Looking Up

Thank you all for your support and words of comfort. The story is not mine to tell but all is well. I've just come back from nearly 3 weeks with my daughter in law and grand daughter. We spent two days packing, two days travelling, and another two days unpacking in the big move to Ft Campbell.

It was my absolute pleasure and delight to see the world through the eyes of a 3 year old. Lying on your back looking up through an oak tree with the promise of spring in its green leaf buds takes on a whole new meaning when you do that with a toddler. Life is good. Life holds magic.

Being 3 years old is serious business when you get out the side walk chalk. There is no thought of colouring outside the lines. You just make your mark. You do it with no preconceived notion of how it is supposed to be.

Kicking a ball is an experience of wild abandon. Your whole body is involved, your arms pin wheel, you jump, you fly!

Going down the twisty slide is sometimes best in the arms of your mother. Life is absolutely packed with newness and beauty. I hope I can hold onto this. Because being three is magic.

We've got the 'girls' settled into their new home. All that's missing now is Daddy. He should be home from Afghanistan in a month. Me? I feel so priviliged to be part of this lovely family. I miss them so much and it has only been a little more than a day since I left.

I'm slowly getting back into the swing of things here at home. Many ideas, many changes of our own on the horizon.

Thank you all for being there! I'll be catching up with you over the next couple of days.

Sometimes the best thing for your heart is a break

Sometimes our hearts can only accomodate so much and we need to focus on the things that are most important for our emotional and spiritual health. Our family is going through something of a crisis right now. Things that will work out in time, things will be good when we sail through these rough seas. For me that means taking time away from this blog for a couple of weeks while I hold onto the people I love the most in this world.

We've circled ourselves in love, this small family of mine. We will be all right. We just don't know how things will unfold. So for now, the most important thing for me is to focus all of my heart on my family.

Thank you all for being with me on this blog. I do so hope you will join me again when I am back.

Kindness and hugs

BTW - A nearly clean slate!

Heather Powers of Humble Beads, created this wonderful idea of showing what's on your bead table on Wednesdays.  These are bronze pieces I just pulled out of the kiln late last night. They've been tumbled and are patiently waiting for me to come in and put patina and other goodness on them to make them all shiny and pretty.

Often late to the party, this is my first time posting my bead table. But I have a very good excuse. Until Sunday night I couldn't actually see my bead table because it was shockingly buried in piles of things that the chaos creator in me refused to acknowledge as an unsightly disgraceful mess.

I spent much of Saturday and all day Sunday sorting, organizing, cleaning and generally grumbling to myself that I should do this more often. Like clean up after myself every day. Look at that would you. Vast expanses of useable space! A virtual paradise of tidiness. It's a clean slate and I vow to keep it this way. I've even picked up after myself 2 days in a row. Mum would be so proud.

This is the piece that came out of the kiln that I am most pleased about. (Never mind the carbon buried under my thumb nail) It's a bead that did not collapse. Yeah! Now if I could just get the shot from the tumbler out of it so it's more of bead than a rattle, life would be nearly complete.

Happy Wednesday!

What's on your bead table?

Bead Soup Sneak Peek and an Award!

The time is near, very near, and more than 200 fabulous people will be posting their bead soup creations on Saturday, 26 February. I even have mine done! Photographed and ready to go!!! I am ahead of the schedule, at least for me. So plan for a leisurely Saturday of visiting these wonderful people who've turned out for this wonderful event organized by the oh so lovely Lori at Pretty Things. You can find a link to every thing in the world, OK, everhing in the world related to the Bead Soup Blog Party right here. And on Saturday, an unusual blogging day for me, you will find links to all 200 plus participants right here on my very own blog.  Yes, and my very own Bead Soup reveal.

(Shhh, my finished piece is a lot more done looking that that teaser photo up there. It even has a surprise thrown to me by Bead Soup partner Melissa Meman. Challenged I was by a bounty of goodies to choose from! So do come back and see how I solved the riddle.)

I got doubly blessed with a blog award today, by my friends Gunilla and Mary Ann. Gosh, golly, am I loved or what? Sooo part of this award is to reveal 7 things about me that you may not know and presumably might find interesting, if not amusing. So here we go....

1. I don't like breakfast. I eat left overs from the night before. I like soup for breakfast.

2. I like breakfast for dinner, cereal, pancakes, scrambled eggs are all fair game at supper time.

3. I love my dogs just as much as I love my children. My children are happy with that because they love my dogs just as much as they love me.

4. I am short, really short, like not all that much over 5 feet tall but not quite that wide. I do have a tall attitude and feel like I am about 5 foot 10 inches tall.

5. I don't much care for brocolli even though I know it is good for me.

6. I really, seriously really, like the combination of purple and green.

7. All of my dogs and cats have been named for family members.

Now, this is probably  much more information than you probably wanted to know about me. But it is all true! (Sadly). I am supposed to pass this on to 15 people. Seriously, there are so many bloggers that I admire. I know this is a total and complete cheat but I'm just leaving it all to you. Yes, broken chain, I know and I'll suffer those consequences silently.

But do go give some blog love to my friends, Mary Ann and Gunilla.

