It has been awhile....

It had completely slipped my mind that I still had this blog. I have to thank the random person that put a comment about selling penis enlargement supplies on an old post, as it got me back here. It was really fun reading and seeing what I had done before and then looking through the last 3 years of BJP that show such beautiful and insightful works of art. I am inspired to join in again this year, even starting a month or so late.

It has been a particularly hard year. I have had major surgery, continuing health issues, learning to live with chronic conditions and pain, being laid off work, etc.....just to name a few issues. It has been a huge battle not to let it get and keep me down, and some days I win, others I can only fight to a draw. Mike and my mom have been incredibly supportive and motivating throughout it all. I am truly blessed there.

It also has been so difficult on the friends front. I kind of had this silly idea that by the time you and your friends are in their 30's and 40's, we left high school behind. Wow, was I wrong. I ended up having a falling out with a group of them (fault lying on both sides as it always does) but it left me in a lonely place at a time I was pretty vulnerable. I decided I would not say anything bad about them, or what had happened from my perspective, and it has hurt a lot hearing from others how many mean and petty things they are saying about me to anyone they encounter.

And that brings me back to the BJP. Trust is a huge subject and I really want to explore it through these next 12 months. I don't have an idea what it looks like yet, but I can't think of a better topic for me to personally explore this year.

Pay It Forward

I was browsing blogs today and came across this on Arline's page and I just had to join in.

The first three people who comment on my blog will receive something handmade from me, if you will also post it on your blog and pass it on. The rules are as follows:
I will send a handmade gift (something beaded or created with metal) to the first 3 people who leave a Comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange (and email me their mailing address), and who make the same pledge on their own blogs. I don't know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward meaning you will do the same for three people who comment on your blog.

Trilly

More Silliness

Wow, it has been awhile since I have had time to get on my blog. In some ways it is wonderful because my life has been busy, yet so fun and challenging. On the creative end, I have been venturing into PMC and polymer clay and have had so much fun playing with it all. Combining it with Mike's glass work was the fun project this weekend in addition to working on a chain mail bra/halter top that I am making.

In other happenings, I was invited to join a student dance troupe and I am so excited. I have my first tribal belly dance performance at the end of April and practicing for that is also taking a lot of time. One really cool thing that just occurred to me this weekend is that I can combine my love of beads and metal jewelry with my love of dancing, in terms of costumes. I just made some hair falls that included a bunch of different red yarns that I have been beading and braiding. And then I am tying that in with my BJP. I do not exactly know how it will look yet, but my April piece is going to attempt to express the love and freedom of belly dance.

Now for the silliness....Arline tagged me to reveal 7 random things about myself on my blog. Then I can tag 5 others to do the same. So here are my 7:
1. My favorite food is cheese....all cheese. I love cheese :)
2. I love Porsches and used to race them on Autocross courses and weekends at road courses around the eastern part of the country.
3. Books are a passion of mine and I always carry one with me and generally am in the middle of reading a couple at a time. I also prefer to watch tv while reading a book.
4. I dislike donuts.
5. I collect elephant and gargoyle pieces, but I prefer to find and adopt pieces that have something broken or imperfect, as they need love too.
6. I can't stand grocery shopping, but I love cooking.
7. My favorite ride at Epcot is Mission: Space.

Well that's all I have time for this morning. I have to get some more pics posted of my next couple months BJP pieces and will try to get that done this week. Bye for now.

Trilly

Silliness

I was wondering the BJP pages and everyone's lastest posts and pictures and came across this link on Sue's blog (sewingmagpie) about your aristocratic name, and just had to go play.

You may now address me as

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Countess-Palatine Lisa the Intransigent of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrnd- robwllllantysiliogogogoch Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

I just had to laugh as that is about the gibberish I have been generating today as I try to get reports out :)

Have a wonderful day, many laughs and all the wonder you can perceive.

Trilly

Happy New Year

It is January 28th, I am sitting at my desk in my new office and still trying to get sorted out since the move over the holidays. So much has happened in the last month, I just felt like writing about it before I can even think about what comes next. The first was I had a wonderful christmas. It was spent with Mike and my mom, and it was the first christmas in a long time where I was relaxed and had a wonderful time. Christmas has generally brought some challenging memories up and had long been missing any sense of joy and wonder for me.

This year was different as I chose to look at it as just a celebration of joy for all I had in my life and as the end of another year, on the brink of a bright new year. I loved seeing the lights everywhere, loved picking out items for those I loved and making gifts for those I share so much of my time with every day. I think the biggest change was that I had fun through it all instead of stressing about what I had to do, when, how, etc.

