lo and behold

My 100th post went up over the weekend when I was in New Jersey.  No time to do it justice while I was on the road, but I’ve been thinking about how to mark this milestone for a while, so here it is:  the 102nd post in honor of the 100th. 

I’ve been trying to tell more people that I write a blog.  Like at the class in New Jersey, I mentioned it at lunch.  But then, when someone says, “Oh, what’s your blog about?”, I get sort of stuck.

“It’s about turning 50.”

“Really – when are you turning 50?”

“Umm, in 3 years.” 

And then I get a strange look, like what is there to say about turning 50 for three years?

Or, “It’s about my life.” 

And then there’s just silence. 

I could say, “It’s about becoming an artist in midlife,” but it feels pretentious.

I tried, “It’s about making glass beads,” and I have to admit - even at a glass class - this answer did not inspire enthusiasm. 

Instead, what ends up happening is I get into a long winded, twisty explanation about how I freaked out when I turned 45, and how all of my professional decisions of the last 10 years have been about prioritizing the care of my children, and now it’s all a big deal when I decide to go away for the weekend, and now I want to prioritize my creative life, and when you’re almost 50 and your kids are almost grown-up (comparatively, at ages 8 and 11) it feels like midlife and things start changing, so I started to write a blog . . . At the end of it all, I still feel like I sound flimsy and pathetic and no one really knows what I’m talking about.  I’m not looking to be talked out of that feeling or to be encouraged into feeling better.  It’s just my truth at this moment.

In any case, I like writing the blog, and I know there are a few people out there who like reading it, so I just need to get my elevator speech down better.  Or look at it a little differently.

I follow a lovely blog called Standing in the Shadows which is written by a neighbor of mine in the town down the road. In a recent post she reflected on her first year as a blog writer: 

I’ve also struggled with the fact that my blog—like my writer life beyond the blog—is not neatly focused upon one topic. I do not write about adoption or pink boys or the planet or reproductive justice exclusively. I’ve had to accept that I don’t quite fit in a single category and that this potentially makes for slower going (you know, in that writing career sense). At the very same time, I think I’ve accepted myself as a person whose interests and passions are varied. I’ve pretty much settled—almost more comfortably through this process of blogging—upon the fact that I write what I write and I’ll get where I get, which will be, uh, somewhere.

That seemed at the time I read it, and now, to be a pretty good summation of both my dilemma and my conclusion.  Thanks, Sarah. 

I have a few thoughts about things I might try in this blog going forward: 

• I may try to write more reflectively and less as documentation.
• I would like to write more about my children and my experience as their parent, but I struggle with respecting their privacy.
• I would like to write more about midlife – the body, the mind, the memory, the marriage, but here, too, I am not sure how personal and exposed I want to be, or if this is the place to do it.   
• I am so naturally a words person that I also want to use the blog to develop my visual side. I have the camera now and I want to add posts that are completely, or mostly, photos.
• I like doing giveaways and contests, but with the last one, I found that I am terrible at the follow through. I would like to improve that. 

And now, I hope you have read this far, because there are two presents to celebrate this 100th post celebration.  First, I have finally loaded up the LINKS tab at the top of the blog.  The other blogs listed are among the ones that I enjoy and admire.  There are more, for sure, and now that I know how work that page, I will add more as they come.  That’s my present to the blog (as if it is separate from me), and to the readers who stop here.

And to those readers who stop here – the ones who come once and the ones who come back – thank you. If you have never left a comment, please do.  I would like to meet.   

And lastly,  KELLA of Kella’s Creative Wishes.  I knew you had a blogshop but I hadn’t realized until just a few days ago that you have a bloggy-blog, too.  You have commented here more than anyone, and I am so touched by your interest and attention and enthusiasm.  Send me a comment with your direct e-mail and mailing address (I won’t publish them) and I will send you a present!  Just like that! 

Here we go – onward to 200!  I still won’t be fifty, but who cares?!

I just realized that in My Own Personal Fake Graduate School, I forgot to plan vacations.  No spring break coming up?!?  No intersession between semesters?!?  I am going to need to talk with the Registrar or a Dean and get that changed.  I’m getting a little burned out – or maybe it’s because I’m writing this just before bedtime.

Classes:

• Registered for Marbles, Buttons, and Beads with Heather Trimlett at Blue Moon Glassworks in Austin, TX.  Marble class got cancelled b/c not enough enrollees.  Negotiated a day-long private class with Jill Symons instead.  So, three days of glass class coming up in April. 
• The decisions and planning and emotion around the class in Austin was so huge, it’s worth at least two bullet points. 
• Next:  I am taking a weekend class with Kristina Logan in May. I cannot imagine better preparation (Heather, Jill, Kristina) for a summer of torching.  

