Computer Heaven

I think I've died and gone to computer heaven. I have a laptop that I can use outside at my worktable, and there's a wireless network that I can use here in Spanish Village so I can surf the internet and do my Spanish Village work. It's so wonderful. I love sitting outside and working. And here in Southern California, we can really sit out almost all year round. There are really only a few days when we have to be in because of rain.

I've been spending the last few days setting up my new computer. It's small enough to carry around really easily, and I have a little bag to carry it in. It weighs less than my purse does at times. Who would have imagined such a concept when I first started using the computer in 1984. Well, actually I dreamed of such a thing, but it's taken awhile. And my dream hasn't come true 100%. Maybe just 90%. But we're very close.

Recently, I've been working on beaded jewelry. Without leaving my worktable, I can look up patterns for beadwork, shop for beads online, look at things such as fabrics to get ideas for color schemes, design a color scheme online by changing the numeric values of the colors. I can research the history of beads, I casn write in my blog as I'm doing right now, and with my new printer that also scans, I can scan in all the photos of jewelry that I've been collecting for awhile. That will be relative time consuming, but I'm going to do at least some of that.

I spend quite a lot of time looking at jewelry online and in magazines and books. I don't ever try to copy anything, but I get ideas and I "develop" my eye.That's very important, I think.

Today I'm off to spend the evening with my special friend, but now with my new setup, I have no excuse for not msking entries here in my blog. And I've even figured out a way to upload my photos directly from my cellphone to my computer, in case I can't get on my provider's site.

Doing Paperwork

Here's an array of my seed beads, some that I've collected so far. It's hard to know what to choose, so I just pick ones I like the colors of and go from there.

One thing I've been wanting to do is make some beads out of seed beads. I have seen some photos of some that I think are so attractive. So yesterday, I spent time working on a bead. In hindsight, I think I didn't follow the directions quite right, but I'll try making another one. The one I made is really very pretty though and I put it on a strand of beads so that I can wear it as a necklace.

Today was spent working on Spanish Village business. We had a board meeting this morning to deal with various issues that have come up, and so I spent the day after the meeting writing the minutes and also writing an email to send to all the members about various items. Eventually we'll get it all put on the website, and I won't be sending out as many emails. Philip as recently updated our website. It's http://www.spanishvillageart.com. I'm currently working on some photos and some text to add to my separate page.

Tomorrow I'm off to spend some time with my parents. They live about 35 miles north of me. Almost always when I go up there, I stop and look at the bead stores and look for books in their bookstores around there. Even though the bookstores are chains, they still frequently have a different selection of items.

I'll probably take some of my seed beads home with me to work on tomorrow or tonight maybe. I don't like to take things home, but I'm working in a new area with the seed beads right now, and I'm anxious to develop an adequate skill level.

Learning and Growing

Here's a photo of what I've been up too recently. I've been making jewelry with seed beads. It's called beadwork or beadweaving. How did I get myself to this point? I'm actually not sure. I did buy a bunch of seed beads to make into multi-strand necklaces for my enamel pendants, but then somehow I've progressed to beadwork.

Well, I do know that I've always wanted to try beadwork. Unfortunately in the past, a number of books and magazines showed rather uninspired pieces. But I thought I could make some pieces that would be striking looking. That's what I've been working on. I did find one book that has lovely pieces in it, ones I would aspire to in some cases. In the meantime, I'm learning the various "stitches." I'm making progress, becoming more proficient, but it will take time.

When I first started, a couple of weeks ago, I felt so clumsy and awkward. I spilled beads everywhere, and they're too tiny to pick up. I can scoop them up off my worktable, but I certainly can't see them very well on the ground. In addition, my knees are not good enough to tolerate crawling around on the ground.

I found that if I dumped some beads onto a paper plate, that made it easy to pick them up with a needle. That was fine until a breeze came along, lifting the edge of the plate and scattering beads everywhere. Now I have a small but sturdy plastic storage container with a snap on lid to hold beads. I've been dumping little piles of beads in it, the colors all mixed together. Then I pick out the beads I need for the patterns I've established. And having all the colors together in one container gives me ideas for new color combinations.

It will be a matter of finding the colors of beads I want, learning the techniques, creating some new ones, and then putting everything together. It will take time, but when I learned wirework, it took time as well. I'm prepared to follow the process through until I'm happy with the results and I can see myself growing in the discipline.

Getting Along With People and Understanding Computers

Even when the Spanish Village members are in disagreement about something or other, there's always some happy plant busy blooming. This succulent lives near my outside worktable and has the most beautiful but odd flowers on it. I think the colors are so delicate and subtle. The blossoms themselves look as though they might have been designed to be accessed by hummingbirds. Can't you just picture a hummingbird stationed below the flower taking a drink?

The rest of us grumble about various business issues and then go back to our studios to pursue our artwork. And even though we have our disagreements, like the members of any community, we're still just as happy as our plants when we pursue or discuss our art. I know I certainly am. I've spent the day typing up minutes of this morning's meeting, sending out several emails to members, and now I'm going to move outside and work on my jewelry.

