Weekend Looming

Our weather has been fantastic for October.  So we, in hope of a good Sunday, pulled steaks from the freezer yesterday to defrost.  If all is well and the weather cooperates, we'll grill those steaks for dinner on Sunday.  I'm already looking forward to it although I always put on a pound or so when I eat beef.  I eat beef rarely, usually only once every two weeks or so, so I don't go overboard on my beef intake. 

Tad Bowman took this beautiful picture
of Aspen trees.

This is the kind of autumn that I dream about in other years.  We've had perfect weather for the trees to turn spectacular colors.  Driving to and from work daily, I see so many instances of gold and russet leaves.  It's just stunning.  Autumn is my favorite season - the harvest is in, people are settling in for the upcoming winter season, and we get the last, glorious clothing of the seasons in the varied colors - from deepest olive green to scarlet red.  We don't get the fields of gold that the aspen trees gave me while I was growing up in Colorado, but we get the reds that I always wanted from our maple trees and sumac bushes. 

Just look at these glorious colors that
the maple trees give us in the fall. 
I love these colors!

I find that my art and my life are both influenced by color, and the autumn colors are the colors that I consistently choose for my clothing and my art.  Although I try to break through the boxes every once in a while and use pastel, spring colors or the rich full bright colors of summer, or even the muted neutrals of the winter, I always come back to the autumn pallette and those that I love the most.  What colors do you find yourself using time and again for your artwork?  What season inspires you the most?  Make something this weekend to celebrate the changes of season that make our lives rich. 

Friday Cleanup Day

I'm very tired of the lousy internet connection that I get at the shop.  I hop onto my next door neighbor's wi-fi signal when I can, but it is a dirty signal and drops every 10 minutes or so.  Not fun.  Yesterday I wasted more than an hour just trying to get connected.  I finally ran out of patience and phoned Comcast to get a true internet connection.  It will cost me $60/month for a business connection, but it would be something that I and my Manager have been wanting for a while.  I'm going to go ahead and sign the digital contract this morning and arrange for installation.  That means that today will be a clean-up day.  I need to get my little slip of office space cleaned up because it is one of four points that I want available for my internet connection.  As I recall (and if I take my home business installation as a template) they will install the cabling and the modem which can support up to five connections.  I think, at that point though, it will be up to me to run cable from the modem to each of the four locations that I want to be able to have computer access from.  I will be buying cable.  I like the fact that it will be a hardwired connection.  I could buy a wireless modem, but I have always preferred hardwire for security. 

I'll be buying a lot of cable to connect our
computers to the new modem. 

So, today I will dress down.  I have been assured that I will not have to go onto the sales floor, so I can dress in stretch pants and a t-shirt for the purposes of cleaning like a madwoman.  I will have one day to get my area fixed up and that's not a lot of time.  The one thing I really want to do is get my lightbulbs replaced so that I have light again.  That is one of the hardest things in my little area - the ladder is huge to get up the 12+ feet to my ceiling and my space is extremely cramped.  I'm not even sure that it will fit at all, but I have to try.  I need light!  Then I can start working on the website again, while I seek out a good programmer to develop an upgraded website for my shop.  I need to find a few good people and get some quotes so that I can budget that for 2011.  I hope you accomplish a lot today, I know I'll be focused on doing that :-)

Progress

Chickie has her 40th birthday in early November and I'm organizing her party - uh, funeral.  Yesterday, when her Mom dropped off her old lawn mower for us to have, she also dropped by several excellent photos for the storyboard.  I can get started on that now.  And I revised Heather's poem for the remembrance card.  She still has to get back to me about the revisions.  Next week I'll have my final count and can let the restaurant know for sure on that.  I will also have to Email Angie and Alex and remind them that they are driving Chickie to and from the restaurant so that she can actually have a drink and not have to worry about driving home.  Now all I need is the weather to cooperate.  It will be early November, and we've had snow by that time of the year in other years.  So I want the weather to stay relatively mild through Turkey Day, and if I get lucky and all things go well, that will be the case. 

Isn't this a great image?  Just love
Death holding the birthday cake, and
the little hat is da bomb!

I set up a Facebook page for the business.  I have had a personal Facebook page for a year or so, but hadn't done anything for the shop until now.  I still need to upload other pictures, link things, etc., but it's a start.  If you are interested in following us, search for "Stormcloud Trading (Beadstorm)" and you'll find it.  We also tweet for the shop, that's under "Beadstorm", so if you are so inclined, sign up to follow us there too.  We're going to start really using these services within a month or so. 