New Year's Eve was especially magical as well. Mike proposed and gave me a beautiful ring. I am so very happy and feeling so very blessed for having him in my life. We are still really wrapped up with the house renovation for this upcoming year and are thinking sometime next year for the wedding.

On the beading front, I am just finishing up an order for necklaces for Valentine's and just getting back into my BJP pages. I can see them in my mind, just have to schedule time to devote to them. I have been busy also taking a few classes and had a lot of fun at a polymer clay class I took a couple weeks ago. It was so fun and even playful, like being a child with playdough :) and I loved the couple pendants I did. I also just took a class in Viking Knit and absolutely loved the end result. I will post a pic in the next day or two.

I find myself liking so many different styles and techniques, I can't seem to settle with one I want to do in particular, so I kind of go back and forth.....but I am getting much better at completing the project I start and practicing new techniques I learn in order to keep some retention. I have really discovered a love for chain maille. I just did a dragon scale bracelet in copper and wow, I love it. I am also finding that I love mixing copper and silver and have many ideas in my head. Now I just need to find time to create them :)

That's about all that is new for now. Back to work so I can get home and play.

Trilly

Christmas Gifts

It has been awhile since I was here but it is a busy time of year at work and I have been busy trying to get gifts done for all the ladies at work. I recently took a class in these beautiful crystal hearts and decided to give them for gifts. I also wanted to do them in everyone's favorite colors. If you click on the pictures you can see them up close. I had so much fun making them after I got the hang of it. I am planning on getting back to my BJP during the holidays. I am sure looking forward to the days off work. Two short weeks in a row is just heavenly.

I also wanted to wish my friends and fellow beaders the most happy of holidays. I have loved sharing this space and this project with you all.

Trilly

October Completed

Well I did something different this month. It is as sparse as last months is full. I did it in the course of a night. We had gone over to a friends new house to help them move some stuff around and hang pictures. Well as it doesn't take four to do that, I sat back and offered input while beading my leaf. I really did not intend to just outline the leaf, but as I sat there looking at the beautiful material and the pretty metallic beads I had, I just started. I finished the outline then added the veins and stopped there for the night. I fully intended to do more the next day, but when I looked at it the next night, I couldn't make myself attach another bead. It just spoke to me with its simplicity, its simple beauty and I decided to honor that. My life feels so cluttered with my job and everything else I do, I really love the simple nature of the single falling leaf. Autumn has always been one of my favorite seasons and the colors in October are so inspiring, it now just seems so fitting. Life is change, death and rebirth, again and again. Fall never feels sad to me, rather it feels like a clearing of space for something new to come, just around the corner.

September Completed

I finished September up finally last night. I found myself struggling to get this one completed. I had set the goal for myself of trying different colors and stitches and I found it slow going at times. Plus I started the piece with the multi-colored melted glass piece in the middle. That was created by taking a pile of glass seed beads and simply slumping them in the kiln. We were not sure what they would do, but my boyfriend was playing and when it came out, I really liked it. So I decided to use it as a focal piece for this page.

It was a little extra challenging as I usually have a plan in mind when I start and I had none, so I just followed Robin's advice and put on bead down after another. I reached a point about midway through when I had the lower left done and the bead blob in the middle and it was such a contract between the chaos of the melted beads and the nice lines of the bottom left corner that it started me thinking about making order out of chaos. Of course then it lead to me thinking about my life and job and that is pretty much what I do, I attempt to find some order in the chaos that surrounds me and make som sense of it. At work, I work with soils and the earth and I am always tring to take a natural, organic site and make it work for a building or structure....imposing a form of order on the ever changing ground.

So with those thoughts, I started working a structure around the center piece....no real thought in mind, just wanting some nice curved shapes. Just after I was at this point, I joined some fellow beaders for a bead night, hanging out together working on our own projects, enjoying the company and companionship. Well I was working on this piece and a friend of mine, and fellow BJP member, looked at my piece and said what an interesting heart in the middle of the piece. Now up to that time, I had not even decided what was up or down yet, and rotating it around, the heart jumped out at me. I just had to laugh a little at this time, cause as I have previously said, hearts are not my favorite shape, yet here was another, and this one coming from my subconscious. Well I looked at it and just loved it. Amazing how this project has opened my heart in so many ways and to have a heart be the center figure in a piece about order and chaos....the bridge between them I would say, just made me feel so good.

