You all know that I live a creative life. I make my living by combining several things that I love to do. I  make things, I have a shop ( actually several ) and I think outside the box. I am liberal in my leanings and wild in my imagination and color palette. I think a lot and also take mind vacations by loitering on the internet, watching television, reading people magazine and just sitting in a rocker outside on warm summer evenings. I knit and crochet to relieve stress. I am addicted to playing one hand of solitaire on the computer just before I close my eyes to sleep. I am one who believes there are not enough hours in the day to do all I want to do and I often get a second burst of energy just before I go to bed. I like people. I like speaking with people all day in my shops but when I am done and quiet calls me; I am just that - done. I am mostly solitary in my life outside my shops. Sometimes I think I should reach out more and meet new people and be out there, involved, socializing, whatever people do when gathering. However, it feels like my hand is reaching towards a lit burner on the stove; as soon as I feel the heat; I snap back. I have tried a few new things and activities this year and I will probably do more of the same  next year. As much as I love Port Townsend, it is really a place that respects your solitude and you much reach for more if you want it because it is not going to come in search of you.

Anyhow, all this has me thinking about a different place to live. Maybe I want to sell everything and live smaller. Lord knows, with the new president elect we may ALL be thinking along those lines out of necessity. Maybe I want to try another country where medical and dental care is done at a reasonable cost. Just reading of a friend who had to go to Germany for affordable medical treatment and her costs, including airfare, lodging and meals, still equaled one fifth the cost of treatment here in the US. That makes me angry and afraid and brings on sleepless, dark nights. How can this even be?

Maybe I want to live with my kids. Be closer to my son on the east coast. Mostly, I'd like all of us on the same family compound. A closeness not only in bloodlines but in proximity. I have more room to build on my acre of land.

Maybe I just need to feed my soul with more of the things I love. Maybe I should feel content with what I have. I already feel so much gratitude for everything. Contentment is likely missing though and no matter where I look, I just can not find enough.

Maybe all I really need is a bathroom in my studio.

Worry

I certainly intend to write more in the coming days and months but for now I am trying to find my center as I reel in the results of our recent election. I, along with the rest of the world ( except maybe Russia ) will need to worry over the coming days and plan for the worst while hoping for the best. I am reaching down, deep in my very soul to find hope and courage, conviction and love and it is a little dark in there now. Stay tuned and when I can again feel; I will write again. Peace out my friends, peace within.

Memories

On Tuesday, Phil was inspired to clean out the garage attic under the pretenses of organizing it and
" finding something. " He came out to the studio with a large blue plastic storage tote and when we opened it; I was struck by memories and youth and young children and a life lived long past.

Inside were quilts of old fabric, all carefully hand stitched and pieced. Fabrics that I recognized were from the 1930's and even earlier. Other quilt tops that I had marked and cut into Christmas stockings and tree skirts. These cloth treasures were found almost 30 years ago when a girlfriend and I would send the kids off to school and then hop into her Toyota 4Runner and drive around the Virginia country side from junk store to antique store searching out things to make and remake into things for our homes and families. Our kids were young and so were we. We would laugh and pick over things, ever mindful of the clock and when we got home; we'd spend the time talking about our finds and the things we would do with them. I miss my girlfriend. She left us just as she was planning on moving closer to us here in Port Townsend. Suddenly, without warning in the middle of plans; she was gone.

I don't think I have made things like I did way back then. My life has been consumed with divorce, remarrying, having a surprise child and beginning a business. In my heart I feel a little ache, a little sorrow for the young woman I was then. I barely scratched the surface of that life before I was swept along into a new one. I miss those afternoons in Deb's kitchen and my dining room. We talked so much. I was never closer to anyone. Memories I will treasure the rest of my days and even now I can close my eyes and see our kids, running around in the yard, playing while we dreamed and made memories for each other. Quilts of life, many colors, memories and friendship joys.

This quilt wears sneakers.

In My World

Here in my little world where the days start early and end falling asleep in my living room chair; I paint and dream, color and plan, knit and visualize - all the creative things I want to do and make as I find time. Sunny days should give me more energy but it is the cool, gray, wet days that inspire my creativity. I can hunker down in the studio or at the shop and make things. At home I play a bit, work a bit for the shop and then play some more.

