Luna's Baublebilities

It is turning out to be a very low key vacation.  We had expected to do tons of work over at the Beorningstead this week but Bry has been down with a cold for well over a week.  He took two days off work last week, missed two Sundays in a row at Church and has been just plain tired and sickly for a long time.  The kids have both got it, too.   I'm the only one not sickly.  That's a bit of a change.

My Umbrella Swift (aka Umbrella Fish - Maxx is great!) and all of my various yarns arrived last week.  They have been pre-washed are now drying.  I'm pondering color palettes and record keeping. 

I started out my dyeing career with keeping records.  I used to have a nice home made swatch book that had a 2 small squares of fabric - one cotton and one silk - for each dye color I had.  That fell apart years ago.  I don't even know where the swatches are anymore.  I don't usually dye for specific color outcomes.  My process is much more intuitive than that.  I've learned enough about how colors overlay and how they may or may not shift on silk as compared to cotton that I just throw things in a bucket and know that the result will be pleasing - or at least interesting. 

That will all change with this new line of threads.  I need to develop reliably reproduceable colorways and learn how to dye with procion on wool blends.  Wool is usually dyed with acid dyes but some of my wool has rayon or bamboo blended in and acid dyes won't touch the plant fibers at all so I have to use procion for those blends.  I also want my colorways to "translate" across the line of threads I've got so I'll hav eto be using the same dyes and colors.  I will have to do several swatch tests to learn how colors interact on the wool and wool blends before I jump in headfirst and dye up all this yarn.  I'm a little intimidated, but excited, too. 

This is a good thing.  On Thursday, Don Mandigo stopped into the Arts Council to do some Valentine's shopping for his wife and he asked if I was creating anything new.  We chatted for a minute and our conversation reminded me that one can't grow as an artist or a person if one is too comfortable, mucking about doing the same old thing all the time.  

Well, I won't be mucking about with the same old stuff all year this year!  I also got a shipment of acrylic felt to cover my print table with last week so I'm all set to play with breakdown printing , too.  I'll be setting up my printing screens for that when I prepare my first test batch of wool fibers. 

Gearing up for these two new processes feels a bit like jumping on the swing at my Grandmother's house.  The monkey swing swooped out over a big drop off where the driveway was.  If you planned your swing just right, you could swoop around the tree, spinning out over the driveway, swing back and wrap halfway around the tree on the way back, landing on your feet.  If you planed badly, you could slam against the tree or scrape bits of skin off your knees or elbows or fumble your landing and end up in the dirt.  

Sadly the tree and the house are gone now.  I took this photo on the last morning of the house - it was a very rainy and sad morning.

A blog post is NOT what I intended to work on tonight.  But. .  .

Maxx has been having some serious adjustment issues with back-to-school and had a violent meltdown tonight after dinner, including punching me several times and saying "I wish I didn't even HAVE a Mommy!"  This as a result of being instructed to NOT allow the dog to drink from his cup of milk.  Maxx and I did a hold down on the kitchen floor while waiting for Daddy, who dispensed an appropriate spanking and talking to and sent the boy to bed before leaving for meetings tonight.  Boy hasn't slept and keeps coming downstairs.  I am frustrated, discouraged and angry and can't work at any projects upstairs right now.

I've been having a hard time finding my feet after vacation.

I'm no longer a home schooling mom.  That's O.K.  Molly is having a great time in HS and is enjoying the musical immensely.  She's even starting to catch on in Algebra. Wisely, they put her in the slow class and she is doing just about as well as the kids who have been there from the beginning of the year.

I'm trying to lose weight the old fashioned way.  You know - eat less and exercize more.  So far so good but with tonight's stress I really want some chocolate and I've already broken into the popcorn.

I'm struggling with my calling.  Primary Secretary is very administrative which means that I don't have a lot of prep time for Sundays since I'm not teaching but it also means that I'm not growing spiritually because I'm not teaching.  I'm also not doing a very good job in it.  I had to miss a meeting tonight because I needed to get Maxx in bed.  It is simply impossible to have both Bry and I out of the house on a school night and since Bry is the BP - his responsibilities at church come before mine do right now.  I also feel that Maxx clings to me and acts out more in Primary than he would if I weren't stationed there every week.  I'd like him to be more independent on Sundays and I feel like my being available in the room impedes his development there.

