After Tucson

Honestly I thought that I would be able to get so much drawing and knitting done in Tucson while working the show that I packed a bunch of art supplies and three ( what was I thinking? ) knitting projects. The weather was extra warm, the show kind of on the quiet side, the friends amazing as always and the work day, just plain wore me out! I managed two drawings and nearly finishing one knitting project which now waits to be rinsed and blocked.

I love my annual Tucson trips not just for the bead shopping and friend filled dinners but because of the light in the sky and the green growing things so different than here. I like the textures of the palm trees' trunks and the way their leaves ( fronds? ) make a linear pattern against the bluest of skys. I like the way the clouds form, high and white against the pink/ purple/ mauve of the Catalina Mountains. I like the artistic touches that line the freeways and overpasses. I like adobe walls and the seclusion of homes behind walls, especially walls with lots of textures. I like the long, skinny spiky brown branches that are made into fences and deck roofs. I like the smoothness of flowers on a blooming cactus against the thorns of the big green arms of fine, ancient cactus plants.

My fingers don't hurt there. I give my hands a rest from jewelry making but I think it is the warmth and dryness in the air that makes me pain free. I enjoyed for the first time this year, chocolate nachos as a dessert. An angel treated four of us to our dinners without leaving a name. Only a card with " please pay it forward " on the reverse. We will. I loved my time there and look forward to next year when we are hopefully deep in a winter that needs escaping, a winter that missed us this year.

I like the piles of gemstones and beads at the shows. I hunt and search for only the finest treasures to bring back to the shop. This year I literally reached deep into piles of cheap, imported junk to find stones worthy of bringing home. My trunk show will be worth the wait for my customers and filled with intriguing beads and stones.

I am just not one to remember at the times I am involved or having fun to take pictures. My camera may be at hand but my thought processes are definitely somewhere else! 

For now it is getting late and I am sleepy waiting for my teenager to come home so I will end this posting for this wee early morning hour. Until next time. 

It is my last night in Tucson and soon I will be heading off to dreamland. It is the end, maybe temporarily of an era for me. I have been selling in Tucson for 21 years now and I want and need a break! I am planning on taking a year or two off from doing the show down here. I'll still be shopping, playing, touristing and visiting with friends. Can not possibly give that up! I have been craving a break like this. Actually starving for a break like this and with the economy as it is and time becoming more precious and living in the creative wasteland; everything seemed to come together to make that time now. I want to spend more time crafting one of a kind pieces, work more in my shop and be home with Phil, Jake  ( even though he mostly ignores me ) and Clementine. I want to finally plant flowers in the dang pots on the porch!

I have had the best show customers and enjoy each and everyone who stops by my booth. I will be on line. I will be drifting in my own little artist world, where they know me quite well there! XO

It is 11:30 on a sunny Friday morning and I am sitting at the dining room table listening to Rod McKuen songs and thinking of my glory teenage years back in the 1970's. It is a bittersweet sadness that I am listening with a deep longing to head back in time to tell everyone I knew, how much they meant to me. When will we ever understand the meaning of how fast time moves? The seasons are nearly gone and I miss my hometown and family and high school and college classmates. I am older now, perhaps a bit wiser and I am freer with the words, " I love you. " Some days I don't think I can even say them enough. Lessons in time, and love come late in life to most of us. Occasionally with a hard won victory over fleeting days and years, we learn, remember and pass on how sweet, short and precious life is.


RIP Rod Mckuen.

The last several days here, mostly shrouded in fog, although I hear there has been sun in Seattle; I have had owls fly closely by me. Once while driving and once again while standing in the back yards, I have been delighted with their appearances. Is it a sign of things to come? Are they visiting for a reason? So close yet not close at all. I am thinking about all this and letting them be my little spirit guides.

Still busy in the studio but all the merchandise for Tucson has been packed and shipped. Set up is on Sunday and selling starts on Monday. Whew! Long, hopefully busy days await me! Now it is time to pack my clothing and the all important knitting projects and sketchbook with art supplies. I think I chose these things for a trip much more carefully than I chose clothing or cosmetics! I must have an activity with me at all times that involves the creative half of my brain.

