Southern California in February!

My sister, who is 16 years younger than I (we being the eldest and youngest of 5), currently lives in the foothills of the Transverse Mountain Ranges in southern California, about 60 miles east of LA. As her childhood caretaker when Mom worked, we developed a close relationship, despite our age difference. Later, she lived with me for a couple of years, and after starting my bead business, she regularly helped me sort, weigh, and bag beads at night. At times I noticed her beadlust was almost as great as mine.

Last week, I flew to CA, rented a car, and spent a wonderful week with her! These are my 15 favorite things (not necessarily in order, except for number 1) about the trip...

Being with my sister is at the TOP of the list!

I love the way the sunshine brought out the beautiful rose-red color of Bougainvillea.

This vine was all over the courtyard of the Dynasty Suites, where I stayed in Redlands, CA.

 Hollyhocks!

So many memories... They grew all along the side of my grandparent's home in Sutter Creek, CA. My brother and I decorated mud cakes and made ballerinas out of them!

 It was way fun to be around my 12 year old nephew, Jackson!

New to me, I think these ubiquitous trees are called Italian Cypress.

 While the spires reach 60' high, the trees are only about 5' in diameter.

 On a road trip into the Transverse Ranges, we saw trees with cones as big as pineapples!

I think they are Coulter pines.

 I didn't expect to fall in love with trees in the desert, but here's another one

that caught my fancy... The desert fan palm is also called

petticoat palm, for reasons you can see.

 This incredible lion sculpture (click to see details!) is one of a whole lion family

located at the Living Desert, a zoo (a 5-star zoo in my opinion) in Palm Desert, CA. The "Dancing with Lions" sculptures were created by an artist named Bill Secunda from Pennsylvania.

The Living Desert currently features an interactive exhibit of Australian Outback birds.

For $2 a person, you can go inside the exhibit with all these pretty birds.

For $1 each, you can buy Popsicle sticks with bird seed on it to feed the birds.

After they get used to you, they land on your purse, your head, your shoulder... anywhere...

This one worked a long time trying to get nourishment from my earring. 

We drove out Hwy 38 from Yucaipa to Big Bear Lake.

Entranced by the rocks & rock formations, we stopped many times to take pictures.

This was one of our favorite rock formations....

Can you imagine the various events and forces that caused this!

This is another favorite rock formation. Behind it is a steep drop-off

into a deep canyon. I wonder how long before it topples?

Not only are the rock formations beautiful from afar,

but up close, they reveal lovely succulents like these!

Big Bear Solar Observatory is one the world's larger solar observatories.

Click the link to learn interesting things about it.

 By chance, my rental car was a Mazda 6.

Spunky and nimble, I give it a rating of 4.5 stars!

There y' go... 15 favorite things, although, I'll probably look at all my pictures again tomorrow, and pick 15 more faves. It was a great trip! I took beading and knitting projects with me, but do you think I had any time to work on either? Nope... just didn't happen.

Oh, and more good news! While I was gone, this is what it was like back on San Juan island...

 There's still snow in the ravines and on the tops of the hills (500' elevation), but I happily missed having to drive on roads like this. California sunshine was mighty nice!

Two More BJP Blessings Finished - Family & Health

I finished November's and December's BJP pieces earlier this week and finally got them photographed today. All of my pieces this year are about blessings in my life.

Family (for November) is all about the blessing of a relatively close-knit family. We're not as close as sometimes I'd like, but we all like each other pretty well. My brother, Thom, and I lost our biological father in a car accident when I was 5 and Thom was 3. That could have been a disaster, but Mom met and married a wonderful man 2 years later, who soon became our new Papa. I'm fortunate to have always felt that he was my dad, that he loved me as much as he loved his own 3 children, my other 2 brothers and sister.

I don't really know what this piece says about family. Usually, by the time I finish a piece, the meanings have become obvious. Not so in this case. Anybody have any ideas?  It seems possible that the three buttons in the upper half represent my mom (the bird), my dad (the small blue-bordered button), and my step-dad (the square). Then, maybe the other 5 buttons represent me (well, that would be the rabbit, of course), and my 4 siblings. Whatever the significance/meaning, I do like the colors and the way it looks rich and inviting.

Health (for December) is all about the blessing of good health, with which I am unusually blessed.

