Gifts and Solstice

I love giving gifts to others - even virtual ones. I've been busy over the past two days giving virtual gifts to all of my Super Poke Pet friends. I've got almost 400 of them, so it takes a while. But it is one way of my celebrating Solstice with many people, and I think it's worth the extra time that it takes to brighten the lives of others. So, I am happily playing Solstice frog and depositing small plants to celebrate the next season of life. I plan to spend Solstice doing various errands and some photography that has to be finished ASAP. Maybe I'll have an opportunity to catch up on some other photography. And I can tell that every spare minute over the next few weeks will be spent with Photoshop, massaging my photos into something nice to look at and that will work well for screen viewing.
I started work, quite quickly, on my charms yesterday as well. I am thinking about making small tornado charms for the Metal Clay World charm swap. I have my new copper clay to use, and I want to enamel these as well. I've got three weeks to get these nailed. Why am I always tight on time......? Tick, tick...tempus fugit. - LOL. Well, I've always said that I create better under pressure....

Balance

One of the things intrinsic to being female (at least I've been told so throughout my life) is our ability/right to change our minds. Looking at the wireworked portion of my BFAC project for the past two days, I decided that I didn't like it and changed my mind. I cut it apart, grabbed different wire, (a different color in a different gague), and revised the focal drop. I am MUCH happier with it now. It is the right color and it doesn't dominate the item but balances it out instead. I may be adding a little bit more to it, but pretty minor. I could ship it off today and be happy with it. It is a lesson to pay attention to the inner voice that says things must be changed. Sometimes you must listen to that voice to make a much better creative product.

I am deeply into the beta of Iris's latest story. I ran out of energy last night - I guess the pain in my arm finally started getting to me. Of course, the wirework I was doing was certainly not helping my arm - I am ambidextrous for many things, but not for wirework. I overworked my right arm at the shop and then again last night. But the spiral that I added to the piece really works, so I'm much happier.

I read that Hillary Clinton just did exactly the same thing to her right arm earlier this week. She fell and broke her elbow in an impact fracture. She must have fallen harder (or I'm just more stubborn) because she has to get surgery on her elbow. Researching my injury, it appears that 2/3 of the people with this type of fracture need to have corrective surgery. I'm hoping that I won't have to have anything of the sort - the whole idea of elbow surgery frightens me badly. And usually I'm all in favor of surgery and legal drugs - LOL. But not this time. So, best wishes to Hillary as she recovers.

Movies and Completion

To start with - completion. My BFAC project is finally finished. Even though I'm not crazy about the wirework that I did for the focal piece, I'm unwilling to put any additional time into it. The necklace itself is good. I'll try and get photos on Sunday and I'll post one then so that you can see what I ended up with.

Movies...well, I went to see "UP" with friends last night. It's the newest Disney/Pixar production and is done in digital 3-D. Everyone was given specific 3-D glasses when they purchased their tickets. Many of the previews were also in digital 3-D, so we wore the glasses over our corrective lenses for most of two hours. The glasses, instead of being red/blue as previous 3-D glasses have been, are extremely small bi-color bits in each lens that make for a much finer focus. It's really nicely done and the movie is a most definite "Thumbs Up" from all of us. It's always fun to have a kid's movie that adults can enjoy equally. At least 90% of the people in the audience last night were adults and we all seemed to love it. I cried, I laughed, it was all good! (I only cried because I am a sentimental fool, but I also cry at sad stories and lots of movies, so it wasn't unusual, just unexpected.) If you get a chance to see this movie - take it! Go and see "Up". ...Now to figure out how to get those balloons and bright colors onto my enamel work........

Late and Explanation

I'm really late posting today. But I have excellent reasons.

Reason #1 - When I awoke this morning and went to get on-line at 3:45 am, I was unable to establish an internet connection. My network was down. After trying a variety of standard operating procedural things to get things back up and running, I finally gave up and called Comcast. I'm a business customer, not a residential one, so I get really good, fast service. After it was determined that there was no signal coming from my modem and that it couldn't be jump started on their end, a service call was entered for me. The the tech would have been here at 8am, but I had a business meeting across town at that time. So I set it up for 9:30 am instead.

