Bead Show Weekend - here we go!

Yippee Kai Aye A - says Lisa who is watching me post this. I have been incommunicado all week due to this rotten and unexpected cold. I feel like I am awake from a long snooze and although I am not quite well yet, it is time for the Port Townsend Bead Market this weekend. We, Lisa and I, are holding it in a new location this year; the third floor of the old Elks building, above the Silverwater Cafe. The view from that room is spectacular! You can see as far as you dare and believe me, the view to the water and beyond is awesome! The show opens tomorrow at noon and runs through Sunday at 4. I hope to see everyone there to admire the view and the beads!



A charm bracelet I assembled with some of the new chain I have purchased for this weekend's show. I just used all the odds and ends floating on my desk but I think the color palette works well.

Self Portrait Friday

Taking pictures of myself late on a Friday night after working a full day and when I am tired is a challenge. The first challenge is to once again familiarize myself with my appearance. Vanity knows me well. I expect to see in a picture the me that was so long ago before I married more than once, had children and stepchildren, lived a life. I look for that naive youth that used to hang around me, that used to be me. Where has she gone? she has done many things, seen many things, experienced the very ripeness of life and that experience shows in the soft wrinkles of her face, the gentle folds of skin, the graying of her hair, the weight of her body and the ache of her well used joints, not the least of which are her fingers. Fingers that crafted and created and forged and drew and hammered and painted the very things that made her living. Should I be ashamed that I am aging? Should I fear going into the later years of my life? I am proud of me, even when those most close to me question what and who I am. I am pleased that although it sometimes hurts to take these pictures; I am beginning to SEE me, and all that I am and will be. What an adventure!

Earrings for the Port Townsend Show

All day yesterday I made multi-dangle earrings out of my silver pieces for the Port Townsend Bead Market. The bead market is next Friday - Sunday, Mother's Day weekend in downtown PT at Studio 49 on the 3rd floor above the Silverwater Cafe. I use doing a show as the perfect excuse to assemble jewelry that is more complicated than the pieces I often make for the shop.Laboring time on these pieces is a luxury and very rewarding. I am hoping everyone finds these earisistable! Seriously, doing a bead event on Mother's Day weekend helps me ease myself away from the longing I feel for my mother and grandmothers. I miss them and playing with beads and friends and customers takes the sting out of the day.

I Try to Keep the Blog Not Political but....

Wall Photos
YOU WANT TO GET MAD? We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, but now you get mad! You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President. You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy. You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got ousted. You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.. You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us. You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war. You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq. You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people. You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans. You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden. You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed. You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown. You didn’t get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich. You didn’t get mad when, using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage which cost over 20 percent more for basically the same services that Medicare provides. You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark. You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans… oh hell no. AND NOW YOU’RE MAD !
By: Christian Struzan

Done? Or Almost Done?

This is a painting that I have been working on; flowers in a sunny setting. When I am looking at the piece on the easel in the studio, I say that it is done. I am happy. Satisfied. Anymore work on it would take it beyond what I am doing with the image or colors. But then, oh then, I take a picture of it to post and it feels undone. This may be showing back up in my blog as a changed composition later on.

When I work on a piece, it sits on my easel or a tabletop or windowsill in the studio and I run at it in spare moments and paint here, there, add a line, place a color, until it says done. Sometimes a piece will linger for months and months, as the thought of its completion is in my head from morning to night. In moments both expected and unexpected, the right final marks, color, texture or image will pop into my head and I will be able to finish the piece.

What I do know for certain is that the flowers in this painting will become charms in the near future.

I have had the sweetest most relaxing day here at home. I had the entire place to myself!! Now that is so rare, I could not figure out what to do first! It was even a pretty day and the house was surrounded by new mown lawn, weeded flower beads and blooming wall flowers and daffodils.Blessings all!

Self Portrait Friday Rolls Around Again

I had my camera locked in my studio and the keys to the studio locked safely in the shop in town so I needed to take a picture with my laptop's camera. Jacob saw what I was doing and said if I was doing a self portrait, he needed to be in it! Of course, he buttered me up by saying I did not have a double chin, so who could resist?

Seriously, I am enjoying the challenge of self portraits and the awakening of myself that they bring about. I find myself thinking about them all week long and examining my feelings towards them. I still do not like having my picture taken, even by me as it is very difficult to not see before me the image that is carried in my head. Who knows where this inner path will lead? I am walking carefully around personal land mines and demons on this journey of self.

On another note, I can not let Phil mow the lawn because too many plump chickadees are feasting on all our bloomed out dandelion seeds! They are so wonderful to watch!

FAME!

I know, it is a bit of being a braggart but remember the song, " FAME" ? " Remember my name, I want to live forever.... " Disco days from so long ago that even now when I think of something I have done and it is in print; that song runs through my head.

Truly, I feel blessed, excited and grateful ( to Interweave Press & Beadwork magazine ) to have included some of my charms in their Editor's Picks 2010. I am thrilled to the point of clucking that my chicken charm is included in the layout. I still get such a charge out of drawing, painting and crafting chickens. Chickens and crows are my two favorite birds!

Now, I can hardly wait for the new charms to be back from the casters and the platers. It will be another thrill to unveil them at Bead & Button in June!