr. PH goes - I suspect that, over the long haul, I will start finding little plastic ears and colorful noses in odd parts of the house, but for now we're having a fun time reinventing your basic potato.

Have a great day.

ps. Did you notice how I cleverly managed to work in jewelry-making in this otherwise completely non-jewelry or knitting post? I have a couple more catch-up projects to handle until I get to new work... In the meantime, the SO is always a favorite topic of conversation at our house...

Yawn

I'm afraid my discussion of Mr. Potato Head will have to wait. I spent the evening writing up a project for one of the beading magazines. What I thought would take about an hour to finish took closer to five, due to technical difficulties (printer going off-line, losing data due to a computer lock-up, yada, yada). Sometimes I think the so-called modern conveniences are simply additional challenges to getting through the day sane. It never fails that whenever I have a deadline our network fails (after the Husband is in bed, of course, and I never wake him for stuff like this, no matter how much I'm tempted), and I spend hours rummaging around the computer trying to figure out what's wrong and ruminating on the good old days of MS-DOS, when I could actually understand how an operating system, well, operated. Or perhaps this is simply part of my about-to-turn-40 mentality.

But I digress. Anyway, this is also the first time I've had to take stepped out photos. Stepped out photos, for the uninitiated, are the little close-up shots you see in a beading magazine that clarify a certain difficult step in the instructions. My pieces really don't have difficult steps, but after discussing the issue with the editor, I took a couple stepped out shots of the piece, just in case. It'll be interesting to see if the magazine ends up using them.

My eyes are crossing, so I should probably finish the dishes and stagger up to bed. I can't remember whether I've shown this photo or not. As you can see, I've used the whole dragon heart motif on pretty much every kind of component I've been able to think of...

Thanks for stopping by!

There's Treasure Everywhere

A few weeks ago, I managed to cajole the family into letting me visiting a rock shop that's located near the condo I owned when I was single. It's a great store - I could easily spend hours in there admiring the fossils and minerals.

When I was a child, I had a huge rock collection, filled with pieces of iron pyrite, amethyst, rose quartz, galena, mica, obisidan, etc., etc,. etc. The father of a friend of mine was a collector and he took us out with him occasionally. I would give a lot to know where we went now - it must have been a quarry, but I was only 6 and really don't remember the details (and would you really take a couple of 6 year olds to a quarry? I don't know...). We were living in Rochester, New York at the time. If anyone has the foggiest idea where this might have been, I would love to hear from you. I had aspirations to become a geologist back then. I actually came across a paper I wrote for the third grade about ten years ago. It contained a detailed discussion of the Mohs scale (a scale for mineral hardness) and the properties of various minerals in detail that made my eyes cross. I can only wonder what my teacher must have thought of all of this. Clearly, I've forgotten much more than I know now. Sigh. This early childhood obsession may explain why I'm so committed to using semiprecious stone in my jewelry design now, though.

Anyway, I found a lot of treasure at the shop when I visited, including some really lovely slices of amethyst crystal. The top of the slice is the crystal and the bottom is banded agate. The slice is thin enough that the agate is transparent. It's the perfect size to set in a pendant. Nice, don't you think? Now if only I can figure out the best way to set this... More on this later. Hopefully.

I'm a little behind on finishing up a couple projects right now, so there probably won't be any new work to show in the next couple days. If you are interested in my thoughts on such profound topics as Mr. Potato Head, though, feel free to stop in tomorrow.

Thanks for visiting!

Fireworks

I was rooting around in one of my "pending" drawers and came across this prototype. Last summer, I was trying to make a firecracker pendant with Czech glass strung on fine silver wire. This piece isn't terribly durable, but I still like the concept. It's one of the many ideas I hope to get back to this summer. (I feel terribly clever that I've procrastinated long enough on this project that I now look early for the summer, rather than hideously late.)

We have family arriving tomorrow, so I've spent the day tidying up a bit and generally getting ready. As I vacuumed, the Short One followed me around and covered whatever he could reach of me (posterior and legs, mostly) in stickers. I suppose it says something about how well the SO has me trained that I merely checked to see that the stickers were at the right height to be covered by my windbreaker upon leaving the house, rather than attemping to pull them all off (the latter course of action always results in vocal complaints from the artist/designer). One of the magazines in which I will have a couple projects this year publishes color photos of its designers and requires submission of a head shot with each project. I seriously considered sending in a photo of what I really look like - Portrait of a Mother in Stickers - but decided that it wouldn't suit the aura of professionalism and creativity that the magazine cultivates, so I ended up sending in a completely misleading, plain photo of me standing in front of a serious-looking bookcase, instead, which was the most professional-looking photograph I could muster up at 2am using Photo Booth (a sad statement on my level of procrastination, I suppose...).

I'm going to be taking a break from blogging tomorrow, since we have a house guest. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

I scream, you scream, we all scream for...

