Even as I sit in my newly air conditioned home; I am longing for fall. For cooler days, bright, crisp, cloud filled skies and rain! I have so missed the rain. We are lingering in a heavy brown, dry drought. It is sad to see all the brown and I hope what I am seeing are dormant plants, grasses and trees; not things that will never spring back to life once we get rain. If, we get rain. I am feeling like the rain is a far away, nearly lost friend that I can't quite reach out to.

All these years of living here and this is the first time my home has ever been air conditioned. Never needed it here as we had our reliable breezes off the strait waters every day and the skies were filled with rain, cooling rain. Now, with this the hottest summer on record, I am feeling decadent and indulged with air conditioning. Two pregnant summers here and I never had the need for this a/c. Climate change is definitely rearing its ugly head. I am mad about climate change and I can make adjustments in my life to help diminish these changes but my impact is so minimal on the big picture. Must not let myself get into this spiral of anxiety and change coming to the world through climate change. Just breathe.

Anyhow, I am inside making treasure tubes for the lobby shop. After 23 plus years of having the shop, I have bits of this and that left around so I fill tubes for embellishing projects. I could just dump things into the big tubes but no, I have to make them just so! Color families, complimentary textures, some of the beads, a few buttons, bits of ribbon and yarn, leftover fabric; give me such pleasure. Pleasure I am now sharing and selling to my customers. Incidentally, I have a name for the lobby shop now after 13, 14 ? years..... Embellishments, The Lobby Shop. A name just to the point.

I am cool, content, feeling creative so it must be time for a knitting break. Happy Blue Moon on this sizzling

Today in the dining room.

night.

A close up. $ 4.95 a tube! 

So it is summer. Days of intense, surrounding heat have finally given way to some cooler temperatures and a bit of rain. I miss the rain and I can not stop staring at the clouds! Clouds vanish from the sky most summer days and I swear if I lived in New Mexico; I would never stop looking at the sky. Deja vu!

I work a lot in the shop these days and when I am not being all people centered there; I can be found in the studio making the jewelry to fill in the spaces that jewelry has sold from in the shop. I love all the excitement and stories in the air from the people visiting town. It's like a little party every day in a place I like to be - the bead shop!

Cherries are another good thing about summer! I can eat them for every snack and at every meal. I could turn into a cherry for how many I have eaten and lusted after. Tonight's dinner was loaded with fresh vegetables from the Sunday Chimicum farmer's market and the green beans were an absolute delight!

I am leaving you all now for a nice long sleep this night . In closing, here are a few pictures of what is transpiring here.

I am sure that many of my customers think that I have all my beads neatly organized in little divided boxes, all stacked comfortably on a shelf or shelves in my studio. Well, here is the big scoop - I do not keep them organized in the traditional beady ways. They are grouped like my brain thinks and designs in a loud song of color and pattern, texture, light and dark, large and small. All shapes and sizes, all colors and patterns. I design like my brain thinks. All at once, creating to the music in my head and the notes that run through my hands.

Last night, around midnight, I turned on the Christmas lights, the pretty blue LED ones and the twinkly white ones, threw on a light jacket and sat out on the porch watching the night stars. Frogs were singing all about. Planes crossed the sky with their blinking lights and the air was cool, sweet, smelling of hot days to come this summer. I saw a shooting star! Feeling enchanted, I sat back and breathed the silent prayer of thanksgiving that many mothers breathe during June as our children graduate school and move on in life. It was with bittersweet sorrow and anticipation that I looked at that night sky and thought of how quickly the days of my son being a little boy had flown past me. I turned, blinked and he is 18. On the precipice of a future that I will not always be a part of. He is leaving me now, a bit at a time, finding his own way in the world. So yes, it is a happy sorrow that surrounds my heart and knocks at the door of my soul.

The other day I was grooving in the shop wearing my brand new 100% cotton, bateau neckline, three quarter length sleeve, lightly striped tunic tee shirt. I felt as if I were on vacation on the Mediterranean Coast. Feeling summery and happy and loving what I do for a living and playing in the shop when someone said to me, " Is that a new shirt? " I smiled and said, " Yes! Isn't it great! Only four dollars at the thrift shop! What a find! " She looked at me and said, " I think you must be very brave. " I had to stop and think for a moment. She actually was thinking that here I was, a slightly larger woman wearing horizontal stripes! Oh my! The universe is collapsing and folding in upon itself. Stripes! On someone not at all thin! Was I being brave? No, I was loving me, loving the shirt I was wearing and feeling good. I told her, " If you've got it; flaunt it. "

Would we say something like this to a thin woman? " Those vertical stripes make you look like a flagpole...."  or to a man, " Wow, those stripes accentuate your belly. " No, people feel it is okay to insult a bigger woman. The last legal discrimination. Just when you think we as a society are moving forward; we really are not. What would you have done?

By the way, I am wearing that shirt again this week. What's even better? I have it in two other colors, too. HAHAHHAHA

It is raining here. Absolutely pouring. The wind is still blowing and the big brass bell in my alder tree out front is still dinging. I love it. This is a Northwest spring afternoon and it is fabulous! I can nestle into my studio and get a bunch of things made and done for the shops. I feel like cooking so after a quick run to the grocery, I am baking potatoes and chicken. Phil is going to love this chicken, made one of his favorite ways with a ranch dressing on them. Tangy and moist.

I used to always use Tuesdays to make my own work. To experiment and make things and artwork that did not have a necessarily retail selling price. I have let those days slip away and Tuesdays have become another work day. That ends with this Tuesday, the 21st. From now on Tuesday is going to be MY day and I will just get to play. I will make no appointments, no schedules, no set projects. Just my mind exercising its creativity and stretching wings into unexplored territory.

The nice thing about the rain at this moment? I finished knitting a baby afghan. I have worked at it for the last couple of years always putting it down to take up a new project because I did not know anyone having a baby. Today, drum roll, I finished it! My first all cotton knitting!

I also have a drawing I am working on and although it is a long way from being finished; I am really loving these new pencils! Lots of color and a soft, creamy feel. I can't remember what they are called but I love them .

This is my pencil table. A sunny yellow, vintage formica table. Nice and small with drop leaf sides for my studio. Perfect size. Perfect funk. I like my pencils being so close to where I like to work. So many ideas in my head now. I think summer will bring more drawing time. Maybe even time to play.

Many people come and go in your life. Each leaving a bit of themselves with you, imparting lessons and shared experiences to accompany you on your life's journey. Every time I sit down to draw, I think of this and the many people who have passed my way. Sometimes I can feel them over my shoulder watching me work. I am never alone even though I work alone. It is the people in my life and the people that have come and gone, that enrich each and every drawing. 

It is eleven twenty five on this Tuesday night. The house is almost quiet and Clementine sleeps at my feet, ready to go to bed as soon as I say it is bedtime. I am waiting up late to give Jacob his penicillin at midnight hearing him groan in his room as he turned in his sleep. I am surfing the internet on a tidal wave of useful and useless information. I am dreaming of a tiny house in the middle of no where and building a different life but then maybe not as another website draws me into a different world. Another place.

Suddenly, without any warning or sound, the Easter lily on the dining room table just over my left shoulder pops into open flowers and sends out the most heavenly scent reminding me of spring, and Easter, rebirth and home when my dad every year came home with an Easter lily for my mom from the grocery.

So pretty. So scent-ful sending me off to a time before I was this adult I am now. Sending me to bed to dream of remembering.