This weekend, I spent time working on two necklaces and three bracelets made with seed beads. One of the narrower bracelets I made has approximately 500 beads in it. A great many pieces of jewelry made with seed beads tend to be rather weak in design or color choice or both. I'm working towards making some pieces that make stronger aesthetic statements. I think it will take a combination of the right colors, the right shapes and the right size to make the pieces a success.

I've never done any beadwork before, the term used for making jewelry and other items with lots of tiny beads. Usually when I begin something new, I start by studying some examples in books and on the web, looking at available materials, and then trying to make some pieces. I believe that the only way to really get a feeling for doing anything is by doing it. I like to begin by doing and then keep working until I get stuck and am forced to learn more. I suppose you could say it's kind of a circular process of learning.

Sometimes you can't make sense of instructions until you try and find what you don't know as well as what you do know. It's like that with the computer. You have to just begin and try to do tasks. When you get stuck, you read the help section. If you try to read the help first, you'll never get anywhere. I've wondered whether this attitude comes from that time in computer history when help manuals involved such error messages as: "error 13456." Huh? What error is that again.

Trip To Atlantis

Yesterday my father and I went computer shopping at a very large computer chain store. I'm sure you probably know which one it was. The theme of the store is Lost Continent of Atlantis. The store is so huge it looks as though it could be a blimp hanger. We laughed the first time we saw it. This photo is a shot of part of the mural on the back wall. Who would have imagined such a place in the days of daisy wheel printers and eWorld?

Happy Fourth of July, Independence Day. On the radio they were talking about a survey in which many of the participants didn't know the significance of July Fourth. Most people around here go to the beach or have a bar-b-que in the backyard. Nowadays I try not to go out in the evening. But we are open at Spanish Village which is where I've been all day.

I'm trying to go in a somewhat different direction with my jewelry. I want to do some more stringing, something I hadn't been doing because it seems to be frowned on. But some necklaces lend themselves better to stringing rather than wire bending. I've spent so little time studying that style of jewelry that now I need to develop an eye. I don't know what I like. I definitely know what I don't like.

Well, enough for now. One of the artists has just come to chat. I'm off to celebrate the holiday.

Slow and Quiet

I took this photo late yesterday afternoon. You can see the sun shining in through the open door. Back in the back, on the left, you can see the handle of my broom. I think it's appropriate to have a few brooms hanging around, but I certainly think using a graphic of a broom would be too trite, unless it was very stylized.

I want to create a logo, and I've spent some time attempting to. However, I admit I become something of a perfectionist when it comes to my logo, and I've never come up with something I love. And the problem I have right now is that I don't have a graphics program installed on this computer. I've been using Power Point which works pretty well, but it's a little cumbersome.

I've created a flyer for my enamel pendants and one for my clay pendants. I've created business cards, more of which have been eaten than passed out to clients. I've put up a rudimentary website with Philip's help. I've started a short bio to use various places. I'll probably go on with that today.

I'm dressed up because we've been invited to go see the Dead Sea Scrolls tonight at 5:30. And since I'm dressed up, I don't want to do anything like carving clay that will cause me to get dirty. I could make jewelry of course. Really the only things that do make me grubby are clay and etching. Oh, the other thing that really makes me grubby is sanding with steel wool. It gets all over my shirts.

Right now it's very slow and quiet here in the Village. Nobody is blowing glass which is nice because I don't hear the noise of the glory hole, but sometimes I get a little lonely back here by myself in this corner. On the other hand, I like it because I can concentrate. Sometimes when I sit in my studio or outside, I keep getting interrupted by people who come to talk. But that's fine, too, at times.

Speaking One Word Of French

Here's a photo I took several weeks ago when I was in the area we call the back patio. Several artists use it as an extension of their studio, the Board of Directors uses it for meetings, and some of the artists give classes back there. It can be a fun place to work in the evenings with lots of folks out there.

It was a relatively quiet day today, not many people around. We're trying to decide whether our fairly regular customers may avoid coming up because they're concerned about the traffic that the Dead Sea Scrolls is causing. However, it seems to me that there isn't a problem. In addition, the museum is providing parking and shuttle rides from a parking lot across the canyon. East Mesa they call it.

I spent the day working on clay pendants. The fish definitely take longer to carve than the other pendants. And I'm fussy. I like the lines to be smooth and deep, as though they are carved in stone. You sometimes can see little bits of clay when people draw or write on a tablet or vessel. I don't want any of those little crumbs to remain, so I spend a fair amount of time smoothing them away. But I like doing it, and I'm not satisfied with it unless it's done that way, all the little bits of clay gone.

Today while I was working a woman came up to me and asked me in French whether she could watch me. My French is very rusty, but I understood her and said, "oui." I told her that I was carving "terra" the word for earth. I think she understood. Then she asked me if I was going to paint it. And I said, "oui." I showed her a fish I had finished and then held it up to me to show her it was going to be a pendant. And she understood that, too.

We don't interact with very many French people, but occasionally I hear people speaking French. Mostly around here we hear Spanish. But in the Park, I do hear a number of people speaking different lanuages that I can't identify, probably Eastern European. Middle Eastern and Oriental ones are easier to identify. I like the idea that we're spreading an appreciation of art to people from all around the world. Like the internet.