things are brewing...

Unfortunately they aren't dyepots until tomorrow! I haven't had a chance to dye more woolies in WEEKS!!!! However I do have a few announcements not the least of which that my reception at the coffee shop is a week from tomorrow. Not really any prep for it as I'm not sure if it is gonna be much more than a meet and greet, try stuff on sort of thing but I'm looking forward to it.

In other news, I've closed the shop for a wee bit. I really needed to step back and focus on a few things that I've been trying to catch up on. I'm excited to be providing fiber for an Insubordiknit workshop with Jacey Bogg's in a few months so I've been busy prepping tiny little sample batts and goody bags for that. I also have a few swap packages and blog prizes to send out *she says as she hangs her head in embarrassment for the long delay on both counts.* I took tomorrow off so I have a glorious three days of no work to hopefully manage to get all of that completed.

I start teaching my art appreciation class again next week. I'm a bit nervous as usual when I am going into a new class. I almost think it is worse than beginning to take a new class. Maybe it's because I fumble over my words and more often forget what I am actually going to say when I'm all nervous in front of all of those people. Thankfully I only have 24 students this time around as opposed to the 31 I ended up with last time.  This is another cause of the shop being closed for a bit so I can prepare for the changes I'm making this semester. I'm really excited to try to implement more hands on work in class along with contemporary references and videos. I felt like my class responded best to those activities as opposed to me yapping on for hours for the lecture portion.

The MAJOR reason I shut down for a few weeks is because I am also working on various different new product offerings for the shop, some of which I had hoped to release some time ago but have yet to get some solid headway. There will be new fiber and fiber supply, TOOLS for the spinner, knitter, all around fiberista, AND some scrumptious new batts and yarns. Stay tuned for some previews soon! In the meantime since I hate to post with no pictures (which I painfully did in my last post!) I leave you with a shot of one of my pieces that is up at the show currently.

P.S. any unsold work will be heading to the shop. Details to follow! :D

today I....

Slept in.

Had two lovely phone conversations. One with a new friend and one with a dear old one.

Cleaned part of my studio. While if someone else walked in, it may not appear tidied,  you wouldn't believe the difference it made on my workbench. (there is empty space!!!)

Watched a movie with my family while eating pizza. (what else on a saturday night right?)

I have lots of catch up work to do except unfortunately now I'm too tired to make anything, BUT....

Tomorrow I will. 

2011 Schedule

As I started thinking about specific goals for myself this year, I realized I still hadn't updated my show schedule to be for 2011. It is now right here. :D

I am really hoping to be able to get into a few music festivals this year in Michigan so I'll keep everyone posted. I also might be doing a few art fairs, I just feel like fiber shows are where I want to be this year.

In the meantime, I've got some new ideas and lots of ambition, if I find some time somewhere in there, look out everybody!

I can has show?

My show is now up for your viewing pleasure from now until the end of January at:

Brownstone Cafe
18 1/2 Michigan Ave W
Battle Creek, MI 49017-3604

Stop in for the best coffee in town or a lovely spot of tea. :D

There will be a reception on Friday, January 28, 2011 from 4-6 P.M. There will be postcards with all the info. available later this week if you'd like to stop and pick one up.

one small bag

My beginnings as a jewelry maker began as I'm sure most girls did, stringing pony beads. I did this for a long time until I came upon the discovery that there were bead stores. Not the little section at Jo Ann's but entire shops filled with beads, baubles, clasps, and toggles for me to create more "sophisticated" jewelry. Gone were the cheap plastic beads which had entertained me for hours. They were mercilessly  shoved aside for those pretty little glass flowers and tiny fairy charms.... and a slightly higher price tag. No longer could a few bucks buy me a gigantic bag of Big Value beads, oh no.

As you may have imagined it only got worse. My tastes changed, I learned more and then it became, "Only semi precious stone beads!" and, "If it is glass it must be vintage or handmade, no exceptions!" Well at this point I would marvel at the end of a bead binge shopping trip. It was unbelievable how much money I had spent for such a small bag of goods!

All this to say that today, long past my "beading phase," I finished creating the last few pieces for my jewelry exhibit at the local coffee shop. The show has been scheduled for about 2 years at this point. They were scheduled so far out that I thought, "YEA! I have so much time to put this together now!" Fat chance!!!! I have changed my mind about what I was going to do for this show at least 3 times and therefore never really got started on what I was ACTUALLY going to do until basically the last few weeks. Big mistake with Christmas and all... Anyhow, I ended up creating pieces from deer antler and Icelandic sheep horn slices with mixed metals. The focus was on texture and allowing the natural shape of the organic slices to tell me how they wanted to be assembled.  I am VERY pleased with how it all turned out and I will certainly post pictures of everything after tomorrow when I will be hanging the show.

All this to say that today, long past my "beading phase," I have sat in my studio and created a whole new line of jewelry to be debuted this week. I packaged each piece into a tiny ziploc bag according to size and type and then placed them all together in a ziploc bag. Hours upon hours of work and it all fits into one small bag.