Reading:

• Read Blogging for Bliss and discussed it here. 
• Bought a copy of Totally Twisted.
• Next:  not sure yet.  I may go back to some of my old books like Passing the Flame to study technique.

Blogging:

• 13 posts in January, 14 posts in February, and a whopping 23 posts on March! 
• Updated my About page with a photo. Still there is a second photo I want to add.
• Next: get a new camera.  Even if it’s just another point-and-shoot.  A point and shoot is bad enough to begin with, but a broken point and shoot is just out of the question.  And constantly borrowing the camera we bought my daughter for her birthday just isn’t fair. 

Studio:

• Finally:  met with Jim, our beloved contractor and carpenter. Discussed two options:  1) moving the studio into a finished room in our basement, or 2) building a shed out back. 
• Next:  Talk to some folks in Amherst government about permits and regs relating to business space in my home.  Continue to learn about venting and torch.  Look into oxygen concentrators when I am in Austin and at Carlisle.   

Making:

• Made necklace.  New original design.  Great experience.  Very happy with resulting product. 
• Got Isabel to string a bunch of beads for bracelets so I have lots of portable projects for the plane ride to Austin (see classes above)
• Got back behind the torch for the first time since November.  Spent a few afternoons at Open Studio at Snow Farm.  Cranked up the torch in my garage.  Ran the kiln a few times.  Feels great to be back on the horse. 

• Made great progress on the elusive sphere that I long for – the marble mold!  
• Next:  Torch as much as I can.  Go where it takes me.  Be present and work hard in my classes. 

Professional/Networking:

• Finally joined the International Society of Glass Beadmakers (IGSB). 
• Registered for the IGSB Gathering in Rochester, NY in July.  I’ll be there for about four days.  I’m a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing, but what the heck.  Jumpin’ in with both feet. 
• Joined a local newly-formed group called Artisans of Western Massachusetts. Will go to my first meeting in April. 
• Got my Facebook profile updated and added Friends.  Started to use the site regularly.  Jury is still out on whether I think it’s a good thing.  But it has been fun.
• First time – I entered a contest!  Art Bead Scene Color Challenge.  They also have challenges every month, so maybe I will do another one.  Or maybe I will next send something to a publication. 
• I had hoped to set up my Artfire store and do some selling for the Mother’s Day/Graduation gift season. I know it’s a good idea, but I could not do it.  Not without a more functional camera.  I feel bad about this because I really wanted to do it.  Perhaps I can open in September for the holiday season.
• Next:  My focus is going to change over the next two months.  I am moving from winter to spring work mode which means more time at the torch, less time at the bead table.  More hands-on time, less time in books and on the computer.  I am ready to turn myself away from the hard push of self-propulsion I’ve been on for the past three months, and move toward being more open, more receiving of what I can absorb from other <real> people rather than just what I make for myself.  I feel like I can slow down a little and breathe.  It feels welcome to place myself in others’ hands for a while.  My Own Personal Fake Graduate School becomes My Own Personal Real Graduate School for just a little bit.

Health:

• I am pretty much sustaining morning water ritual.
• I am exercising moderately 2 – 3 times a week.
• Experimented with getting up early to write and exercise.  Worked OK, but I am not committed to it right now. 
• Next:  Get back to taking notes in Health Journal.

Part of the motivation for my new time management scheme is that I need an hour a day for my blog.  Since January, I have been dedicated to posting frequently, and I have to say, I get it now.  I get why it’s fun to blog. I get how it becomes a habit and a part of your life. I get how blog readers become friends. 

When I was a teacher of writing, I told my students that “the more you write, the more will you have to say.”  I was a disciple of the Natalie Goldberg, Donald Murray, National Writing Project school of thought:  writing is a practice and also a method of discovery, not just a result of learning.  

The thing is, I never really got to practice the practice myself. The closest I came is when I was in my MFA program for poetry at Sarah Lawrence College, but I never really had the time when I was a teacher, nor ironically, have I ever been very effective at keeping a journal. 

Now I get that this blog is a midlife gift to myself, one of the tools my life has been leaning toward, but which I have never quite reached.  Odd that choosing a visual art has also brought me back to my oldest and deepest love: writing. Also, since I opened a freelance writing business nearly 8 years ago, I have thought of myself as a “pen for hire.”  I can write about anything and do a decent job, but I did not ever, in that business, succeed in both earning money and writing anything I really cared about.  I did occasionally land assignments that really turned me on, but not sustainably.  I am not in the business of blogging, but I am writing for both myself and an audience and that works for me.  