Clean and Strip

So, today's goal is simple.  Bring books up to Sharon's room and start an assembly line to strip boxes.  First the books.  I haven't been able to continue cleaning the den because I don't have anyplace for my books.  My books are truly getting out of control.  I need to start culling my books, but for the moment all that I can do is put them into a locale where they will be out of the way but still accessible.  I've been using Sharon's room as secondary book storage for several years, but I need to make it more functional.  It is a store-room and currently has two broken VCR's and a couple of non-functional and very old TV's in it that need to be recycled.  I need to determine where I can take these and get them out of there.  Then I need to buy or make some new bookshelves for that room that will have more storage room than the old ones that are in there now.  Finally, I need to cull through the paperbacks and get rid of a lot of them, selling them back for pennies.  But I need the room for my art books and technique books. 

My house could be this bad.  I really need to get
my books under control. 

And second, I need to start working seriously on my boxes.  I love my boxes, but they are taking over my life and my space.  So I need to start stripping the ones that I want to work on next.  I want to strip the finish on all of my Onyx boxes as well as two or three others that I have plans for, and then I can refinish them and begin work on the decoration part. 

Chemicals and elbow grease will allow me to
refinish my boxes into new artwork.  It will
be LOADS of fun.

The last thing I want to do today is update my Silhouette software that I have on my laptop, and try a few more experiments.  I also have gift cards for $35 of downloadable clipping shapes and want to look through the options and determine which ones I want to purchase.  And finally, at the end of the day we may get a new lawnmower from a friend who replaced her's with an electric model.  She wants to get rid of her old one and we need one since ours is dying after 30 years, so we're happy to take it off her hands for her. 

GO TWINS!  Beat those NY Yankees!



Dreams of Dogs

Usually when I dream of dogs, it is my dear Pookah who is with me once again.  Pookah was a mutt - a terrier/? mix that my sister-in-law's dog gave birth to.  She became my dog when we moved up here and lived for almost 19 years.  We haven't had any more dogs because my husband can't bear to love and lose.  He has never learned to treasure the times we have.  But I don't want to push, and I do want to travel, so I live dogless right now.  But they are often in my dreams. 

Look at this beautiful six-week-old puppy.  He'll
grow up to be a great companion dog. 

Last night's dog was a bit more unusual for me.  My companion last night was a variant of an Old English Bulldog.  A fantastic breed, they have great courage; they aren't fast, but they are consistent.  This particular dog of my dreams had a body type very similar to an Old English, but more compact, and a face more like a pit bull - also a beautiful dog.  He was mellow and perfectly content to sleep on my motel bed while I was taking classes at a place called "Fellowship".  Fellowship was a small, oddly-shaped stone building that had a larger front room where I was working on my activities.  In the back room was an even smaller room where several people were working on the smallest frame loom I have ever seen, working with threads of silk.  The entire loom fit on an old-fashioned typewriter table, but was perfectly functional.  Bizarre.  But it was making a really beautiful weave on a ribbon of silk.  Maybe this location is in my future.  I can't say for sure, but I can think of worse places to have spent my night.  Have a creative day and pet a dog. 

Closedown and Startup

The backside of Mac's Pub in the
afternoon sun.  Reminiscent of an
English country cottage.

The 40th Minnesota Renaissance Festival is now history.  We celebrated closedown along with many of our friends and acquaintances, enduring a very cold morning that developed into a beautiful day and a soft and cool evening.  I did wear my cape and it was the perfect weight and warmth factor for this year's fest.  I've had closing days that were even colder when I would probably want a warmer cape, but for a medium-cool day it was perfect.  Now I want to bead the painted flourishes and replace the knotted closures with a different type and I'll call it complete.  I have at least four other capes sitting on my brain that will happen, as well as a lot of other clothing.  I need to get my den cleaned up! 

Fire performers in front of the main gate to
Ren Fest celebrate the end of our 40th year.

Ren's closure for another year is always a bittersweet time for us.  Despite problems, politics, and grounds that need some serious upkeep, we truly love going out there weekly.  We've met many people through the fest, and several of our customers in the store are part of the Fest as well.  In a way it reminds us of the optimistic days of our youth, when we felt that we had a chance of changing the world to a kinder and gentler place.  "Free Love" and "Give Peace a Chance" were words that we believed, but look at the world now.  Peace is becoming a concept that is ethereal - a mist rising over the pond.  The world that we have now is not the world that I wanted to grow old in and not the world that I wanted my friend's children to inherit.  But it is what the world became.  Going to Ren allows us to believe that there is hope; that there are people out there who still believe in peace, music, dance and good times without hatred and pointing fingers.