1880's Adobe House

I've always said that if I lived in the desert, I'd live in a real adobe house. Three years ago I had the opportunity to buy one in Arizona and restore it. See the temperatures - that's why I like living inside adobe walls. If you manage an adobe house correctly, you have little need for air conditioning.




Both the exterior and interior walls in my house are between 12" and 14" thick. The worst of it is that it takes major planning to be able to hang anything on the walls. You decide, once, where you want something and you don't get to move that nail without having to do a lot of patching. My Brother-in-Law taught me the correct way to do it. You drill a 3/4" hole in the adobe, then pound a hardwood dowel in until it's flush with the surface. After that you can nail or screw into the dowel and hang a picture.


Nothing is very straight in the house and the cement floors dip in unexpected places. To my way of thinking, it just adds to the original charm of the place.

Packing Up - Closing Down

The large Nopal cactus outside of the beadroom window has bloomed and is busy putting out new leaf pads. It's time to sort the beads all back into their Plano boxes for their car trip East. My beading table looks bare with just a few projects on it. Now it's time to start down my "get out of town" check list and get ready to shut up the house. I'll be leaving Arizona Memorial Day weekend, heading for New Hampshire for the Summer. This trip will take a bit longer as I'm taking a side trip through Northern Arizona and Southern Utah to look at the rocks & beautiful scenery. I'll also stop and visit with at least five beading friends as I wend my way East. Once again I'll have a co-driver so I can gawk at what's outside half of the time. It's always more fun to share a trip like this.

Real & Felted Flowers

The Arizona cactus are starting to bloom and they are just beautiful. I have some hedgehog cactus by my front door as they are the first to bloom and I can enjoy them before I leave for the summer. The yellow and orange blooms on the prickly pear follow next. Any of them are inspiration for beading projects - or felted flowers.






Yesterday, my Sister Jill and friend Ginger came over to try their hands at making felted flowers. We used the great instructions found on Gleason's Fine Woolies Ranch site. Ginger brought her collection of felt hats and I dug out all of my felting supplies.


It's always relaxing to have an afternoon of doing creative things and experimenting. Jill and I had been talking about doing this all winter and finally it came down to now or never as I'm heading East in a couple of weeks.


Ginger added a needle felted edge to the hat she had made in a workshop and then created a felted flower to perk the whole hat up. Jill is modeling both the hat and the felted flower pin that she created.



It's always fun to play dress up, no matter what age you are.


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Winding Down in Arizona

Now it's time to start thinking about packing for the trip to New Hampshire. I've already been making piles of treasures that I've collected over the winter to take with me. Many of them are unusual Arizona or Mexican items that will be gifts for friends and family.

Busy Beading + Finger Weaving

The last week or so has been occupied with travel beading. In between, I celebrated living another year. I made a flying trip up to Phoenix to meet two long-time beading friends, have lunch, visit the Glendale Bead Museum and (of course) tour a local bead shop.

Left to right - Judith, Crystal from Sun City AZ, Bev from New Orleans.




I also made another trip back up to Payson AZ to bead with a group of friends in that area. Some of those people had taken my free form workshop and I was delighted to see where that technique had taken them.



What had started out as a bracelet became a beautiful embellishment for paper craft. Isn't she delightful?






"elements" - I had used free form elements to teach with and one participant took it to heart and made many separate pieces that she then joined and applied to an art doll. Isn't this a great, original way to put free form beading to good use?



This piece will still become a bracelet. The subtle use of color and texture suits the beading personality of it's owner. It will be an outstandingly beautiful wrist adornment.



I seldom get to see what people in my workshops end up finally creating. This was a unique opportunity to see where this technique had led some of the participants. I'm so pleased that they took me seriously when I said that the beads will sometimes tell you just what they want to be.



I just returned from another bead cave in Huachuca City AZ. This is a group of friends that I've enjoyed beading with in the winter over the past 5 years. This winter I didn't get to spend as much time with them as I had in the past so this was both a catch up and a goodbye session. Both of my two travel beading sessions allowed me to work on some fun, original beadwork.... and use up a bunch of left-over larger beads.

Finger Weaving

Over the past few months I've been exploring finger weaving from Robin Adkin's book "Timeless Treasures". The first bracelet that I made caused me to break out as I had included some vintage bronze leaves and they reacted badly with my skin.




I started another bracelet that would not have any metal accent beads.





One of the Bead Cave participants decided she wanted to try this technique also. It just showcases how different individual beading styles can be, even when using the same base technique. Sparse can be just as effective as lush.

I'm quite happy with my new finger woven bracelet with a mix of odd beads.

I have another one on my board and I'm still deciding where it is going to go. The flat beads don't allow for two passes of the cording, so I'll have to get creative if I want to use them. The bronze colored glass triangles offset the green beautifully. At the moment I think I may make a bracelet that simply repeats green squares with bronze triangles.

Color & Ideas are Everywhere

Three Sisters, three different personalities, creative, good friends. My brother once commented that he could count on seeing foot ware on our feet that reflected our different personalities..... Boots, slides and flip-flops! Every year that we can, we get together and celebrate our collective birthdays; two in April and one in June. This year we took a day trip and went to Nogales, Mexico for lunch, looking and shopping. We caught up on news, laughed, acted silly and enjoyed the day.

I found these beautiful, hand embroidered shirts for two of my seven year old friends. The colors and graphics are beautiful and I'm sure the girls will be delighted and enjoy them this summer.

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For myself and two friends in

the East I finally found some oilcloth in bright Mexican colors. The color combinations give a different perspective on color combinations. I would not have thought of using some of these colors together, but looking at these fabrics gives me some different ideas.
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We wondered just what all of this wool felt might be used for. There was a whole wall of it, so many full bolts and in so many colors. This photo is only about a third of the total. There must be some reason for one fabric store to carry so much stock of a single item. What great bright, primary colors.
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Woven fabrics - again in what I think of as typical Mexican color combinations.

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Bead Embroidery

Wouldn't these items translate into different bead embroidery designs? The stone bird was at the base of a beautiful little fountain.

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The lines on the tin seem to be be made for lines of couched beads.

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Last ....... here is a pair of earrings that I made as gifts for my Sisters. I wanted to try out a new design and get some feedback. I always know I'll get answers, sometimes pithy, but honest. They liked them and how they balanced - I got a thumbs up on them. Now I have to make a few pairs and try them out in Twist Gallery in Bisbee.

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I've often been asked where I get my beading ideas from ..... just look around you, ideas and color combinations are everywhere.