It took me a couple weeks to finish it from that point, but I finally did it last night. I am so very pleased with this piece and I just sat there grinning. I am now really looking forward to starting the next month tonite :)

Trilly

Rakkasah East

I just had the most fabulous weekend at the bellydance festival. I spent the better part of the last three days saturating myself in music and dance and it feels like my feet haven't quite hit the ground yet. I volunteered at the festival as well as sat in the audience and watched some of the most incredible performances and I can not stop grinning yet. It was so awesome meeting some of the dancers I had only seen before on dvd's or read about in magazines and listening to the live music that moved me so much I could not sit still. I also worked with some incredible people and had so much fun. I can't wait for next year now lol.

I managed to restrain myself from purchasing too much, but I couldn't leave without picking up a sword to start practicing. I have only been dancing for 3 years, but I love it. One of my instructors pulled me on-stage during one of the open dances and that was the first time I had danced in front of any audience. And even though we were on-stage with a half dozen others, I was terrified lol. I had no idea I would be that nervous, but I was. I did fine once I got started, but wow, I wanted to bolt. I have so much respect for everyone that gets on-stage and performs. I think one of my BJP months is going to center around the dancing....I can feel it coming :)

Trilly

August Completed

Whew, I think it is done, for now anyway. I keep looking at it and thinking I need to add more, yet I am going to stop now. This kind of sums up the incredible times at Burning Man for me this year. The theme was the Green Man and I couldn't do a BM piece without the Man. I also had to add some of the playa (dry lakebed) in as well, as we lived through dust storm after dust storm this year and it was so incredible. The rainbow came in one afternoon as we were in the middle of a horrible dust storm and the rains started. I was working with a bunch of people during the storm and the rain, and we all had to stop and take in the wonder of the rainbow, then the double rainbow that appeared during the break in the storm. It was a simple, beautiful moment shared and I will never forget it. Of course the other highlight of the event for me was working in the cafe during the full moon and someone lighting the man on fire early. I stood in the cafe with friends watching the full moon and then seeing the man start to burn. The feelings went from shock to amazement to a feeling of somehow this feels all right, after all this is Burning Man and things happen.

We also had the total lunar eclipse during that week, so the moon was such a part of the event this year, I had to include it. I realized as I worked on this piece that I had to have a palm tree as well, as our camp was the Blue Oasis and my 13 days on the playa were spent at a camp with some of the most wonderful people I have ever met. And it was one of those rare times in my life where I was simply me, with no masks, no worries of what anyone thought of me and felt such complete acceptance regardless. I treasure that feeling and call it back to me when I find myself not being completely authentic in the default world.

It was an awesome experience doing this piece weeks after I returned and reliving moment after moment as I put each bead on my needle. I also realized that this page is truly a journal page for me, as it may not look like much to anyone else, and it may be so simple that it looks unfinished, but it means everything to me. I am finally really taking that in right now and realizing there is no right or wrong or proper or improper way to do this project, except maybe to change something or doubt it b/c of anyone else's opinion. Again another lesson to take to my life :)

Trilly

New Earrings

I had so much fun yesterday at the metalwork class. I made a simple pair of earrings and really can't wait to try some other items. I can already tell I am going to need to get some more tools :) As much fun as working with the metal was, I so enjoyed spending the time with others and looking over all the beautiful beads in the shop. I have such a hard time restraining myself from buying more and more. LOL I bet many others can relate to that feeling. I now have to decide whether I want to make a pendant to go with the earrings today, or return to my BJP piece....decisions decisions.

