It is ever so quiet in the house at this moment in lazy Sunday time. The sun is out, a breeze is blowing and I can hear the occasional soft drone of the airplane flying over head from the airport below me. Jake is at a friend's place down the street and at any moment I expect he and Ben to come flying in to play video games or be on the computer or to eat and eat and eat until the cupboards and fridge echo with emptiness.  I do not think I have ever been around a teenager that eats as much as Jake and he seems to grow taller by the hour. Even a close friend, visiting from Panama said, " geez, Jake I haven't seen you since Tuesday and you look two inches taller already! " Amazing this teenage growth. At once I love him to pieces and don't want him to change or leave or move away from me physically or mentally and the next, go, young man, go. Since he was first born, I always thought he was adult who could not wait to get out of his stuck little baby body. I will lose him a bit more this fall when he starts the 9th grade in a public school. Oh, how I wish I had Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility so I could follow him throughout his day and watch him. Be protective, save him from the roughness of the adolescent world. I suppose all moms feel this way and it is part of the needed separation from teenager to adult. Still, my heart just aches at the tenderness and sadness of our little partings now and the big parting down the road a few years from now.

Jacob and Lisa working on Lisa's new Mac. How hard is Lisa working with
that bottle of beer in one hand, I wonder. 

Anyhow I have a much needed day off, out of the shop to catch up on jewelry making. I have been fortunate to be selling many of the pieces I have made over the past winter. My new things are well received and I am very happy. However, this business of working e-v-e-r-y single day this summer is exhausting, mentally and physically. Even on this day " off " my mind is still in the shop working and I can not seem to unwind or relax. I have a goal of making 30 pairs of furnace glass earrings for an empty rack and then I want to cut out a nice thick cross for casting. It should all keep me busy today when all I really want to do is watch a good movie and veg out; still my hands, still my mind, breathe deeply and maybe even doze off! On that zzz note, I will close for now and be back when something other than a sleepy Lois is ready to show you some real WORK! xo

One old Jesse dog trying to sleep in the studio.

The Weekend Past

This weekend just flew pass in a blur of activity that has hit its mark and made me tired! My friend, Lisa of ZizzyZaZa Beads came over and we put on our much planned Port Townsend Bead Market. The weather was gorgeous, the crowds good and everyone that stopped by my display was in a great mood! Really, I could not wish for more. Lunch time came and I was able to get away and have hot dogs at the stand across the street. I tell you it was bliss to sit in the sun and eat hotdogs!

Setting up a show and co ordinating all the jobs that go with it is challenging. Plus, when you are a vendor, you are also getting your products ready to sell. Entertaining in the evening is a must, so we filled up on pizza, (Waterfront, of course ) and beer, laughed ourselves silly and let conversation flow wherever it wanted to go.

I am free from shows now until September and I am so looking forward to working in the shop and maybe catching up on a little journaling and painting.

Happy August!

Nothing Much to Say

This is summer in the northwest for me. I am reading this book three pages at a time in the evenings just before I fall asleep. Written several decades ago during a time I actually entertained the idea of going to Alaska with my then boyfriend and working on the pipeline; I am hypnotized by lifestyles and places  contained with in. 

Isn't it an interesting journey, this life of ours. We could have done this and been there but instead we are here after having done that. What would life be like if you or I had made different choices? I left home within two years of graduating high school and have not looked back. Somewhere in my thoughts,  the family I left behind is still exactly in the same places, living the same lives as when I left. No one has died or changed or left. I am comforted by that as I move forward into my own days. I am not hurt anymore by their words or actions and the distance from them with the memories I have both good and bad exist in their own place so far away in miles and years. Still in sometimes late night dreams, I am among them again and moving in a different life. Maybe a life in Alaska in the late 70's. 

Summertime Means ....