I have no idea why I used chakra colors for this piece, or why I worked with a Goddess figure to represent health. I've never known much about chakra theory or particularly subscribed to other than Western treatments for health issues. Maybe this piece portends something for me in the future. If so, maybe this dear, healthy Goddess (along with her association with growing plants and a little kitty-energy) will continue the blessing of good health as I grow older.

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Because of working on my new book, I didn't get started on this year's BJP until June, my first piece for the year. I've done 7 pieces (June - December). Think I'll try to do double pieces for the first 5 months of 2013, so that in the end I will have 12 blessing pieces for this year... I do like them quite well.

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 Hope you all have a wonderful, magical, joyful Christmas. May the year ahead be just beadiful! Thanks for visiting today!

Mom and Me - April BJP Finished

If you read my April 1st post about Mom, you know she passed away at age 94 this year in March.


I began working on my April BJP while I was in Minnesota, just after she died, for the memorial service and to be with my siblings. Thus the subject for March was a "no-brainer," the intersection between Mom and Me, how our life paths intersect.

As usual, I worked improvisationally, with no plan for how it might turn out. In my other BJP pieces for this year, the two intersecting lines of the X always developed distinctive characteristics, one representing me and the other representing the other force, event or person in my life. For example, it's very clear to me looking at the piece about my husband and me (here), I am the red beads and he is the blue beads.


This piece is different. I can't explain and don't really understand why Mom and I look the same. Is it the strong bond and connection between us? Is it that we are quite a lot alike in many ways? Is it because I've now assumed her role as the matriarch of the family? Is it a visual way of holding onto her, not letting her go, wrapping her into my own identity? Whatever the reasons, in this interpretation of Mom and Me, we are so much the same that I can't tell which line is her and which is me.


It's been three months since she passed. The raw grief is less now, yet I think of her very, very often. I see a picture of her and catch my breath as it sinks in again that I won't see her in person ever again. Her words and expressions come frequently to my own lips. I miss her in ways I don't know how to express. Life goes on with no mama, in a different, more lonely way.

I Love You, Mom...

Those of you who know me, know that I'm very close with my mom, and that we have maintained our connection even though she was in Minnesota and totally deaf (unable to talk on the phone), while I live across the country in the NW corner of Washington state. She turned 94 this past January.

Over the past three years, as her health declined and I made more frequent trips back to Minnesota, I've cut back on teaching. This year, I also turned the leadership of the Bead Journal Project over to other wonderful and experienced volunteers, so that I could be free to go to my Mom at a moment's notice.

The time I've been dreading finally came. Three and a half weeks ago, Mom started showing signs pneumonia, running a fever, no strength, difficulty breathing. They started her on antibiotics. For a while she seemed to be improving, as she has in the past, but then her fever spiked up again. She did not regain consciousness for two days and passed away two weeks ago today. I flew to MN and stayed for a week. We had a beautiful memorial service for Mom, a very sweet tribute to a remarkable woman.

Now, back home again, I feel that her enormous love still surrounds me somehow, just as my love surrounds her wherever she is. Yet at the same time it's a strange, empty, lost feeling to know I'll never hug her, rub her hands, kiss her, touch her cheeks, or "talk" with her using a dry-erase board again.

My April BJP piece will be about my relationship with Mom, as have been several other pieces over the years. I've shown two of them above. I love you, Mom... you, who've I've known and loved for 68 years, are always a blessing to me.

Beading in Minnesota!

Short on blogging time this month... Just returned to the soggy Northwest after 8 days of visiting my Mom, family and Minnesota bead friends. Thought you might like to see a few pictures....

The picture at the top of the post is a group of hand knitted pumpkins and one gourd by Pam Ehlers Stec. Pam is a member of the Bead Journal Project (08-09) and planning on joining again in 2010.


Pam, Julie (my sister-in-law), Brenda B (our BJP web mistress) and I got together at Julie's for an evening of beading and show'n'tell a week ago Thursday.... much ooooohing, talking, laughing and even a little progress beading. Then Sunday we all went to the Bead Bazaar sponsored by the Upper Midwest Bead Society. Whaaaa-hooooo! That was way fun too! More? You bet! Monday afternoon we were joined by Carmen (who we HOPE will join the BJP next year) and had a second bead-a-thon at Pam's house. Way to make it hard for me to go home, girl friends!

Pam's home was filled with beautiful quilts, dolls, beadwork and other handmade art. OMG... I couldn't settle down to bead until I had looked at and fondled every piece. She's so multi-talented! Here are a few things I photographed...


