Long Time, No See (or Write)

Okay, from February to June (barely) is a long break in blogging and for that I apologize. In my own defense, I have to tell you we moved from Houston to Los Angeles. And since this wasn't a company move, it was all on us and we had many years of accumulated stuff to go through and organize and get rid of. What a job! We moved into a place that's one-fourth the size of our house in Houston so the getting rid of part of the job was most important.  I just wonder why we waited so long to do this. I love being here. I love being near by one daughter and grandgirl. And the other daughter is at least in the same state!  We've become great friend with the 2 yo Ruby. What a gem she is, too. We babysit every Tuesday because her mom teaches yoga then (hence, our very own Ruby Tuesday). And last weekend we babysat while her parents took a well-deserved mini-vacation. It was our first sleepover with Ruby and did we ever love it! She's an amazing child -- bright, funny, quirky, silly, cute as the dickens and has a mind of her own (don't all 2 year olds?).

I love this photo of Ruby with yogurt all over her face and a picture of her mom at the same age in the background. They're both cute little girls!



As for the beading world: At the end of February, Mandy came to visit!!!  It was the best. We met through her blog, Beads for Brains, and became online friends, really good friends. It was a little unnerving for us both to have this meet up. What if we didn't like each other in person? Well, that was SO not a problem. We had fun, took a beading class, made bracelets, started a Nancy Dale type Color Play piece.  The only problem with the visit was that it was too short! An added bonus was that Mandy & my hubby got a long like old friends, too. Lovely!

After that came all the move preparations and then the sale of most of our belongings (that's a photo of some of the yarn I had for sale and ultimately donated -- I still have too much here!) and the packing of everything else. I still brought too much crafting stuff and we have a second bedroom filled with boxes of mostly my junk (and I call my husband the packrat!).  I haven't gotten to the beads yet and we moved in at the beginning of May!  But they're out of their boxes and onto some bookshelves. That's a start. Sadly the bookshelves are unreachable because of boxes and stuff in front of them! Some day...

I've signed up for Lori Anderson's Bead Soup Blog Party to force myself back into blogging and beading. My partner is Sheryl Stephens at The Babbling Beader. She has WAY more experience than I in beading but she and I have found connections that are really kind of amazing. We've even made some bracelets that are very much alike! How cool is that? Lori must have been pulled by some strange strings in the Universe to pair us up! I love that and am looking forward to our partnership.

A Long Month

It's been busy here in Houston. And fun and rainy (thank heavens for that). The busy-ness started with this.  Our good friends from Dallas have a son whose a professional runner. He qualified to try out for the Olympic marathon team so everybody came -- all the aunts and uncles, several cousins, and the grandmother of the runner. They came from all over the US and it was such an amazing show of support for this kid. Though they all stayed in a motel, our house was the gathering place for meals and socializing. It was really fun, and even though they weren't our family, we felt part of theirs. My own brother even came and that was awesome (he's one of my favorite people on this earth). Sadly, the runner didn't make the Olympic team this time. But he has an indomitable spirit and is already planning for 2016.

And then the stomach flu hit our house. Yikes! That was not fun and that's all that's need to be said about that. And it felled several of the people who were here that weekend. Sadly we missed a trip to see a cherished SIL who was visiting Texas because of this bug.

I have beaded. First I'll show you what didn't work. I call this one the Elephantine Hot Mess:  I mean, look at this! Thread showing everywhere. The spirally look going in too many directions (should only be ONE). And it would truly fit an elephant. HA. Let me know if your pet elephant needs a bracelet and I'll send it on.

Then I did some quickie bracelets in chakra colors. I'm going to do more of these using the right gemstones but these were made of glass beads.

And finally, one that I really like and really enjoyed making. It's the flat spiral pattern and I just love the way it turned out. I love blue & copper together. And it was really fun to do, too.

I've had a lot of work for my job so that's kept me busier than usual. It's a good thing to have work but I really want to bead all the time!  So that's my record of January. Sorry to post so sporadically but that's the way it goes!

Thanks for reading.

Word Cloud

Have you seen these cool word clouds? I spent my working years in the publishing business. I love typography and words (I have been known to read the dictionary). I am hooked on Words with Friends on my iPhone (anyone want to play with me?).  So I love these word clouds and now I love that I can make my own so easily. Here's one based on my  blog.

 

 It seems only right and natural that Beads is prominent but I'm pretty sure I never wrote anything with "eeeeee" or "tabs-inner."  So I don't know where the words come from exactly but it's pretty cool to do.

I made one for Brooke's blog (my daughter), too. She's at whimsyvalentine.comhttp://whimsyvalentine.com/. Her word cloud is:

 I love this one, too! What fun to play with this cool software.  It's here.  You can go make your own.