Wishing For a Week of Days Like Today

Today was a luxury.  Except for a quick trip to the post office first thing this morning, I stayed in my workroom all day and played.

The goal for the day was to make lots of earrings to build the inventory for upcoming shows.  It was the first time in a long while that I've spent the whole day with beads in my hands, and it felt GOOD!

Spent the day listening to NPR, spent the evening watching some football (Roll Tide!), and let the fun flow.  It was incredibly satisfying.  Being able to spend every day, all day, doing this is my absolute fantasy.  Maybe some day when the kids are out of college and we've downsized...or when monkeys fly outta my butt...in the meantime, I adore every moment I can spend making jewelry.

If a little time this morning was spent excavating my work table in order to make jewelry (I'll admit it, I didn't put everything away -- I just moved it off the table so I had room to work!), tomorrow has to be spent excavating the rest of the house.  Serious cleaning has to be done in preparation for some dear friends' visit next weekend.  If they walked in the house today, they'd run screaming in horror.  I will close and lock the door to my workroom -- I don't know CPR, and I'd need it if my friends happened to see the site of beady explosion...

And if I can get the cleaning done quickly, maybe I can spend some more time at the bead table when I'm done. Now there's an incentive to bust out the vacuum cleaner and Endust!

Excavating Before Creating

It's T minus two weeks until my holiday shows start up, and y'all, I am in serious need of some bead table time.

But my bead table is in serious need of some de-cluttering.

Oh, dear lord, it looks like the bead fairies exploded in my bead room!  What you can't see is that there's also so much stuff on the floor, it's almost like climbing a mountain to get to the table...I've spared your delicate sensibilities from having to witness the horror of my clutter.  It's a big room, and this is only one tiny little slice of it...

I have all day tomorrow to play in the bead room and build up inventory for the show, but it's going to take me several hours to excavate the work surface before I can get to it!

Then again, who knows what treasures I may unearth from under all that crap?  Fabulous beads?  A special finding?  Small children?  (Don't laugh -- some of those piles of stuff are big enough to hide a toddler!!)

Wherein I Am Thankful That Fireline is Relatively Affordable

Yesterday was the first Saturday (heck, the first day) in a very long time that I could sit in the bead room and play.  So I thought I'd work on this necklace that's been living on my worktable in various stages of incompletion for a long time.

I have completed this necklace about forty bazillion times in my mind's eye, each time a little differently.

The centerpiece finally came together.  Well, okay, after versions 1 and 2 and maybe 3 -- I kinda lost count) just weren't quite it.  Ripped that baby apart a few times before I was satisfied.

So what to do for the rest?  I had fallen madly in love with the flat spiral when I used it on one of my Bead Swap Blog Hop pieces, so I thought I'd use it here. Then I was worried that I didn't have enough of the faceted firepolished beads to make a long enough necklace, so I added crystals in between sections of spiral.  Yesterday I finally sat down to put it all together.

AARGH!!! 

That is so NOT what it looked like in my mind.  The balance is all off.  The strap is just not proportionally right for the watch faces.  The sparkly wheel I made to use as the clasp is too small.

And to add insult to injury, I can't figure out why the picture is showing sideways instead of upright, but bless its heart, the necklace is bug ugly either direction...

And here, dear reader, is where I would tell you what I actually said, but to spare delicate sensibilities and avoid having my language compared to that of a salty old sailor, I'll sum it up as "well, crap."  Followed by a glass of wine to go with my whining.

I've got another idea percolating, and maybe tomorrow night will bring some play time.  If nothing else, there may be a massive sacrifice of fireline as I weave and rip it back out again...

Already Warming Up the Couch and the DVR in Preparation

If you're looking for my Bead Soup Blog Hop post, look here.

Have you heard about the show coming to Lifetime TV next month called Project Accessory?

Now I will admit that I am a sucker for the reality shows that showcase talent and creativity.   

Project Runway old school and new school?  Yep, been watching them make it work since the beginning.  Currently rooting for Anya, and still lusting after this confection Daniel Vosovic made back in season 2.   

American Idol and The Sing Off?   Check, and an a capella check.   

So You Think You Can Dance?  Heck yes, particularly because I know I can't, at least not without injuring both my pride and several muscles, and walking like an old man for a few days afterward...

But I'll also admit that I'm curious as to what kind of time constraints they'll put on the contestants for Project Accessory.  It may be tough to sew a straight seam on a garment when you've been working for fourteen hours without a break, but if you're a jeweler trying to solder a join after that long a workday, the danger potential seems to ramp up a wee bit...

Despite that, I'm really eager to see this show, and more than a little frustrated that it's not on my DVR's program guide yet so that I can get it set up.

I know where I'll be at 10pm on November 3 -- how about you?