Trilly

OMG it is October already

Where has the time been going? I am just about done with my August project, or I was until last night. I added what I thought would be the last bead and then came up with something else I want to add, but did not have the beads I wanted for it, so I now probably have one more night before I get it done. I have found materials for September and October, as well as a focal bead for each. YAY! me....I am really rocking now lol.
I got inspired for both last weekend. For the September piece, Mike had been playing with glass beads in the kiln while we were getting pendants made for Burning Man and took a small handful of size 11 glass seed beads, heaped them in a little pile and melted them....they made this strangely shaped, multicolored, shiny glass piece that I just loved. I knew I wanted to use it one month for this project, so last weekend we went shopping for a material to use. I found one, then found two more that just cried out for me to take them home....so I did :) Then I was ordering some beads with a friend the other night and I saw this beautiful glass leaf pendant that I just had to have and I am planning on using it for October on a beautiful purple material.
In my mind, now that I have directions or at least a beginning for both months and August almost complete, I am not as far behind lol....I just love how we can rationalize almost anything. I was just thinking how my progress with this project reflects my life. I do tend to get involved in many things, then move on leaving this and that undone until it nags at me enough to get back to work. I am trying to respond a bit differently with the BJP though. I am not thinking of it as work or anything I have to do. Rather it is something I want to do, something that serves me and is for me alone. And that is the crux of it...how I often let slide the things I want to do for the things I think I should do. This keeps me very conscious of being sure I come first in my life some of the time....finding that important balance between taking care of self and taking care of others.
The yin-yang of life. Balance, a perpetual motion in every facet of our life, is something that I lose conscious awareness of until I hit one extreme or another, often taking for granted those moments in my life where I have found balance because they are just so peacefully simple. Those moments are the ones I truly treasure, yet I embrace both extremes and am grateful to have the experiences, as I might never recognize the beauty of balance if I never had the challenge of everything spinning out of control. Ok, enough thoughts along these lines...one is connecting to another and faster than I can even type them.
And back on the physical plane, my hand is still troubling me and I go for more tests this week, but as long as I take frequent breaks and watch how I am holding my wrist, I can bead....whew. I am excited about this weekend too, as I am taking a class in metalwork from a fellow BJP member. I can't wait to play with a different medium and I love being in the company of fellow beaders, learning something new.
Love and Light,
Trilly

Ohno

Well all my plans to get caught up ended almost as quickly as they began. I am in a wrist and thumb brace for at least a week, possibly longer, as we try and figure out what is causing the nerve pain. It is most likely carpal tunnel, but having some strange symptoms too, so this is frustrating and painful. I had no idea how much pain it could be, and being a migraine sufferer, I have a high pain tolerance. I definitely have new respect for those with this condition, I truly had no idea.
I am hoping to find some way to continue working on my beading without stressing my hand. I guess one thing in my favor is it is my left hand and I am right handed. Maybe I could work on some sort of stand up frame, or something like that. I am creative and an engineer, I can make this work :)
Well that is the end of my whine for today, plus typing is tough with the brace lol.
Trilly

I just realized it has been well over a month since I wrote anything here. I had the most wonderful vacation ever. Burning Man was awesome. We had two burns, miserable weather conditions and the most fun imaginable. I met many new people this year and volunteered with some different groups, as well as having an incredible time with my campmates. We gave away many of the necklaces and pins we made and it was really great to get the feedback and compliments on our work. The pendants we made from old glass plates we found at a garage sale really looked great and made beautiful gifts. They also ended up being worth a lot more than we would have expected when we needed an obscure pipe fitting during the week and finally found one we could barter for, and our end of the barter ended up being a couple pendants.

Here are a few pictures from the event. The dust storms were pretty incredible at times, and were common the whole time we were there. The full moon was awesome, as well as the eclipse. One day we had a little rain on top of a dust storm and had an incredible double rainbow, as well as the single one shown in the picture. The last two pictures show the playa at the end of the event, practically empty and during the event, very full of people and camps.

So much happened there, both for me personally and at the event in general that I don't even have it all straight in my head 3 weeks later. I did a lot more on my own this year and really loved it. I set an intention to stay completely open to the experience, without any expectations, and it surpassed anything I could have even hoped for in terms of interaction with others and time alone with myself. It was also a wonderful time for Mike and I. We found a good balance between doing our own thing and making time to do something together every night. I found myself leaving Burning Man more in love with my partner and more at peace with myself than I could have ever dreamed.

Needless to say, the three weeks we were gone has me now a bit behind on my project. I finally got started on the August piece a week ago and hope to have it completed this week. I haven't found inspiration for September or October yet, but I have a feeling that will come as I complete August and move out of the Burning Man mode. I usually stress over missing a deadline, but I am staying calm through this and will get caught up over the next couple months as winter moves in and I have more indoor time. I will put a picture up in the next few days of the August progress.

Trilly

Our New Addition

Well, there is not much of anything to add to a beading update....ok to be honest, nothing at all. I have not even prepped the material lol. I have been working with my bf to get gifts ready for Burning Man. We have been making fused glass pendants with the BM symbol on them to give to camp mates and others we meet along the way. I have never worked with glass before and have been having fun. We did about half as pins and half as necklaces that I have been putting on braided hemp and cotton cords.