This is a necklace made of new and old beads and hand forged sterling chain.

Happy little bracelets with sterling links.

Celtic crosses I cast in bronzes.

Sterling silver crosses & crucifixes.

My JOY charm in pewter.

This is a collection of some of the finished work that will be in my booth at the gem show in Tucson where I also hope to find some sun and time to sit out in the dessert and knit by a swimming pool. 

Today, Busy as a Bee

Working at the shop, getting ready for Tucson and still trying to be creative has kept me very busy since the holidays. I actually love doing all this and am ever so grateful that I get to make my living by being creative. I have fantasies of living off in the woods by myself in a cozy cabin with a big studio and having no place to go and just making things. Isolation when it comes to being creative and thinking through the whole design process appeals to me. I like being around people, that's part of the reason I love working in my shop, but I crave alone time too. 

Soon all will be crazy as I immerse myself in Tucson and all that it is. Friends, gems, jewelry, gathering, selling, buying, eating, sitting in some sunshine, walking near the dessert; I can hardly wait! Until then here are today's finished works.

A Charm Bracelet Story

I have a gentleman that comes into my shop to have me look over his boxes, bags and trays of junk costume jewelry. He is a sweet funny and energetic guy that is always so excited with the treasures he has collected around town, EBAY, Goodwill and the like. I rummage through it between customers and tell him if he has anything unusual or valuable and once in a while, I purchase something. He gave me a rose brooch as a New Year's present. A sweet guy indeed.

Anyhow, on his last visit as I poured through and over his treasure boxes; I came across this charm bracelet.

It has a collection of sterling charms with the dates on them running from the 1970's through the 1980's. They all say ABWA on them and some inspiring, goal setting word or words. On research it was from different events of the American Business Women's Association. Someone worked towards all these goals and achieved them. She especially achieved them during the 1970's when not many women were in business or in the corporate world. She must have been proud, felt accomplished as she added each charm to this bracelet.

I pulled the bracelet from my junk dealer and asked if I could buy it. He looked at it and said sure. When he and the customer at the counter asked why I wanted it ( was it for the sterling silver to be melted down ? ) -  I said that I felt touched by this bracelet. That someone, a woman who I have never met, worked so hard to gather these charms by her accomplishments only to have it end up in jewelry scrap. I was embraced by her journey and felt an immediate kinship with this woman who probably put this bracelet on everyday as she readied herself for her career, not just a job, and felt pride in herself. I am her sister, having been mostly self employed myself since the early 1980's.

The chain the charms are on isn't much, just plated metal, so maybe her budget never allowed for the frivolous purchase of a lovely sterling silver charm chain. I think that means she was given each of these charms as part of her journey in the business world. She earned them. She treasured them.

What made me even sadder was that she had no one to leave this bracelet to. Perhaps no daughter or granddaughter or son, to pass on her journey, her lessons. That whoever searched through her things after her death ( did she die ? ) just tossed it aside to be given as a charity donation or part of an auction.

I have this bracelet now. I treasure it. It will become part of her legend for me and a reminder of goals set and met, goals worthy of an award that is worn close to the pulse of life that runs through your body. Goals made in life, set in precious metal. I will keep it with this story, this imagined part of her story and pass it down to my own granddaughter, hopefully inspiring in her a life of accomplishment, joy, work and reward.

The bracelet has a home now and a story and a future. An inspirational journey for the next generation of American Business Women.

It is always just after Christmas is over, and New Year's Day is upon us; that I decide I am ready for the holiday. I want to start at that late date to get things ready. Ideas pop into my head and I think. " Yay, Christmas! Time to decorate. " I think my interior calendar is just a bit off!

Anyhow, I vow that this year I will make more time for my own projects. Things I want to experiment with and things I want to finish. I have all manner of jewelry and metal smithing work just waiting for me to have time to get to it. I am doing it in 2015!

Thank you my friends for the love you have shown me, the trust you put into me as a retailer, the creativity you have that so inspires me and most of all for the friendship shown me. I am ever so grateful and ever so happy! Happy New Year all!