With the warmer weather seemingly here (I say "seemingly" as I don't want to tempt fate and bring the snow back), my mind has been increasingly turning to thoughts of the above. Yep, this is one of my earlier PMC and lampworked necklaces. I was just starting to get a handle on making these blasted banana split beads when it became too cold around here to work in an unheated garage. Also, those PMC spoons and the clasp are just looking incredibly crude to me now. I think I need another whack at them. I certainly never seem to get tired of an homage to my favorite food. (In case you're wondering, my current favorite flavor is Ben & Jerry's "Cake Batter". Truthfully, it borders on being disgustingly sweet, but, oh, how I love it so. And I wonder why I haven't been able to lose any weight lately...) On the other hand, I haven't so much as made a glass spacer in over 8 months - I wonder if I still remember how to do it...

On other fronts, a couple of pans that my Mom ordered for me as a gift arrived yesterday, and the Short One (who believes that all packages arriving at the house are gifts for him) descended upon them with cries of rapture. I had to remove the large pan - it's so heavy, I was worried that the SO would drop it on his toe and Bad Things would happen - but he spent a happy hour (really a very long time for him - his attention span is still pretty short) "cooking" with it. I showed him how to crack an egg with a couple of plastic eggs left over from Easter, and he meticulously cracked each egg open before putting it in the pan. Then we gathered up his set of plastic fruits and veggies that the Easter Bunny brought him and made stir fry.

As a result of all of this, I have been spending today surfing the 'Net looking at toy cooking sets for him. I find it interesting, although not surprising, that the sets are largely all marketed to little girls. Curiously enough, though, reading the parent reviews on Amazon and the like, it's clear that many of them were purchased for little boys. I once knew a woman whose husband used to get upset if their son even watched the Food Network, because he felt that cooking was "sissy" and he wanted his manly little man to have no part of it. We don't remotely adhere to that principle chez SO - the Husband is an excellent chef and actually did almost all of the cooking at our house before the SO arrived. Now I cheerfully burn things on a nightly basis, as I try to keep one eye on the food and the other on the SO, but the fact is that we both think that cooking is an essential skill for the SO to acquire. Hence, my sudden interest in plastic pots and pans and play condiments. I'm staggered by the sheer variety of sets on the market these days. The same company that makes the fruit and veggie set that we bought for the SO also has dim sum and sushi sets. You can buy anything from cake and pizza making play sets to ice cream banana splits etc., etc. There are also tons of wonderful play food sets available on Etsy. I'm lovin' it! The only difficulty for me is deciding which one will be the best for the SO. Stay tuned...

Thanks for visiting!

True Love

Well, okay, okay, I actually designed this to be a winter piece, but I've decided not to wait until next year to post this, so I'm going to pretend it's a wedding piece, instead. It could work like that, right? Right? I'm quite fond of petal-shaped freshwater pearls. I think they fit a floral theme pretty well, here. My own wedding was so untraditional - barefoot on the beach in Hawaii (we also managed to schedule it the same weekend as the Iron Man competition, but that's another story) - I like to imagine a young bride wearing this with complete regalia: beaded white gown, veil, something borrowed, something blue, etc., etc.

As I run around tonight trying to get a bunch of chores done, I wonder for the nth time - HOW CAN SOMEONE SO SMALL GENERATE SO MUCH LAUNDRY? I think the SO went through five pairs of pants today, for various reasons. Hmmm. Looking at it that way, I suppose it's not such a mystery as to why I keep having loads-full of small socks, shirts and pants going in the wash. I'm still surprised by it, though. We had a nice warm day in the mid-70s today, and I let the SO wander around wearing a short-sleeved shirt for the first time this spring. He kept trying to pull the sleeves down to cover his arms and was completely puzzled as to why they wouldn't come down. It's a sad statement on how chilly it's been around here.

Thanks for stopping by!

Heart Like a...??

Hi, there. Happy Monday, everyone. Here's a new necklace I designed with a teenager in mind. What do you think? Is it hip enough for a teen to wear? The kind of teen who has a lot of black in her (or even his, although the heart in the pendant could be an issue, I suppose) wardrobe? The cube beads are lava. I understand from the beading magazines that this is a fairly hot material (no pun intended), but I'd never actually seen a strand in person - I ended up ordering these from Fire Mountain Gems. I love it - the lava is pitted, is terribly tactile, has a lot of character and isn't terribly "girly".

Speaking of the 'zines, I've had the two earring designs I raced around to put together last week, as well as a necklace incorporating one of my koi pendants, accepted for publication next year. The earrings will be published next February and the necklace is slated for next April. I felt awful after staying up until all hours putting those projects together at the last minute, but in the end I'm glad I made the effort to meet the deadline. Every time I pull a late night like that, I swear up and down that it will be the last time. I guess I'm just a born procrastinator. And you already know what a short memory I have. Sigh.

