still making lots of soup and delicious jewelry

Soon it will be too hot for soup-making, but never too hot for playing with beads and charms and stuff.

harvest

With the first really hard frost here on Long Island comes the necessity of dealing with all the half-ripe and green tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, and a ton of windfall apples from a friend's trees.  I enjoy food prep and cooking, especially now that the weather is so cool, but it takes me away from my workbench more than I would like. 

Just got this amulet listed on Etsy.  I love the bronze hand clasp and the diamond shaped Thai amulet.  I have come to the conclusion that my reluctance to part with a piece is an indication of how much of my heart I've put into it.  I hope no one buys this one.

sing your own song

I do like the way that the amulets on a choker-style necklace hang over the throat, protective and yet empowering.  

It has been a struggle for me all my life to learn to speak my truth.  I suspect this is true of many women.  These amulet chokers I have been making are a reminder to sing your own song.

My oldest granddaughter started high school this week after going to a small, arts based charter school since kindergarten.  She was upset Monday night because no one seemed to be responding to her openness and natural friendliness.  In searching for words of grandmotherly advice, I found myself starting to tell her to be friendlier, make eye contact, smile more - and then before the words could leave my mouth, I caught them and swallowed them down and told her that she should just be her smart, funny, uniquely wonderful self and she will eventually find her tribe.  Or they will find her.

time traveler

Time traveler.

Way back in the 1970's, I used to watch Dr.Who.  I was a fan of the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, with his unruly scarf and unrulier hair.  (I watch it on BBC America now too and am very impressed with the last three doctors, but I may just be watching so that my grandchildren think I'm hip.)  The idea of time travel has always intrigued me.  If I had access to a Tardis, the first thing I'd do is visit Broadway in the 1920's and catch the Marx Brothers live on stage.  The second thing is attend a ritual at Stonehenge when that culture was at its height.  When I hold one of these beautiful Russian fossilized ammonites in my hand, I am transported 60 million years (give or take a few million) back in time.  It's incomprehensible.  The quartz crystal bead above it is from Mali and I am told that children sift these beads from the sands of the Sahara, string them, and sell them to tourists.  Since there is no way of dating them, they may be anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand years old or more.

Here's another necklace that I wasn't satisfied with and decided to rework.  I added some more quartz crystal to the Labradorite and one of my copper wire DNA charms.  Now it makes me happy.  Just wish I could get the colors in the Labradorite to photograph better.  I have a cool new photo prop though - a nice little piece of driftwood with an interesting shape.

And one more new piece - this one feels so earthy - like the way that the woods smell in Spring.

into the dark again ...

Do you ever feel like you're in danger of becoming stuck in amber?  Like it's sort of comfortable and safe to be surrounded by that warm honey-sap but you know where this is going to lead and it's not pretty.  You've got a couple of choices: you can wiggle and fight it and maybe get out, or you can just relax and see what happens.  Go deeper.  BE the amber.  Is it just laziness??  Laziness with a hefty dose of fear thrown in?  I prefer (at the moment) to think that I'm not just making the same stuff, I'm making the same stuff a little better.  And after all, does any of it really matter?  Can any piece of jewelry, even if I'm arrogant enough to consider it ART, really matter?

Luann Udell, whose art and words always resonate deeply with me, just had a post about the artist not remaining silent in the face of grave social injustice. She makes, among many other beautiful things, these powerful and evocative little polymer clay horses inspired by prehistoric carvings and cave paintings.  She writes, 

“…And I can do this with my hands, by creating my little horse, which symbolizes the power that comes from our choices, our actions, even in the face of despair.”

https://luannudell.wordpress.com/

Read her posts.  She is wise and eloquent, where I am just stumbling around in the dark, trying to make some sense of this screwed up society and my part in it.  10 years ago I would have been at a vigil or a protest and that would make me feel better.  Today I'm just sitting at my worktable trying to fend off despair.  Here are my latest feeble attempts to put a little love and beauty out into the world:  Just treading water artistically maybe, but still satisfying on some level.  This I can do with MY two hands - my offerings of protection for the darkness.

in my mind I'm goin' to Carolina ...

It's almost time to pack up the old Volvo wagon and head South for a bit.  The baby is talking, the bigger kids growing ... well, bigger.  FaceTime is wonderful, but little Izzy thinks that Grandma Maggie lives in Mama's phone.  There's no place to set up all my wire and beads, so I'm trying to get everything finished, photographed and listed on Etsy before I go.

Can't wait for the AppleFest and the Dixie Classic Fair.  Apple dumplings!  Pig races!  Autumn in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Maybe we can get in a visit to the alpaca farm.  Maybe I can start to look for my dream house ...

SALE!!!!!!!

In honor of all who work with their hearts and with their hands, please use coupon code "LABOR2014" at checkout to get 10% off all purchases in my Etsy shop, "maggiezees".  Good through the end of September.

My first necklace and earring "set".  How bourgeouis of me!  Anyone who has read my feedback on Etsy knows that sometimes, when the mood strikes me, and the Moon is in the Seventh House and Mercury aligns with Mars... and I'm still not done playing with the beads that are all over my work table, I include a matching pair of earrings as a thank you for the purchase of an amulet necklace.  I know that it's hard to find something to "go" with some of my odder pieces.  But on the couple of occasions when someone has tried to make it a condition of the sale that I throw in a free pair ... well, that just gets me annoyed.  Some pieces demanded earrings to be made - some didn't.  It's not up to me. I'm an ahtist, damn it.

green green ...

In the Town of Islip, where Bay Shore is, we had an incredible amount of rain one day last week.  13 + inches in less than 6 hours.  I've never seen it rain so hard.  The streets became rivers and little gurgling brooks turned into raging torrents.  Starting a block away, our neighborhood was evacuated, but miraculously, our basement didn't even flood.  It was almost nice not being able to go anywhere, just sit around and play with my beads and wire, totally free of guilt.  Why do I still feel guilty that I no longer have a nine-to-five job?

Anyway, I used my guilt-free time wisely and made a couple of new necklaces:

I thought I had used up all my lovely big faceted Prehnite beads, but I found a few more.  Sometimes being disorganized is a good and useful thing.  The little iridescent gray/green Czech beads are called "ghost beads" and are quite special.  I should have bought more because they don't seem to be available any more.

April

Some new pieces for April:  turquoise, amber, lava and bone.  Copper and bronze.  All my favorites.  I'll just keep quiet and let the pictures speak for themselves.

And if I managed to do it right, there's a video of a little egg hunter if you make it to the very end.  Maybe not as funny as kittens being tickled, but pretty damned cute, I'd say.