All that said, I recently read Blogging for Bliss by Tara Frey.  It’s a great guide for someone starting up a blog, gives good overview information about the kinds of decisions you have to make: the technical platform, choosing a name, making a banner.  The book also provides a good blueprint for keeping a blog going:  establishing your voice, crafting photos and images, drawing traffic.  For me, one of the best parts of the book are the profiles of other bloggers that are woven into each section. Even though I think of myself as a part of the “creative blogger” community, most of the folks in the book were new to me, which meant I could also go online and hop around among them for a few – or a hundred – hours.  I guess, in reality, “the bloggers in my neighborhood” are more specifically jewelry oriented than the general crafters in the book.  Also, a big part of Tara’s interest is vintage stuff, and I am not drawn in that direction at all.

One of the puzzling things I read in Blogging For Bliss is the following statement in a chapter called “Beauty and the Blog:”  

For my own blog, I decided to take down my fancy sidebar decorations and just be me.  I’m not a plain Jane by any means, but I like things simple, casual, and elegant, whether it’s my home, my clothes, or my blog.  After making this change, readership doubled and I was getting thousands of hits a day from all over the world.

Tara shows a screenshot of her blog when it was called Bella Pink and was filled with visual froufrou, and then she shows a  shot of the “after” design for Tara Frey: Typing Out Loud.  I love the cleaner look she evolved to, but of course, that’s me – I always choose bold, colorful, and clear over frilly, fancy, and cute. But when she says her traffic doubled after the redesign, it sounds like one action caused the other.  And that can’t be.  There had to be many different factors that came together and boosted her readership like that.  And if she’s saying that readers in general like a cleaner look, I don’t get why so many of the other bloggers featured in the book are visually of the Bella Pink variety.  I mean, I agree with her:  as a reader I do not like cluttered visuals in a blog. I love striking photos, I like a design that’s cohesive, and I hate dark or black backgrounds.  Sometimes, I have liked the content in a blog whose design I hated, and unfortunately, the design wins out.  I just can’t fight the graphics to read the words.  So, I while I like the opportunity in this book to hear how other bloggers got started, chose their names, and made a blogging a part of their lives, I think you have to also look carefully at the profiles and not take each one as a good example of design. 

And now that I’ve just said all that, I’m going to try and turn a fresh eye to my own blog.  If you think there are any distracting design elements, please feel free to let me know.  I am definitely still working on it.

My daughter Isabel reached into the hat and pulled out a name: 

Adrienne Campbell  - Yeah!  You won the surprise giveaway.

My daughter Rachel reached into the hat and pulled out a name: 

Kate from Organic Odysseys – Yeah!  You won a bead crochet bracelet. 

Please get in touch, and we’ll work out the details.  If the bracelet I originally posted isn’t the right size or color, there are lots of options. 

Special thanks, too, to everyone who entered by adding my RSS feed to your blog reader.   The best part (for me) is that hopefully we’ll stay connected and a bloggy friendship will grow.  

This was the first give-away I’ve done on my blog, and I liked it!  I want to do it more; I’m thinking maybe once a month.   One blog I follow, The Vintage Pearl, gives things away all the time, and I love the spirit behind it . She says, “Let’s give one away!” and I hear the generosity and fun in her voice.  I’ll take her as my model. 

And, I’ve been reading about all that One World One Heart stuff. WOW!  I thought about participating in the event, but it seemed overwhelming.  Next year, though.  Talk about giveaways! 

Happy Tuesday!  

Let me just say, I think I visited 50 blogs yesterday.  It was like eating potato chips, it was a feast, it was a drug;  I just couldn’t stop.  I was bleary-eyed, my tired fingertips bleeding, and I just kept going.  One more . . .Just one more . . .Just one more.  I kept thinking I was close to the end, and then I find another and another that I hadn’t yet seen. 

And let me just say, I’m having one of the happiest hangovers I’ve ever had.  Thank you again, Lori Anderson, for such wonderful opportunity. 

Over the next few posts, I’d like to reflect more in depth on some of the art and artists I met during this blog fun.  Since I’m treating this whole period in my life as a personal art school, I really enjoy the process of gathering other artists into my fold and thinking about how I am like them and how I am different.  I feel like it all contributes to my own sense of voice and vision in what I’m doing. 

So, of course, every single piece of jewelry I saw was lovely.  Really.  Not a dud in the crowd :).  But this one photo keeps coming back to my mind. 

This necklace was made by Cindy Wimmer using beads she got from Lyn Foley.  I would love to hold it in my hand, to see how heavy it feels, to see how it moves.  I like that it’s a substantial piece, but it’s also trim, and short.  I can’t really figure out how big those gemstones in the back really are, and I don’t think Cindy mentioned what gauge wire she used.  She called that wire technique “chunky herringbone weave” so I can investigate it from there.  I am also simply enchanted by those empty links between the lampwork and the gemstones.  I don’t know why, but I think they are brilliant. 