At the shop, I rearrange beady treasures, play a bit, help customers, visit other merchant friends, do repair work and keep moving forward on a path that delights me. Socially, I am the butterfly that flits here, there and everywhere onto the perfect purple nectar giving flower.

I have not been doing shows on the road and even though I really, really thought I would miss them, I do not. I can take my sweet time with a customer, linger over a tea with a friend, spend time just contemplating a project I want to do. ( Like tackling lace knitting next week! )

Here in this world, politics leaves me alone. Friends share a common vision of peace and love and I am reborn in the delight, with the delight, of being and remaining creative.

First fall bloom. I love yellow at this time of the year.

Stacks at the old tidy bowl.

Graffiti, at the Wave Viewing Gallery, which I admire for its cultural significance and hate
for its disruptive, community marring markings.

A very new experience for me today, shopping for girls' clothing. Specifically a dress. For a young girl, just barely a teen. In a town where people dress for effect but not to dress up. I only had children of the male type and never found it necessary to shop for a dress for someone else before. The only person I have ever dress shopped for was me and I have not worn an actual real life dress in twenty plus years. It was fun. Did not take long and we had help from other shopkeepers and friends who suggested dresses, stores and held pieces for us. We ended with a beautiful red and black dress with hibiscus flowers on it. I do not have a picture, as we are waiting for the event to get the total picture, but I made her promise, PROMISE to send me a picture.

I also finished a drawing this week and posted it in a few places on line. It is my next mission, and I have chosen to accept it, to figure out how to make my drawings, original artworks, available to collectors, patrons and people who need cool art for their homes.

I would chat more tonight or rather write more but I can feel my eyes swimming in my head already and bed is calling. To write more later....

So I am very tired tonight and I am trying to type this in the near dark of my dining room. I am a terrible typist and at this moment; I have spent as much time backing up in my sentences to correct them as type them to begin with!

I have spent part of this evening posting to my boards on Pinterest and on Instagram. I like Pinterest where I can see a collection of my pictures all together. I would rather have them in a book so I can linger and lust over every single detail in the photos but storing them out in the great cyber universe is okay for now.

Fall needs to come on and get here. I am tired of summer's heat and the withering drying plants around my home. No amount of water seems to make them look lively again. They need fall and cooler temps.

Right now, my brain is crying for rest and maybe even sleep. Off I go. I am reading Vanity Fair magazine tonight. I forget how much I love that 'zine and how comforting it feels to hold it in my hands.

Flowers for Mo.

For her outta here party.

Off from the shop today, I got out to the studio early before it heated up from the summer sun. My laptop called to me but I ignored it. The song of the IPAD was also silenced by me too as I thought of just how warm my sweet place would be this afternoon. I am easily distracted however, by all the siren songs of the beads and glass and metal in the room. It is as if they are all talking to me at one time; wanting me to put my hands to them and create. Reshape. Design. An insulated world not responding to all the outside stimuli. Peace amongst the noise and then bursts of staccato creativity and ideas!

Here is a sneak peak of what I did today.......

Glued bails to some dichroic pendants. All glittery silver finery!

A finished necklace with handmade glass beads and Czech glass.

A closeup!
 

Sterling silver and blue-purple glass are a favorite combination.

Sputnik beads!



I am having blogging issues at the moment and can not figure out how to get my cursor ( CURSES! ) to the other side of the page to add more text so for now I will so long! Have a great evening.

Retired. Are you going to? When are you? I hear it now on an almost daily basis. I will be 60 this November and although I do not think I have yet shouted it from the rooftops or written it in spray paint on the sidewalks; everyone seems to know it. Is it the gray hair that is putting out the 60 message? Is it the ever thickening waistline? Hmpf. I don't know but how can anyone ask about my retirement when I have never felt like I was working? I love what I do even on the days I am cranky. I like making stuff and selling the stuff I make. It is all I ever wanted to do when I grew up. I would tell people I would be a movie star or an artist when I grew up and look at me now - I am both. I am the star of my dog and pony show, the entertainment for the customers who walk in my shop door, the laugh of their day, the kindness that greets them in a stage presentation on the sales floor. I am the artist who makes the jewelry, crafts the things that people purchase. I do it all in an art way; from merchandising to display to little decorated tags. Whoever said make a job doing something you love and you'll never work a day in your life was absolutely right! I play. I chat. I smile. I create. I design. I dream. I make stuff. I sell stuff and I love it. Retire? No, I am not thinking of it!

