Work Goes On

I took this photo yesterday when I was sitting out in front of my studio waiting for the electrician to come. I'm amazed at how quickly the leaves are appearing. It seems to be almost from one day to the next. I like to think of them as a new beginning. Their appearance heralds the opening of my studio, finally. Or so I hope.

I spent time today working at home making some keychains out of some of the surplus pieces of metal I have. I wanted to do some metalsmithing, and I wound up feeling very frustrated because everything is so disorganized right now. A friend asked if I'd been able to use the gold-filled wire she gave me. I said I hadn't yet, that I wasn't even sure where it was. That's typical of my stuff right now. Most of my jewelry materials and tools are in the studio, except for the pliers and wire cutters I have here at home. But everything is back in it's stack in the corner.

I went back to the surplus store on my way home from the gym today. I found some nice pieces. Now that I know how they price everything, I can select items and not worry about spending too much money. I paid less than $20 for enough metal pieces to make eight or ten keychains and three or four necklaces. Of course, I'll add wire and beads and that will increase my cost, but not by much.

I spent some time in the bookstore, looking at magazines for jewelry ideas. If I find one that I think has enough interesting photos in it, I buy it and cut it up. I have a notebook that I tape photos in to remind me of ideas that I have. Sometimes I make a note beside the photo to remind myself of an idea I have based on what I see in the photo. Otherwise I'm likely to forget. Anyway, while I was at the bookstore, I did find a magazine that has an article about presenting jewelry to a gallery. That will be my next step once I begin to become organized and build up a little more inventory.

Everything takes time, but sometimes that's all it does take is time: someone taking the time to do something. Everything that we enjoy, every invention, every new technology, every improvement of an old technology may be nothing more than someone actually doing the work to bring it about. It's not any magical occurence; it's just doing it.