...production work for me or at least what I refer to as production work. Over the slower winter months, I design jewelry that I can make and sell in the shop on a regular basis. I can produce it without a whole lot of new technique or thought going into it and fill the displays. This does not mean that the work is substandard. It just means that in 15 minutes here, an hour there, I can make new things for sale. The new thoughts into new work for the next year, comes in the late fall and early winter when I prepare for the upcoming new shows. The work then morphs into shop work. Anyhow, all of this means that while my hands are producing this years' work, my mind is racing ahead to new things, new designs, new configurations, new metals to explore. Painting waits until the fall too when I can have an entire afternoon all languidly stretched out before me ( Jake in school ) to think and play and work. The noise in my life stops then for a precious few hours.

Bead table view. 

New beaded earrings and heart shape pendants. 

Today, on a warm summer afternoon, will also find me in the studio producing " production " work with maybe a hot tub or walk thrown in. What are your plans?

Who I Am

“There comes a time when you have to stand up and say:This is me damn it! I look the way I look, think the way I think, feel the way I feel. Take me, or leave me. Accept me, or walk away! Don't try to make me feel like less of a person, just because I don’t fit your idea of who I should be and don’t try to change me to fit your mold. If I need to change, I alone will make that decision.” ~ Stacey Charter

From a Facebook post earlier today. 

Nearly 10

It is nearly 10 pm on a July Friday night. A very wet and chilly Friday night. Truthfully, I love the rain and the gray. I love a cool, wet summer and the explosion of green that happens when the sun does warm things up a bit. I have been saying that my yard looks like the Amazon jungle and that all the deep, dark holes that Daisy has dug look like Afghanistan. I think in all seriousness, it may be next summer before I can plant anything and not have Daisy dig it up or eat it!

This is my darling Daisy on her way into the studio. She gets a bacon treat and then sleeps on the carpet behind the chair I work in. Really though, she only half sleeps as the minute I make a move to get up, she is ready to go. If I ignore her too long, I hear the familiar noise of a bead rolling around her teeth and in her mouth. That never fails to get my attention. She looks tail-less in  this picture but she is not. Her tail is long and lovely and full.

Finally this evening, look at these lovely and colorful lampworked beads that I intend to make into earrings soon. They will be a lovely addition to my display cases and the earrings will be a perfect summer into fall fashion forward look. I think they kind of look like byzantine openings or windows. They were available in so many delicious colors, it was heard to settle on these! Rich greens and oranges stir an unbridled bead lust in me.

I am hearing the siren call of the studio and the bedroom. One for working one for snoozing. Which will win out as the late evening progresses? The rain makes me think sleep is the stronger call and hearing the sound of the water falling on the roof will make for a good night's sleep.

Peaceful dreams all.

This Weekend Past in Tacoma

I am just now home from the Puget Sound Bead Festival in Tacoma. The car is unpacked, a load of laundry is tumbling in the dryer, my feet are up and I am slowly getting more sleepy by the minute.
The show this weekend was considerably smaller in size and scope than years past but was filled with an excellent variety of bead things and of course, filled with my friends that I only get to see " on the road ". I can't decide whether I should work a show or just flit from person to person and booth to booth and visit, hug and chat! I take many long bathroom breaks and make sure I walk a different way to them -  past friends so I can stop and talk. Bead shows are a little soap opera from time to time and this show was no exception. Intrigue and mystery, rumor and gossip were abundant! I loved it! The stories customers relate to me also make me want to write a book. Someone, somewhere should be recording these tales I hear from people I barely know. I would have to say I like getting to know people and treasure every minute of conversation we have.

I was a terrible picture taker too this weekend! I just was more interested in talking than picturing so I leave you this fine evening with half a full moon hanging in the inky black night outside my sliding glass door with a few pictures from the weekend.

THe view from the top floor of the convention center where the show was being held. See the mountain?
Mount Rainier, that is! 

Another downtown shot featuring the Tacoma Dome and the Washington State history museum. 

A random show picture showing the setting up of Pam's booth.