Birthdays and Holidays

Today is the birthday of the United States. Tomorrow is my birthday. I joke that I'm one day younger than the US. Some days I feel like it's true!

But not today. Pretty good day. On Thursday my dear sweet husband proposed an impromptu visit to Ventura, just a drive up through Malibu on Friday afternoon, and an overnight stay. I thought it was a good idea myself, and he found a nice room in the Holiday Inn Express on Ventura Harbor. Lots of boats in marinas, the ocean is right out there, and Friday itself was a perfect day. 76F, sunny, breezy. Wow. Couldn't ask for any better. 

Traffic was slow through Malibu, at least the southern parts. But the scenery made up for it.  My husband had done his research, and found a very casual seafood restaurant for lunch, in Ventura. How casual? The big water-filled trough full of crabs, lobsters and oysters right in the outdoor eating area was a clue. The fried shrimp were adequate, the french fries good, and the steamed king crab legs were yummy. Eating outdoors was very pleasant.

Then we visited Beads of Paradise. I had hoped Sylvia, the owner, would be there, but she was out. We spent a good long time talking to her assistant, and I had fore-thoughtfully (is that a word?) packed almost all my finished pieces that I haven't given away. So we reviewed them together and I got some much-needed feedback. Or should I call it reassurance? I was looking for confirmation that the pieces were both marketable and of sufficiently high workmanship to be sellable. 

I got that feedback from Leelee (not totally sure how she spells her name). She was enthusiastic about my design and color sense, and reassuring on the quality of the workmanship. She assured me that they didn't have "anything like this" for sale. 

The gallery next door to Beads of Paradise will probably be my first commercial venue. They rent glass show-cubicles 12"x12"x15" for $35 a month, and take a reasonably small percentage of the sale. I will have space to showcase 3 or 4 pieces, depending on size. So in a few weeks I will prepare a display, call and make an appointment to actually meet with Sylvia, and drive back to Ventura to put something on sale.

In the meantime, I'll be agonizing on pricing the pieces. I suspect it's more an art than a science.

For dinner we walked from the hotel to the restaurant row at the far end of the harbor. We picked a Mexican restaurant, where we had moderately tasty dinners. The dessert was excellent, however. But we fled quickly when the live band fired up...we'd taken a table right in front of the stage before the band showed up. Who knew? They were surprisingly good, but way too loud. I did my time as a band groupie in my teens...been there, got the hearing loss, thank you. We could hear the band anyway from our room across the harbor, until they shut down at 11pm.   Well, we could hear the bass player and the drums anyway, and occasional snatches of the singer.

Saturday morning we simply lazed about in the hotel room. The Husband read fiction for probably the first time in 6 months, and I beaded on a new project, an embroidered pendant using an ammonite as a cabochon central piece. For some reason I decided to use 15/0 seed beads for the peyote bezel, and it took forever to complete! Boy those beads are teeny!

Then we ate lunch at Marshall's Bodacious BBQ, where I had some really primo tri-tip, and my sweetie had a fine chili dog. The baked beans and chili beans were excellent as well. If you're in the area, seek them out. Casual, but whole tables of California Highway Policemen tell you that this is a good place. Those guys can eat anywhere, they know the best places!

Then we drove home. Slowly. There was much more southbound traffic than we anticipated.  

Other birthday goodies include a new, lighted magnifying lamp and a new leather cover for my Kindle. I'm going to take the retired cover and bead it! That ought to be fun. I have to find a beading method that will allow the cover to open out and fold flat behind the Kindle, while being wildly decorative.  So all in all, a good birthday weekend. I love how the whole country celebrates with me!

More Micro-Macramé and Other Pieces

The micro-macramé has been going well. One of the projects in the book by Kris Buchanan I purchased caught my eye, and I tried out the leaf shape to see how hard it was. The answer is, the decrease/increase wasn't hard at all, but getting the beads in the center, which fall in a small gap, to be tight between the rows of knotting, isn't as easy as it looks. I suspect I did something wrong with the angle of the anchor cord as I did the second side. You have to drop a cord each time to make the top side, then pick it up again as you create the lower side of the leaf. Cool!

I'll continue working at this practice piece until I feel like I can fling myself into a real project. Not yet. A few more leaves perhaps. 

Some earlier pieces joined me in my photography tent, but the light wasn't cooperating, either that or I've forgotten everything from the last session. Pics aren't as sharp as I'd like, or the depth of field stinks, or something. 

First is a fun piece I did in a netting stitch, there are some vintage purple glass beads, some amethyst drops, but most of it is glass. Oh, and the little coral dumbbell shaped beads are so much fun. I wish I had a ton more of those, though they weren't cheap. When you put multiples together, they form such great shapes.

Next is one of the first pieces I did when I came home from Mendocino two years ago. That's when and where I found those wonderful black and white seashell beads. Yes, those shells are naturally striped that way! Not painted. They're combined with bone beads from Africa, some coral, and some onyx. I love this necklace, and actually made it twice, but the other one isn't as full and I like this one best. I treasure those shells and will have to use the remaining ones very carefully.

The lapis and silver necklace is also one of my favorites. The large silver beads are silver over ceramic, there's sea glass beads, along with real Afghanistan lapis that I took out of a crudely strung necklace I purchased at a swap meet several years ago. Silver spacers and liquid silver fill it out. Stringing liquid silver is a bit intensive. This was a "learning to get the lower multi-strands to connect to the single upper strands, and get them to hang right" try. The main lapis piece somehow came out a trifle to one side. Sigh. I don't really want to redo the whole thing, but you can't sell something that isn't perfect.

Last for this post, is the original embroidered pendant that inspired my friend Anne to get her commission piece. I finished this just before Christmas last year, for obvious reasons. I absolutely loved working on this. On the second piece, I incorporated a pin back to help anchor the pendant to clothing and/or to anchor the length of the sliding braid. When worn, this one is a bit fussy as it keeps sliding down and hiding the large fringe at the bottom. I'll have to retrofit a pin back on this one, eventually. 

I also did this directly on Lacy's Stiff Stuff, and that was before I realized that you had to either color the LSS with pens or cover it with ultrasuede so that white doesn't peek through the beading, because nobody can perfectly bead 100% coverage. So, not a perfect result, but still really cool. It impressed the heck out of family members at Christmas!

More gallery pieces as I get the pictures taken.