The Short One and I have been playing charades a lot, lately. The SO has been practicing his words and letters pretty much non-stop. He's recently undergone a surge of new ones, and I'm having a hard time keeping up and keeping them sorted. This morning, I could have sworn he told me he wanted some "juice", when he was really commenting on having "two" boats. I thought he was "yowling" like a cat, when in fact he was commenting that his toy piano has a "yellow" musical note painted on the side. Needless to say, it has all been very frustrating for the SO that Mama can't seem to keep up. While part of me knows that, if I weren't his Mama, I'd probably be understanding less than 2% of what he says, another part of me thinks that the old adage that mothers always know what their babies are saying is a bunch of hooey. The SO's pronunciation and diction improve daily, but at the moment, it's kind of like hosting a little foreign exchange student with extremely high standards of cuisine.

Hope all is well where you are. Thanks for stopping by.

Work in Progress

Here's a sneak peak at what I'm working on right now. I have to admit, I'm very excited by this project. I have a small stash of ceramic cabs and a small stash of ceramic buttons from Earthenwood Studio (the latter is for my knitting). I've been waiting for inspiration to strike with the cabs - I wanted to do something different with them, but I wasn't sure what or how. When I was fiddling with a different project a couple months ago, I piled all of the buttons and cabs together and started playing around with them. Melanie Lukacs, the artist who made all of them, has created some really beautiful designs for her beads and cabs. I discovered that by stacking different patterns and sizes of buttons and cabs together, I could create a design with considerable depth in a single piece.

For this pendant, I already owned both the lovely black and white moon cab and the square checkered button and simply ended up placing a special order for the base cab in a coordinating color (I own a large button of the same design, but it's the wrong color for this project). I set the cabs in PMC with a simple hand pressed design around the rim. I really love the way this looks. Also, as you can see, this is a pendant, but I think it would look stunning as a brooch, as well. (Sharp eyes will notice that I have another moon cab in the banner of my blog - thanks, Melanie!)

Well, I ended up finishing five pieces last night. This is probably a record for me, although, in all fairness, I've had most of the designs floating around in my project book for a while now. After photographing them and writing the blurbs for each piece, I stumbled up to bed - at which point the Short One promptly woke up and stayed up for more or less the remainder of the night. Sigh. Our timing could definitely have been better. I managed to nap with him today, but I woke up feeling achy and unwell. I'm hoping a good night's sleep will fix this, though.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. See you on Monday.

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled

Here's the last of the contest pieces I made in March. I'm sure these will all go into new jewelry designs (the big double koi is reserved for that kimono-style sweater, whenever I actually get around to knitting it). I might put one of them up on Etsy - not sure about that yet, though.

I'm sitting here surrounded by a mess of beads, franticallly putting designs together. Once again, I've discovered that I misremembered my deadlines. I thought I had until next week to submit designs for one of the magazines, and, in fact, the deadline is tomorrow. (A second deadline is, in fact, for next week, but because all of the pieces plus instructions have to be at the publishers for consideration by that date, I've decided to cut my losses and skip that one entirely.) It's amazing to me how absent-minded I am these days, especially when I consider how many deadlines I used to juggle when I was working. My work was so date intensive that we had specialized (and extremely expensive) software just to keep track of all of the deadlines. Nowadays, I'm lucky if I remember what day of the week it is. I'd prefer to think that it's simply the result of being out of practice and not an accumulation of "senior moments", but in my heart of hearts I do wonder if perhaps I'm starting to get a little doddery. Oh, well. I suppose I've got to work with what I have and hope that the Short One doesn't start running rings around me once he figures out my weakness (kids are so perceptive that way, don't you think?).

Anyway, I'm sitting here working on earring designs at the moment, which is unusual for me. I actually don't have pierced ears myself. Although my parents raised me in a highly Western fashion, my mother followed the tradition with which she grew up by not piercing my ears (and not allowing me to pierce my ears) when I was young. (One of my female cousins once told me that, in Korea, the saying was that a woman with pierced ears will be unfaithful to her husband. While I find this interesting, I hardly think most people pay it much mind these days, as I know plenty of Korean women with pierced ears. Actually, ironically, my mother now has pierced ears herself. Anyway, where was I?)

I was never terribly bothered by the lack of pierced ears myself. In college I was known for wearing huge, tacky clip-on earrings (it was the 8o's, after all). I had one pair of high-end, enamel and gold electroplate earrings made by a company called Lunch at the Ritz that were basically multiple dangling images of zebra posteriors. I loved them, but they were so jangly, I had trouble hearing anything when I wore them. Oh, what we sacrifice in the name of fashion, eh? I lost the habit of wearing earrings entirely once I started working, as I found it too uncomfortable to talk on the phone all day with even a small stud pressed to the receiver.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone else here not have pierced ears?

I suppose I should get back to my mess of beads. Thanks for stopping by!

ps. Does anyone recognize the quote that's the title of today's entry?