Waiting for Rain in Arizona

You can smell the rain in the dry desert air.  The wind is gusting, making things rattle, squeak and moan outside.   It isn't too often that the forecast says 100% chance of rain around here.  Yet, there is still a possibility that it won't rain at my house but will rain a quarter mile down the road.







Tombstone's historic courthouse waiting for rain as it looks from my back porch this morning.  The clouds are rolling by quite fast and the wind is pushing the winter bare tree branches around.  I can see some of the birds flapping like crazy against the wind but not going much of anywhere.

It's going to be a good afternoon to turn the space heater on and work on some beadwork.  I have some light ecru pearl 8/0's out for a background.  Now I need 5 spring flower colors.  I have a matte green for leaves and a good yellow.  I need to root around for 4 more colors that makes you think of specific flowers.

Sometimes I think the hardest part of any project  is deciding on what colors to use

I guess you could say that March is coming in like a lion here in Southern Arizona.

Gem Shows Shutting down

This is this year's Gem Show treat for myself.... and it's not beads.

The parking lots are almost empty -- posted Motel prices are about half of what they were last week -- Big shrink wrapped pallets of things are sitting waiting for a truck. -- trucks are being loaded up .... it's time for Tucson to return to a semi-sleepy, Southwestern existence.

I stopped by the Pueblo show today while I was out and found a bargain.  I'd been admiring the Crinoid fossils since I saw the first huge panel of them 3 years ago.  At that point they were too big (5' tall) and out of my price range ($900 - $1,000).  This vendor was packing up and offered me half price, I countered and got it for 1/4 the marked price.  It's beautiful and quite detailed. Now to find a place in my little adobe to put it.  The colors will go quite well on a wall here.

Kino Gem Show

I  need to do a Blog post,   but.....

Oh look, Beads..........I'm easily distracted by new bead shapes and colors.

This will probably be my last show visit this Feb.  I spent a couple of hours at The Best Bead Show visiting with a lot of my beading friends.  It's a shame that we have about half an hour only once a year to catch up in person.

The nice thing about the Kino Show is that it is a small slice of what all of the different shows are like. It's a table (or two), Medium sized tents plus small tents or a couple of display tables of just about everything you'd see at all the other shows.
Today in Tucson was chilly, but not winter coat cold.  It was overcast with a 30% chance of rain.  Everyone was ready with their tarps in case it did start to rain.

It was a good day to poke around this smallish show as it wasn't too crowded.  You see, the Holidome opened today and I bet there were lines of cars several miles long waiting to get in there.  The Holidome is probably the biggest of all of the shows with over 740 booth spaces.





Today I looked, touched and saw what was new.  Shibori ribbon - beautiful, but not for me - too fragile and fussy.  Two-holed triangles, "O" beads -- Oh yes...  they need to hurry up with more production.

Beads, lots of Beads in Tucson

 Two Tucson shows in one day is almost a bit too much.  I had a list of vendors to see and didn't dawdle to look at every booth..... however, there were more than a few instances of, "look...BEADS!"



There's a couple of kilos of seed beads and other bead goodness in those bags to be unpacked.  Looking at what I did dump out almost makes me think those are not my beads.  Lots of gold and muted baroque colors and only one bright red in the bunch.

But . . . . first . ..  My new drawer unit is fixed, re-glued here and there and thoroughly cleaned.  I'm told that the glue is now set up enough to load those drawers.  So I need to do a bit of organizing before I have table space to spread out my new beads.  Already I've found one surprise as I was sure I had bought a dark sage green dagger and find it's a chocolate brown in the sunlight.

 Now these.... What was I thinking and what am I going to do with them?  Do I call them beads or buttons?  Do I file them with the buttons I use for clasps or do I look at them as a really different design element.  I do know they won't really work for bead crochet.









They felt so good and the matted colors were so calling to me that I bought two bunches of them.

How often do you buy on impulse with no clue as to how (or when) you'll use something?

It's feeling like a total PJ day - sorting old beads, fondling new beads and trying to figure out how to reorganize part of my AZ studio into new spaces.