An Art Fair, A New Old Friend, and A Camera Failure

If you're looking for the Bead Soup Blog Hop reveal, go here!

Sometimes the Universe lines up just right and brings you something serendipitous and terrific.

Sometime in the middle of Sunday afternoon at the art fair I was in this past weekend, three lovely women come into the booth.  And of course, I do what any beader does -- I glance at their chests to scope out any jewelry they might be wearing.

(Random side thought -- thank goodness other beaders understand this tendency, and 

non-beaders probably don't notice, or else we'd all be in trouble...)

Anyhow, my first thought was, "they're wearing some beautiful necklaces!"  Then to my delight, one of these beautifully-bedecked ladies introduced herself as Karin Slaton of Backstory Beads.

What a treat!  Karin was (is) in town helping out with her grandsons in the week between her daughter going back to work and the boys going back to school.  I first encountered her beautiful work during the One Crayon Challenge, and have been following her blog, enjoying her creations and her writing, ever since.

It is a rare and special treat to meet in person someone you feel you've "known" for a while in cyberspace.  Karin was every bit as fun and friendly in person as she is online.  The down side was that I couldn't spend as much time just hanging out and chatting as I really would have liked.

And the camera failure mentioned in this post's title?  Karin's sister was sweet enough to take a picture of us, but something heinous happened with my phone, and the picture didn't get saved.  I'm hoping that it's user error and the photo is living somewhere unexpected on my phone, but I fear it's an "oh *#&$%" moment.

But I have a picture in my mind of this lovely new friend, her daughter, and her sister.  And that is the best thing that could have happened to me this weekend!

If you don't know Backstory Beads, go check it out.  Seriously, go now!  You'll thank me later...(although I will warn you that she has a picture from this same meeting that looks a bit like I'm mildly addled from the heat -- as accurate as it is, it could be alarming to the unprepared.  And the fully prepared.)

Serendipity

A couple of weeks ago, I was leafing through some of the books on my shelf, looking at eye candy and getting inspiration for new explorations. Leave it to Carol Wilcox Wells and her book, The Art and Elegance of Beadweaving, to spark an idea.

http://schoolofbeadwork.com/theartandeleganceofbeadweaving.aspx

The shape and proportion of the Cellini spiral caught my eye, and I decided to work with the size mix indicated in the pattern, although I wasn't going to make a bracelet. The pattern calls for three different colors of size 15s. My selection of that size is pretty limited, and since it was 10:30 at night, my access to the local bead store for a quick fix was not happening. I pulled out all of the teeny tinies in my collection, and found about seven colors to choose from.

When I found the three (graphite, moss green, and light mauve) that worked best together, it was time to search for other colors and sizes that would play nicely. The result is a color palette that's somewhat outside my norm, but I think that this time, serendipity was my friend.

Oh, and Carol, thanks for the inspirational eye candy!