I'm trying to determine what to do with my business.  Bry is already playing the "There probably won't be a job for you next year" game with BOCES.  Patterson's budget cuts to education on top of the general economic downturn keep Bryan's position at risk, even though he has been at BOCES for 10 years.  Don't ask - its a bunch of administrative stupidity.  When we began planning for the Beorningstead, I felt sure that I could start producing and selling enough scarves and finished jewelry to pay off some of the extra debt we would have to incur at first to make the transition work.  I still think that is true and that once I do find my feet and get a working routine going, the money will start rolling in the way I need it to.   But I'm pretty sure that I can't make enough to support the household.

Who knows, maybe I could.  But at this rate I just don't see how.

The Goblins' Market supply business contributes a steady cash flow which comes in really handy but the amount of income it provides compared to the amount of time I have to spend is really not worth the hassle.  I need to narrow my inventory and the scope of my supply shops.  I need to do this without taking a loss in my current inventory or slowing down the cash flow.  I need to find the balance between this side of my business and the finished works side - which is where the real profit and enjoyment is.



Where do I narrow things down?  What do I cut out from supplies, what do I increase?

Ribbons and hand dyed cord are very fulfilling to sell.  I spend a lot of time and have lots of fun devising new colorways and the ribbons bring a good price.  They also represent a large layout for raw materials in order to have more than a few lengths of each colorway.  Having regularly available color choices means either doing HUGE lots of each colorway at once or dyeing the same colorways again and again throughout the year.


The enameled brass dragonflies, bead caps and birds?  Love them.  And so does everyone else.  I've managed to restrict enameling to one day a week when Molly and I work together which means that customers wait several days to get their orders shipped out but it keeps that task manageable and trackable for me.  I'm thinking of expanding to include a few more colored metal pieces like butterflies and other repousee findings. 

Beads?  Oh here's a dilemma.  I LOVE having tons of beads to play with and lots of variety.  But since most of the beads I stock are so inexpensive, I'm really not making much of a profit.  Between listing fees and inventory management time, I think that one would have to be selling in huge quantities to make any money with selling beads.  I think I will dig back through my sales records and choose out the best sellers and keep those on hand.  Then I will concentrate on finding a few really special beads for designing with each season and offer a few sets of specials in my supply shops.  I recently discovered some new wholesalers who have slightly higher prices (1-2 cents per bead) but lower minimums and better variety so I don't have to tie up all of my bead money in a few massive strands that I'll get bored with and that may or may not sell.

I love having filigree bead caps and components around for designing with.  Thse will stay, but I will probably start to lean more towards larger and more specialty pieces.  Smaller findings will go.  I realize now that I do not intend to be a "full service bead shop."  There are plenty of those out there.  I want my supply shops to be known for the really luscious stuff - the addictive stuff you can only get from the Goblin Men down in the glenn.

For finished works . . .

I really want to play more with the beads I've got.  I love sparkley stuff.  I need to market it better, though, because jewelry is such a flooded market online.

Scarves.  If I dye, they will buy.  Again, more marketing will help move inventory quicker but I have no fears about losing money on any style of scarve that I produce.  Except maybe the gorgeous hand dyed velvet wraps with the incredible beaded fringe, but that kind of labor is never wasted.

Tee shirts?  I've got some half dyed and waiting for me to finish a silk screen design.  If they don't move well, lots of family members will get pretty tee shirts with peacocks on them for Christmas next year.

But before I can be successful with these finished beauties, I have to actually make some more stuff and get photos of them and list them in my shops.  All of that takes time.


And I haven't even discussed the state of the household.  My studio is a Groggoch's den right now and the bathroom isn't far behind.



I think the boy is asleep now.  Perhaps I can sneak into the studio now?  Or at least upstairs to put my laundry away?








. . . . .

Or was, this morning.

Sometimes I feel like Cassandra, walking about my little kingdom here admonishing everyone that things are out of control and getting dangerous and being completely ineffective at establishing any sort of balance or formulating a plan for damage control. My concerns go unheeded by everyone (including myself) until things go up in flames. In our family's case, going up in flames means that mom has a major hormonal/insomniac meltdown and poor Bryan has to pick up the pieces.