My oldest son and me at the place we began.

It is ever so softly raining right now and I am enjoying it so much. I like the quietness, the coolness and the feeling of solitude the rain imparts to me. So far this summer, business has been quiet and giving me some time to try new things. I have done one event, one craft show and soon, one big festival. I head up to Sequim this weekend for one of the biggest Lavender Festivals in the US. I was invited to do the show by the Sunbonnet Sue Quilt Club so my beads and I will hit the road and set up a booth there.

I love the purples of lavender and the scent delights me. I am looking forward to a few days away from the shop, doing something a bit different. Until I return, here are some around the Lois world pictures.

Tomorrow is my mother's birthday. She would have been 87 if only she were still here with us. She has been gone since 2008. In those eight years, I have missed her fiercely. She was my person to call when something exciting happened in my life or some event came along or I won an award or an election or something like that. No one was quite as astounded by my life as my mom. No one gave the kind of advice she gave me.

I should have recorded her voice. I miss that. I should have more pictures. I miss those. I should have been a more attentive daughter. I missed that.

The world is a bit crazy right now. At least the world that exists outside my front door. The flower beds are wild with growth, the fruit trees are full and lush with beautiful green leaves and many, many buds, birds sing loud songs as soon as the dawn approaches and the deer quietly walk through the lavender beds nibbling here and there on everything that is growing.

The daylight lasts long into the evening and I find myself quietly knitting while I wait for sleep to call me into the bedroom. Quiet times beckon me and soothe me, resting me until the next day awakens.

I love spring and dread the heat of summer. I am hoping Mother Nature will be kind and keep the temperatures at a level that makes me really love summer.

 For now, this early evening moment, I am going to be thankful for all the blooms around the neighborhood.

Reading blogs late into the evening, well before I go to sleep, is a past time that I enjoy even if it is slightly voyeuristic. It can however, irritate me if someone has not posted on their blog in eons and now, I fear, I am in that same annoying little category! It has been a long time since I posted and as I write this my eyes and hands and brain are being betrayed by sleep. Sleep is calling me and I am just slightly nodding off here and then jerking awake to write more. Once again, I am going to escape from writing much and just post a few pictures. I swear, I am gonna start writing earlier in the evenings!

The studio.

Front yard.

New dichroic cabs for the store.

Side yard with a rain squall approaching.


Sweet dreams. 

I truly meant to post

 pictures from Tucson but life sometimes gets in the path of things you want to accomplish and fills your days with what you NEED to accomplish. Here are a few photos from the gem shows'

This girl made her annual foray into Tucson for the gem shows last week. It was a weird year, not being a vendor down there after selling in the shows for 22 years. It felt so odd not to work even though I filled in at a friend's booth for a few hours. I had time, lots of time to shop nearly every day until I was worn out from walking and carrying and talking and my brain felt over used and over stimulated making decisions and seeing so many beautiful things.

There was sadness in the air down there as the shows are changing. There are less customers and fewer vendors. Large open spaces in several shows filled with chairs and not sellers.

The desert though is beautiful. Rich and warm and almost inviting. The cactus just beginning to bloom. Female cardinals jumping in the branches of bushes, singing.Grassy areas were green, dormant areas rich golds and browns. The sky so blue, the clouds so white, the air so fresh - I found a picnic bench in a park. Just sitting. Thinking. Contemplating.

Tomorrow, after a shop day, I'll post pictures of my day in the park and then we'll talk stones and gems.

Sweet dreams.

These are just a few, very few of the charms and religious pieces that I cast. My website has many more at www.wynwoods.com and some are on display in my shop in Port Townsend.