The tech did get here at 10:15 am - not too bad, all things considered. It turns out that lots of things were problematical. But he replaced a bunch of cables with newer versions, eliminated a lot of noise on the line, and got everything back up and running in record time - really nice guy too. So I'm back up and running now.

Reason #2 - While the Tech was here, I received a phone call from my clinic. I had fallen on the 6th of June while at Bead & Button and had hurt my right arm quite badly. I went to the clinic on the 12th because I do have osteoperosis, and I was concerned that I might have broken something because things were still hurting me a lot, especially overnight. The doctor took X-rays and prescribed pain pills, but he didn't see anything. He did leave the film for the Radiologist to look over. Well, the Radiologist determined that I have a "radial head impacted fracture" in my right arm. Now I have an appointment with an Orthopaedic man next Wednesday and will find out how badly I've been injuring it since I broke it since I've pretty much been using the arm as much as possible for days now. But at least it explains why I'm in so much pain. It's nice to have a real excuse :-)

My BFAC project is in front of me. The necklace is finished, but the centerpiece still needs wire work. The problem is that the process of weaving the wire in the pattern I'm doing hurts my arm. So I'm really slowed down. But I'll get it done. Now I only hope I'll get my charms done in time for Metal Clay World. I promise I'll post a picture of my BFAC piece when I get a chance to photo it this weekend.

Scrolls and Praise

I have determined that I do not draw scrolls well. Why, you might ask, do I care about drawing scrolls? Well, the embroidery on my cloak should have overlapping scrolls in the bottom corners and the collar tips, and climbing scrolls up the center front. I brought my french curves to Milwaukee with me and did a rather uninspired scroll on my test fabric to practice my ribbon roses. The roses turned out really well, even though I was in serious pain that day. But the scroll was boring. So I've pulled out design books to help me with this. It's rather amazing how much research I'm having to do to get this part accomplished (in between working out the charm design for Metal Clay World and doing the final wirework for my BFAC piece). All of these items have a July 15 deadline. Deadlines usually help me focus, I'm going to hope that I find a solution to my scroll problem soon because the clock is a'tickin'.

It's nice to get the occasional positive stroke. It's something that I don't get in my home life very frequently. I rely on friends and E-friends to give me the positive feedback that keeps me creating. I received a wonderful compliment from a dear friend in an Email this morning. It brought me close to tears - that anyone could think so kindly of my personal creativity to tell me directly. Thank you. You truly have no idea how much your short Email meant to me today. The wind is back in my sails for a few days.

Monday, Monday...

Well, we didn't go to Twig (not unexpected), and Jim took his anger and frustration out on some trees. We have been cutting down weed trees so that we can get our private jungle a bit more under control. Since he refused any offer of assistance from me, I decided to get some work done that I needed. After a quick trip to Home Depot (there's just something wonderful about a hardware store), I pulled out my pressure washer, electrical cord and the hose and began washing down my siding. It was a perfect day for it - in the mid-80's, partly cloudy, no rain in the forecast. I got wet and dirty, and the siding got wet and clean. My arm got lots of exercise, and all-in-all, I was very pleased.

We followed our respective work assignments with salads and drinks at TGIFridays, then returned home. I went back to my computer and DH fell asleep watching the basketball game. He woke up to watch Expedition Africa, a show that has been quite interesting over the weeks that it's been on. I watched Ice Road Truckers and joined him for Expedition. What does any of this have to do with creativity? Cleaning the house gave me lots of time to think about future projects. Also, working with the pressure wand allowed me to try some drawing without messing with paper and pencil - air drawing, in essence. No great shakes, but I did work out a couple of minor problems that I was facing in my next project down the road. Sometimes working on something that will not take conscious thought will allow the creative thoughts to take over. Similar thought passages can happen when washing the dishes, vacuuming the house or washing the windows. You can get dual benefit from housecleaning - a cleaner house and a more creative mind.