Who Lives Inside You?

No, it is not a weird question. It's a very important question. We all have someone living inside us, someone a bit different from the outside persona. Think about it. Is there a part of you that wants to spring forth, a part that you keep tucked quietly away in the recesses of your mind, a part that you firmly believe is just a fantasy? And no, I'm not speaking in terms of personality integration. I will elaborate.

Inside me there lives an artist. She is an artist who paints with watercolors. She paints delectable, dainty tableaux in muted Victorian colors with oodles of blossoms and lace. She paints portraits of elegant women with translucent skin like the one above, and babies swathed in lace christening gowns and little girls with ringlets caught up in huge satin bows. She sips tea out of fine china cups that let the light shine through, and she lives in a loft in Paris and watches the world stroll by her windows that face north, because that's where the best light lives. And she cradles a white Persian cat while she watches and sips and dreams.

Me? I can't draw a straight line. Okay, so maybe I can draw a little. This is one of my drawings. I live in a world littered with tiny bits of glass, and most of my cats are Russian blue or coal black. I work with needle and thread, and watercolors just frustrate me (yes, I gave them a try). My windows face east and west, where I get to watch glorious sunsets. And no one walks down our road, but we do get to hear the coyotes sing almost every night. It's a long way from here to Paris, unless you mean Paris, Texas. I also have a writer who lives in there (I have written and have won small awards), and a singer (once upon a time), and a photographer (I try), a free spirited hippie chick, and a gypsy queen who dances in the moonlight (did that, too). They all get along quite well, not that I'm talking to my other identities or anything.

My point is this. If I did not have all those other creative personae screaming for attention in the back of my mind, would I still have the strong streak of creativity that drives me to do what I love to do? So there, beadlings, is your question for the day.

I am working on a little "thank you" for Miss A, who had to load the car for Mommy and help Daddy set up Mommy's booth at the ASG exhibit and show. She's such a good kid! They are both good kids. Aw hell, let's just throw T-man in there too! I'm a lucky, lucky woman!

Hellooooooo!

Wow, I feel like I've been gone for ages. It must be blog withdrawal or something. I spent a lovely morning with the Beadalicious Beading Babes in South Austin. Much hilarity and jollility was had by all. These little Friday get-togethers have become more important since I realized at the bead retreat just how much of a hermit I have become!

So, I guess you want details of the Austin Stitchers' exhibit and show, huh? Just promise to read my details first, and then go read Margot Potter's details about her trip to Tucson for the shows there. I'm so jealous! I've wanted to go for years, and her stories will make mine seem piddly, but I digress.

Okie dokie, here we go. The very first thing I did was to herniate a disc in my lower back with the very first thing I picked up to load into the car. I have a very light-weight table that I use, and as I walked out the front door with it, the wind caught it. But I didn't let go, oh no, no, no! And then I stumbled, and that was all she wrote. So I called T-man. "Can you come help me load the car?" No, he was the only person in the office at that time. "Can you meet me over there?" Sure. Well, I tried to pick up a box and carry it to the car. Oh, duh! Yeah, yeah, I know. Now it's time for A to be home from school (it's getting later and later at this point), and as she comes in I tell her how she's going to load the car for me and then help Dad set up my booth. So, off we go, only to get stuck in traffic in between two wrecks, and what should have been a 30 minute drive has taken two hours. We got there with just enough time to set up before the deadline. Everything else that weekend was a piece of cake. There was lots of schmoozing, lots of selling, lots of ooohs and aaaaahs, Donna won a ribbon with my design so people have requested more kits, I got to see some old friends and made a couple of new friends, I got some nifty new tools, I had the most wonderful chocolate cake I've ever eaten, and what was really three days of hard work was very enjoyable. There were some amazing pieces in the exhibit, as always, and I really regret not having my camera there.

Can I tell you how much I enjoyed doing a trunk show? Oh my stars, it was such a blast to have all those other designs in the booth! And extremely low stress to boot! I loved it. I want to do it again. I've discussed it with my distributor and we will probably do the same thing come May, so stay tuned! I sold out of several kits, both mine and hers, and I sold out of a few patterns. We definitely came home a little lighter. By the way, this was my 10-year anniversary with the Austin Stitchery Guild, so it was even more special to do this particular show. They are still some of my favorite people when it comes to beady things.

Some of you who were there noticed that I did this show solo, which I have never done before. Well, I usually get my dear Joyce to help me, but since she has become Regional Director for the South Central Region of the Embroiders' Guild of America, she hasn't had a lot of spare time. (I wanted to make sure I got the entire title in there, Your Majesty!) I did get a chance to give her a little something, which is pictured below. The pattern was adapted from one of Suzanne Cooper's patterns, called India. When I saw the pattern, it just seemed to have Joyce stamped all over it. The one thing I neglected to do was take my camera so I could get a picture of Joyce wearing her new goodies. Damn. Joyce does a lot to promote me and my little venture. I can never properly repay for the things she does and I wanted to do something special for her.

So, there it is. That's about all that happened. I had a good time, as always. And I'm ready to do it again, after a few days of rest. I'll be back Monday morning, bright and early. Have a great weekend, and bead your little hearts out!

More On The Retreat

Here we are all. It's the last day of the retreat, hence the lack of beads and beadwork on the table and some empty tables in the background. The tables were all full for the weekend. Right to left is me, GG, Juls and Cat. Yuck. I hate pictures of myself. Moving on . .