As an aspiring lampwork artist, I know that I want to make jewelry with my beads.  I also know that I want the beads to be the main attraction.  I love sterling, and I love glass and silver, but I don’t like the way, for example, the sterling beads in a Troll bracelet (and others of those variety) compete with the glass.  I also don’t love too many glass beads, one on top of another (though I have definitely seen exceptions which I will talk about later). This necklace seems to strike the perfect balance.  The sterling is there in service to the beads, yet it is unique and beautiful in its own right. 

One thing I tried on my Bead Soup necklace was making my own jump rings.  I simply did not have the size I wanted, so I quick did some coiling and cutting.  I cannot say they were successful at all.  The cut edges were a ragged mess and I felt like I was ruining my wire cutters, even though I’ve bought what I think are good ones.  I’ve been eyeing a class at Snow Farm by metalsmith Joy Raskin, and now I’m seriously thinking that it may be my elective this year. 

I still have thirty-ish blogs to visit and I’m sure I will get to every one! 

PS.  RSS my blog before February 15 and tell me in a comment that you did it, so I can enter you in my giveaway. 

I’m getting very excited to see all the creations that will be revealed on February 10th at the Bead Soup Virtual Party.  Eighty-four bloggers are playing along; it will probably take me days see them all – and I do want to see them ALL. 

My bead soup came from Mary Harding.  I let the ingredients simmer for a few days and then began to make components -like the way a soup is better if you sauté the onion, carrots, and celery first instead of just throwing it all into the liquid to boil.  I wanted to work Mary’s beads into my style.  I really admire designers like Lori Anderson whose jewelry can range from Goth to romantic to bright and whimsical to organic and subtle.  I am not a designer who is adept at many different looks; rather I am one with a signature style (if I can be so bold as to say that about myself at this point) and I want all of my pieces to be somewhat recognizable within a style.  Right now, I would say that bead crochet is one of my signature components.  So I went at it:

The one in the back is not bead crochet but that piece of rope will be used in a similar way.  That’s all for now!!

I also decided that in honor of my many new blog friends, I am going to do a giveaway – my first ever.  Since I consider this stage of my artistic life to be more about learning and developing skills than about selling, I love to GIVE my jewelry as gifts and surprises.  One gift is the bead crochet bracelet below, and a second winner will get a surprise.  Here’s how you can enter:

1.  Sign up for my RSS feed so we can stay connected after the party ends.

2.  Leave me a comment telling me that you’ve done it. (There must be a way I can see who has subscribed, but I don’t have that piece of technology/knowledge in place yet – so we’re on the honor system!)

3.  I will collect names from the comments and choose one randomly on Monday, February 15 at 12 noon EST.  I will contact the winners and announce it on the blog Monday afternoon or evening. 

4.  Want a second entry?  Blog about my giveaway, leave me a comment with the link to your post, and I’ll put your name into the pot again! 

Good luck everyone!  See you again soon! 

Tonight for dinner, I made soup from some leftover turkey I froze at Thanksgiving, but this weekend, I worked on my Bead Soup, which was way more fun!  Just ten days until the big reveal when 84 bloggers show off their artistic creations made with beads received from another blogger in the swap. 

There is also a Bead Soup Flickr pool and had a look around there tonight.  I have to admit, I have not yet visited all 84 bloggers and I liked seeing a bunch of soup pots all in one place. 

These two partners swapped components in the same colors.  That happened with my partner and me, but it was total coincidence.  I wonder if it was the same with these two, or if it was planned? 

You might also remember that I got a heart in my package.  Hearts seem to be a common ingredient – because of Valentines Day coming up?  Or just because beaders love to LOVE? 

Visit the Flickr Pool to find out who got and who gave the soup mixes pictured, and come back here later in the week to see some hints about what I am cooking up. 

My kids got their report cards last week, and since I’m in art school, I’m going to get report cards, too. 

Blogging:  13 posts, participation in a blog party with 80 other people = A+

Studio:  acquisition of new tools and a used RedMax torch by Nortel  =  A

Reading:  Torchworked Marbles, Step-by-Step Wire, Jewelry Artist = A

Making: finished a bead crochet necklace, worked on and then gave up a knitted sweater that was torturing me = B

Health:  kept a journal of healthy behaviors, bought and took vitamins= A

I have a bunch of posts coming to elaborate on some of these accomplishments.  Stay tuned to see my torch and hear about an excellent article I recently read.

Goals for Feb: 

• Get my blog on the latest Wordpress platform, continue posting
• consult with contractor re studio
• make piece for blog party, string bead crochet for trip in Feb
• enter a jewelry contest or submit to a magazine
• exercise once each weekend, once during the week

Note to file:

• next year:  attend at least two major marketplace shows i.e. Tucson, Bead and Button, ACC