I have also been running around trying to decide what to take, wear, not wear, not take, ok maybe take, etc. for Burning Man. In the spirit of my beading this year, I am trying to step out of my comfort zone and let a little bit of my inner self show in my clothes and outfits at BM this year. Basically leave my more conservative side behind and let the Leo in me out to play :) I am also planning on getting out of my camp a bit more and trying some events like morning meditation or yoga, taking a workshop on herbal healing, a class on couples massage, assuming I can talk my partner into this :), and one camp I am looking forward to visiting.....Gnome Camp. You adopt a garden gnome for the duration of the event, put them in your camp or take them around BM and take pictures on their disposable camera, which you then return at the end of the event. You have to make sure your gnome has a good time. This sounds like it could be a lot of fun.

Oh, yeah, I forgot, the title of this post.....our new addition. Well, to make a long story short, hopefully, our house came with a feral cat, unbeknownst to us. She (Zoe, who has since been caught and fixed) had kittens awhile ago and we found ourselves trying to tame and feed and care for four kittens. One of them is a true runt that Zoe abandoned for some reason at about 4 weeks. When we noticed, he was skin and bones. Of course we had to take him in and oh my, he (Pixel) has not grown much, but is filling out and driving poor Beanie (my cat) crazy. How something that weighs only ounces can make so much noise, I have no idea, but he is a wild man lol. And to top it off, he will only sleep if he is cuddled up against one of our chests, purring up a storm, cute as can be, but cause he is so small, we want to make sure he has enough room. Our queen size bed is not big enough for a cat, already demanding in her own right, two adult human slaves and now a pint size kitten.

Oh and his one last, very charming, trait...he has decided that feeding time is 5am, give or take ten minutes. Now this poses no problem for my fellow slave as he is a morning person, but it is pure torture for me. LMAO! now I know this may sound like I am whining, but I already love the little stinker....just had to complain a tiny bit. Oh and put a huge thanks in advance out there to my mom who is just insane enough to take my two cats while we are on vacation. They will have so much fun with her cat and new kitten LOL! She is going to be a crazy cat woman for a couple weeks and I can only hope she still is talking to me when we return from the desert LOL!

July is done.....finally

It has been ages since I have posted. I only finished my July piece on Sunday after having been unable to bead for over 2 weeks. Not only did I find my life in general had a lack of balance and lots of challenges, my physical body reflected it as well. I had vertigo as a result of a sinus infection and my life literally was spinning around me for a couple weeks. Ugh.....that has to be one of the most miserable things I have ever gone through. I couldn't bead, read, drive, barely work, and just felt awful. It did leave me with a lot of time to think and meditate though.

I feel that physical ailments can sometimes reflect our emotional and spiritual states, and this one sure did. I had turned my life upside down and most of my relationships and friendships all at the same time and then lived that out physically. I am finding my physical balance and the spinning I feel is much less while at the same time I am also finding balance within myself as I come to a place of peace about where my life is heading.

I ended up with my July piece being really simple and with little adornment. I let the colors and background stand on their own. I struggled with the idea of a heart because it is a symbol I rarely use cause it always felt so girly to me and I was never a girly girl, yet I look at it now and really like the shape and feel of it. I also am so loving the feeling of have completed another month.

I found fabric for August and am planning on starting it tonite. I know it will be a theme related to an event I am going to at the end of the month. This will be my second year at Burning Man and I can't wait. I feel like a child just before a birthday or holiday. If you have never heard of it, you can check it out here, http://www.burningman.com/. The theme this year is Green Man, and being environmentally conscious and being as green as possible. Guess what color my fabric is LOL!. I am probably one of the tamer participants but I do love being out of touch with everything for over a week, surrounded by art and music and finding myself helping and depending on people, often complete strangers, in such a difficult physical environment, yet one of the most rewarding spiritually.

Have a wonderful week.

Trilly

Finally Un-Stuck

This has truly been a case of art imitating life, or is it life imitating art. I was stuck for over a week on where to go from the flames. This so aptly paralleled my life that I finally just started laughing at the whole situation. And I always find that once I can laugh at life and myself, my heart eases and I can breath again, find my footing and start moving forward.

The flames in my life really hurt this week. One friendship has become immensely challenging and another took a strange detour and the pain and confusion of this was very tough to deal with. I sat stuck in it for days, and found at the same time I couldn't move forward on my July piece. I looked at them both, my life and my art, and had no idea where to go next. I decided to walk away from all the problems for a few days and just let everything ease up somewhat. I also decided to see if I could bring my project to my dreams and see where I might head with it next. Nothing came in the dreams but the next day I saw another picture in my mind and knew where I was going next.