Elvis is alive, well, and 8 feet tall

It's true! I have seen Elvis. I've just come back from my daughter and son in law's wedding reception. They were married by Elvis in Las Vegas on Valentines Day. I've seen the video and Elvis was wearing a very form fitting black outfit, covered in sequins, playing the guitar, singing, and walking my daughter down the aisle. My daughter may be tiny at about 5 feet tall but I swear to you Elvis lookied to be about 8 feet tall. Maybe it was the platform shoes?

Doesn't she look pretty? Derek isn't too bad either. Yes, I know, I may be slightly biased. That's them on the way to their wedding in a pretty swanky car the make of which I don't know. But I do know a swanky car when I see one.

 They got married here at Graceland Wedding Chapel in a small ceremony with just them and their best friends as witnesses. I figure if Graceland was good enough for Bon Jovi, it might just be good enough for my daughter. No photos yet of the actual ceremony. They are on order and I promised not to link to the video. The truth is I wouldn't know how to do that but I felt pretty virtuous making that promise that I knew I was a shoe in to keep.

This is my favourite photo of them taken back at their hotel just after the ceremony. It's their favourite photo too. I actually liked it slightly better before they cropped it down. Up there on the top left of the original photo is a neon sign, yellow letters on deep blue background, "Peep Show" with fairly tame graphics. However, they didn't feel that the sign was in keeping with the spirit of the occasion, so snap, out it went.

We are so pleased to welcome Derek to our family. In less than 6 months I've gone from having a son and daughter to adding a son in law, daughter in law, and grand daughter. I couldn't be happier!

Blessings, Sarah and Derek!

Iteration and Intersection

Recently, Deryn at Something Sublime, wrote a post, What Not to Do, something she had told herself she would never do. It's about copyright and making things your own and it is a wonderful post. It's a prickly topic which I think Deryn has done a lovely job of addressing. It's a very supportive and positive post and definitely worth reading and giving some thought.

As it turns out, I was in the middle of making drawings for a new design. I was definitely inspired by a zen tangle tile I had seen done by another artist. I thought it might be interesting to take you through my design process, at least the on paper part, and then show you where the inspiration came from.

Rarely, maybe never, does a design spring from my pen to paper to a model in one step. It's an interative process for me. I draw out what I see in my mind. Make little adjustments. Start over. Redraw, refine. Each time I put pen to paper it seems that I see something new. A little tweak that might feel better to me.

This is the final drawing from which I made my mold that I used in ceramic and metal clay.

This is the tile that I loved, drawn by Christina Vandervlist shown here on her blog. See there that flower pattern in her tile? I love that. I'd thought about doing something as a texture plate and then as I was working on that concept when the idea to just do a flower seemed to work for me.

The intersection part of this whole thing is that when I contacted Christina to ask if I could post her tile, I found out that she is a bead weaver. I only knew her from the zen tangle community. She's been a bead weaver for 37 years, taught at Bead & Button and Bead Fest. Her work is published and her Traveling Spirits have been featured on the cover of Beadwork. I love and admire all things bead weaving and seed beads. How extraordinary is it that I would be inspired to make a jewelry component by a drawing made by a jewelry maker that I've never met?

In Deryn's post she references a published letter by Heather Wheaton, editor of Art Jewelry magazine. Apparently, there are all sorts of rules of thumb for how much of an alteration makes something your own, 10%, 20%, 30%.....  One of Deryn's DO's is to "Allow that transformation to take place and release the original artistic voice within."  Good advice!

As visual people we aborb images from everywhere. I think it's important to recognize and acknowledge that . For me, iteration is a process that allows me to absorb those images and let them come out as my own. In that process, I have time to reflect on what I am saying, what resonates with me. And I'll tell you with absolute certainty, that with the bitter cold we've been having, flowers and blossoms definitely resonate with me.

Thanks Christina for your lovely field of flowers and the inspiration.

The miracle of Walter

Walter is a cat. Walter used to be our cat. When we left Melbourne 7 years ago we faced a very hard decision. This dear sweet boy, all curled up in a perfect circle had a health condition, cardiomyopathy. He would not survive a 24 hour journey from Australia to our new home in the United States.  In fact, it was unlikely that he would live much more that 6 months.

I remember well when Walter came into our lives. I was sick in bed with bronchitis. Our neigbor came to the door wondering if we would take in a kitten that got hung up in their shrubs. It was mewling and their puppy was having nothing of this intruder. Sweet Peter said, ah umm, and me, from what felt like my death bed, called out, 'yes, of course, we'll have that kitten.' Oh, so very long ago.

Walter went to live with friends that were generous enough to take in a cat that maybe had no much time left. They loved him, he got to watch cartoons every day with their wee little toddler. We lost touch and I've often wondered about Walter and of course our friends.

Just a little while ago, we got photos of Walter from our friends. See those ears up there? We had to have Walter's ears amputated because he had sun cancer on the tips. This is a recent photo of Walter. He is now 17 years old, 7 years older than anyone thought he would be. An absolute miracle that this old boy has made it to this grand old age.

Thanks Em, Rob, and William! We still love Walter and feel oh, so, blessed that he has a loving home with you.

Happy weekend!