There was the little bead war. Juls was working on a piece in blues and greens. I was working on a piece in reds. Juls would throw a reject bead, I would throw a reject bead. On Saturday night, everyone cuts loose, if you know what I mean. Well, Juls got up from the table and I sprinkled A PINCH of red beads in her pile. A while later, I got up to go to bed. When I came down the next morning, this is what I found:Do you see all the green and blue beads? I filled a little baggie with them. What started as a tiny skirmish quickly escalated to all out war!!

Speaking of little baggies, I was so tired Sunday morning. I did not sleep Saturday night. Cat and GG got back to room after 2:00 and I was still wide awake. Even after all the lights went out, I tossed and turned. The next morning, my half of the bed had no bottom sheet on it. There was a bunched up, knotted mess of what was my half of said bottom sheet. This was the reason I slept for 12 hours Sunday. I was so tired. I really thought the dark splotches under my eyes were make up that didn't get cleansed away. I was wrong:
I can't believe how the camera emphasized the bags under my eyes. Maybe I should start taking tea bags and cucumbers with me.

Today, I'm working on revamping the web site. I'm going to go ahead and put some dates in there for upcoming events. I will be doing the biennial show with the Austin Stichery Guild (ASG). Here's your first notice. I'll have some of my kits, and some kits from other wonderful designers, plus some bead packs in various palettes. I love doing that show. And in June, I'll be at the EGA South Central Region's seminar, with lots of goodies. This year they have a market day which is open to the public. I'll have many more new goodies then. But for now, I must type on something else for the rest of the day. My beady pal Jelcy sent this link, which she got from our pal Nancy. I seems that this Dutch department store was sold in June to a British investment firm. HEMA has stores all over Europe. This is the product page, but it's all in Dutch. You can't order anything, but just watch for a few minutes. Sound makes it better if you can have it. Later, beadlings!

Bead Musings

Bead musings are what this blog is supposed to be about, right? I suppose that every once in a while I should stick to the topic. Last night I found a really cool quote that I wanted to post today. Then T-man needed to work on the computer. Did I bookmark it? No. Did I write it down? No. Does my med-fuzzed brain remember it? Oh, hell no. And the short term memory lapse is really irritating, so I'll step back and punt.

While making my morning rounds yesterday, I stopped at Yellow Dog Beads where Pam had posted "I admire all those people who can officially 'blog' - just can't imagine the commitment it must take." For me, it has become fairly easy, especially with the kids gone during the day. I am here, by myself, with only the cats for company, and they don't care what I think or say. So, this is my outlet for conversation. It's great to have a one-sided conversation with no one arguing. I have discovered that I have gotten more visitors to my web site and my Etsy shop since I've started blogging, and that was the main purpose. It's become a very creative outlet. It's like bouncing ideas off of a big group, only no one ever disagrees with me! Oh, and never mind the fact that I am a frustrated novelist at heart. More on that later. I will admit that I had to force myself to sit down and type something the first week, but now it's a little easier. I'm still paranoid that no one reads this. If you scream in cyberspace can anyone hear you?

Then I surfed over to Kate's journal where she posted "Most people choose a life of art from a perspective of freedom, and the desire to have a life structure that isn't fraught with the playground politics of most offices. But get a Guild together, or some kind of power structure, and before you know it you have people who are meticulously recreating the very environment that most of us chose not to participate in in the first place." Okay, office politics were not the reason I did not reenter the workforce after A was born, but I certainly don't miss them. Later, I held offices in two different organizations, at the same time, and I wholeheartedly agree with what she says. T-man once told me if I ever ran for office in any club/society/guild again, he would divorce me! But I'm not sure I agree with her statement that a life of art entails freedom. There is still "WORK" to be done. It's not all fun and games, kids. In fact, very little of it is. Being a self-employed anything takes drive, commitment, organization, self-discipline and enormous motivation. It also entails being able to say "NO" firmly. I've been self-employed for ten years now, and I'm still working on all of those. I'm also still struggling with the frustration of dealing with people who believe that since you are at home, you're not doing anything important. By the way, I don't think that will ever go away.

But neither of these is the quote I seek. So let's talk about my muses, The Beads. As I told you yesterday, I am on an earring kick. I don't know why, it just seems to be the thing to do. I should be sending instructions, patterns and beads out to the angels, and I should be designing more projects for them to stitch. After all, February is just around the corner (I have a big to-do in February). And June is right behind February (I have the EGA Regional Seminar), and I need lots and lots of fabu kits, bead packs, instructions, etc.

But no, I have this need to churn out a bunch of dangly things right now. The first pair has already been grabbed up by N, although she will tell you differently -- her story is that I "offered" them to her. My story? I was holding them up for an opinion, only to be met with an open hand, beseeching me to bestow the pretties in it. I bought these beads specifically to put them on these oxidized head pins and ear wires. Then A wants to know if I can make her a smaller pair of dangly earrings. And she also wants the oxidized wires so they will look almost like the ones her big sister has. So, today is an earring day. More pictures tomorrow!

It's a Bead-iful Day!

What a wonderful class last night. I had one baby beader (someone who has never beaded before). She was impressive. When something didn't look right, she instinctively ripped it out and started again. I always enjoy my classes with the Austin Stitchers. Here is a picture of some of them, beading away.

Okay, you people are a tough crowd! Still no comments, even though they have been requested. I tell you what. I will come up with some sort of contest, with a prize. I'll post rules and pictures on Tuesday, because Monday I'm teaching the Austin Stitchers again. And I might not be posting over the weekend, as I have a lot of organizing to do in the bead room, plus I have to design a beadiful prize! See ya later, alligator!