Above are Pam's framed BJP pieces for this year. You can see them individually by scrolling down the posts on her blog, here.


This is a beautiful pieced and quilted, batik wall-hanging. I love the way these thistles look!


This is a wonderful wall-quilt... warm, compelling, exciting!


This is what Pam was working on... a hand-dyed wool, crazy-quilt block. I'm in love with it! She offered to take off the little papers that say "lavender, parsley, holly-hocks and queen Ann's lace." But I think they're sweet and so said she should leave them on for the photo.


Here's a detail that shows her skills in thread and silk-ribbon embroidery! I hope she tells me first if she ever decides to sell this piece!

Brenda B completed both years of the BJP and is signed up for another year! You can see her pieces here and here. Once again, it's clear that pictures never do justice to the work! I am so thrilled to have been able to see and touch each of her 24 pages!



I was also fortunate to see and fondle the piece above, The House that Seuss Built, created by Brenda for The Beaded Book - a juried competition sponsored by Beadwork Magazine!!!! She won second place! Check out this link for professional pictures of the winning pieces, including Brenda's!!! You can also see some good pictures on Brenda's website, here. The beads on this Seussian structure are are stitched, not glued... more than 1,000 hours!!!


And then, there's Carmen, who is just starting to bead, with some guidance from Pam... Here are her first four pieces. These beaded hearts are autobiographical, telling of important transitions in her life.


This is Pure.


This is Broken.


This one is Angry.


And the fourth is Content.

I'm quite impressed with Carmen's work and hope she will join the 2010 BJP!!!

You'd think from the above that all I did was bead, right? Nope, I spent a lot of quality time with my Mom and some with my two brothers and their families. Mom has been in an assisted living place for six years. But recently she's fallen repeatedly. The PT team says she's too weak to live on her own. So we've moved her to a nursing home.

I dreaded seeing her there because of the typical stereotype of such facilities. However, this one totally exceeded my expectations and Mom seems very comfortable there, more happy than she's been for quite a while. She's almost 93! Here she is... Ferne, my sweet, wonderful Mom!!!


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Happy Halloween, everyone!


This is Lucy! She rules the roost at Matt's house (my brother). An exceptional Halloween kitty, wouldn't you say?!

Beads, Buttons, Hearts...

Happy Valentine's Day!

Last year for my February Bead Journal Project, I made a Valentine for Little Robin. If you'd like to read more about it, see this post.

This year, guess what I'm doing... a Valentine for Big Robin! I got a late start this month and haven't gotten much done yet. This is how it looks so far.


I'm inspired to write this post by visiting Pat's Bird Nest on the Ground blog and seeing her lovely heart quilt in today's Valentine post and a charming heart-shaped door decoration in an earlier post. Like Pat, I frequently use hearts in my work. I doodle hearts... always have.

Below is a little wall quilt, Grandpa's Gifts, I made about 15 years ago. It's a tribute to my grandfather, who was a collector of many things including buttons. A favorite childhood memory is of watching him compare, sort and label items in his collections... especially the buttons.


My brother and I inherited his button collection (which was actually started by HIS great aunt in England in the mid 1800's). Some of the buttons were on cards, carefully labeled in my grandmother's distinct penmanship. Others were strung on a long wire, maybe 20 feet of buttons, many of which are pretty awesome!

I can't recall now what sparked me to make a quilt using some of the buttons. While making it, I remember thinking a lot about my grandfather and his personality. He was a superintendent of schools (Amador County in California) and before that a math teacher. He placed a high value on education and knowledge. A little gruff-seeming, he did not let us talk or play near him when he was working. He would, however, allow me to stand quietly next to his desk and watch. Despite his exterior reserve, I always felt cherished by him... and loved him in return. You might think of this quilt as an abstract portrait of him... cool exterior, warm inside.


This is a picture of him. Charles H. Atkins. Maybe later today I'll find, scan and post a picture of him and my grandmother, Martha Tompkin, taken when they were courting. They're so cute and the photo is so appropriate for Valentine's Day. [3 pm note: I looked for that picture for three hours and didn't find it. I give up for now... rats]

I've been thinking about the heart shape as a symbol. Here is a brief, but fairly good description of it. I want to know more about this symbol and why I am so drawn to it... a subject for further research and contemplation.

In the meantime, may we all have a wonderful Valentine's Day... May we be well-loved... May we open ourselves to as much love as possible!