I rarely if ever use hearts in anything I do, but I am putting a heart in the background of the flames and it just feels right. The flames are cleansing and healing the pain in my heart. They are change and growth and healing, buring away anger, self-doubt, judgement and all the other negative thoughts my ego keeps reliving. The flames clear a space for love, self-care, confidence, patience with myself and others and joy. My heart feels lighter and freer and I can again hear that soft voice that is my spirit, talking of love.

July Progress

I finally made some time to sit down and rough out the flames I talked about last post. They did not come out exactly as I had them pictured in my mind, but I can live with it :) I do not know where I am heading next, and actually can't wait to see where I end up going.

This has been an extremely challenging week for me and a rather tough weekend. A lot of changes have occurred in my life and my relationships in just the last 48 hours and I am still processing it yet it becomes clearer that flames are very appropriate for this time in my life. They are burning away parts that are no longer serving me. The analogy definitely applies here as the pain of the burn has quite taken my breath away lately, but I know this will clear a space for other relationships to enter my life and provide a great opportunity for new growth. I sit here taking a few deep, cleansing breaths and set the intention to surrender to this experience, allowing it to be a beautiful opportunity for growth along my spiritual path. So be it.

Random Thoughts

On my commute into work today I was thinking about my July page. I have picked out materials and colors yet did not work on it at all this weekend. I was playing with some bead stringing, using different materials I normally do not work with and it was a lot of fun. I actually made a couple necklaces for myself, which I rarely do.

LOL! ok back from that little digression....anyway, in the car, I was picturing the brilliant reds, oranges and yellows I had selected for July and I was thinking originally in terms of flowers, blooming etc. yet this morning, they had morphed into flames. I think this is because I have been surrounded by angry people lately, both at work and in my personal life. So I started wondering why I have been drawing this in, what am I to learn from observing others around me sit with unexpressed anger that comes out in little jibes or sullen silences. That lead to thoughts that we tend to be reflections of one another. So I went deep within myself to see where I might have some unexpressed anger, some resentment or something I have not forgiven myself or others for. This is never a very comfortable exploration, yet is always freeing when done with an open heart and lack of self-judgement.

What I realized is that I tend to over-give, to be the peace keeper, appeasing everyone for the illusion of peace, instead of speaking my truth, standing tall in my beliefs and trusting in myself. With that recognition, I see clearly how I end up resentful. Yet I am the only one doing this to myself. No one is holding a gun to my head saying to sacrifice myself for everyone else. I am choosing to do so. Doesn't it always come down to that? No one can make me do anything I don't choose to do, and it is now time to choose something different.

I choose to take care of myself first; to be true to who I am and what I believe, to allow those I love to have their feelings freely and not rush in to "fix" things that are not mine to fix, to realize that the only thing I have any control over is my reaction to situations and let the illusion of control fade away, to love myself unconditionally and allow that love to flow outwards to all I encounter. With that intention set, I am going to start my piece tonite with the flames I have envisioned and see where they take me. I am feeling them as burning away the illusions I have bought into and bringing forth a new understanding, a rebirth, not unlike the Pheonix.

Trilly

Whew......

I finished my piece last night. I have not made a final decision as to whether it will become a page in a book or a part of a wall hanging, so for now, it is stored lovingly in a beautiful box. I am very happy to be finished with this piece so I can begin the July project, which has been floating around in my mind for over a week already. I even saw part of it in a meditation last week and have been so excited to start, but holding myself to completing June first.

I am still struggling with wanting to fix the little imperfections I see, and rethink this bead or that bead, but am holding myself to letting it develop as it is. I keep reminding myself this is such a different project from anything else I have tried, and there is nothing it HAS to be, it just is.

The more I sat and looked at it last night, the more that sunk in. I started to see what this project meant for me, especially in the balance between light and dark that played out with the moon and the sun. Everything always comes down to finding a balance and that has been on my mind so much recently that it shouldn't surprise me to see it in the beads. Duality plays out in so many ways and yet we are always simply where we are. We have this moment and one choice after another. We can choose light or we can choose dark or anywhere in between, yet we are only at one place in between the poles every moment. I find that I bring drama and confusion into my life when I forget that simple idea and start to buy into the illusion that I am good or bad, that I am right or wrong, that something is beautiful or ugly.....forgetting that I just am. I am.