He has gotten quite good at that in the course of 18 years and we've almost erradicated these temporary tragedies completely. They do still sneak up on us and sometimes, they are even good for both of us, in a slash and burn sort of way. But if you have never been an estrogen dominant, insomniac woman who is hard wired and well trained in the art of extreme anxiety, you have no idea how terrifying and painful those little apocalypses are. The fact that I am still alive today is a testament to both Bryan's skill at soothing crazy people and my stubborn determination to stick it out in this life.

This morning's episode was definitely a result of losing lots of sleep over Maxx's asthma issues since late June (and probably some post-traumatic fall out from the ER visit) added to the stress of the housing situation, added to the stress of running a small business, added to the stress of not having enough Studio space or time (I thought I would have Running Water by now!) added to the stress that a Branch President's family is just always under, added to a lack of exercise, added to sadness that one of our favorite familes is moving away, added to the disappointment that summer is about half over and we just really aren't having any fun. Or at least, I'm not. (Big sigh.)

But now the field is burned, the sun is shining, I've got some new endorphins runnning in my blood from my early morning snot and tears treatment and I don't feel so angry and hopeless anymore. Life is just a whole lot bigger than me. I've got to expect to get flattened sometimes.

Here's a poem that I started over 4 years ago. It is loosely addressed to one of the women who trained me so well in the art of extreme anxiety - my maternal grandmother who, in spite of experiencing more misery in her life than I believe I could withstand, kicked back at death for over 13 years in a nursing home. It lacked a title until this morning

Troy is Burning
Virginia Burnett

The woman behind the counter looked at your photograph,
back at me.
"Is this you?" she asked.

Now my hand moves hopelessly against my forehead.
This curve under my palm is the same
as that which once held your smile.
These are connections deeper than blood
in the lines of our hands and the brown of our eyes,
the spaces between our synapses
and the delicate coil of our DNA.

We belong to our daughters
and to their daughters;
generations new and unborn.
I panfully, gracelessly keep this writhing darkness
safely sealed within my veins;
How is it that I may rip this web & mar this pattern,
when you, for so long, labored to keep it whole?







. . . .

Every now and then I like to pop over to the World Beach Project of the Victoria and Albert Museum. The map header says this of the project; "Devised by artist Sue Lawty in association with the V&A, the World Beach Project is a global art project open to anybody, anywhere, of any age, building on the experience many of us have had on holiday of making patterns on beaches and shorelines."

This is the photo I most enjoyed today.



'Eatons Neck, Long Island, NY'
Al Jarnow
7 January 2008


First, this is just an incredible sculpture. Second, I've been thinking a lot about balance and alignment lately and my reactions to this project were a bit visceral.

Without going into gruesome detail, suffice it to say that my life is hideously out of balance and I need some serious realignment, both spiritual and physical.


Will I someday stand back to look over my life and see that this particular period is like the project in these photos - a series of precariously balanced boulders and pebbles, spanning an otherwise uncrossable chasm?

When I look into my chasm right now, I see economic insecurity, my husband's career uncertainty coupled with my uncertainty about what I can and should do to contribute financially, Maxx's special needs, intellectual stagnation, our crumbling house, religious burn-out, constant low grade illness, too many demands and not enough resources and a general lack of direction our family.

If these things represent a chasm, where & what are the stones we can gather to create the bridge we need? What do we expect to find when we get to the other side of the chasm?

So - I don't usually do this sort of thing, but today I was over at Magdeline Jewels because she is the lucky proprietress of the Etsy Mini-Monday shop for this week and her blog has this nifty link to a Tarot widget.

I know next to nothing about the Tarot besides finding the cards beautiful and fascinating. On this website there's a quick set of questions and answers for you to select before it hands you your card. It's quick and nifty. Here's mine:

You are The Star

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

If you want to see other amazingly cool stuff online today - check out some of Bioephemera's recent posts. She finds the most amazing stuff and I love seeing the many ways that art and science collide.

Now, I really have to go wash some dishes. Enough procrastination.

I hate always failing at my New Year's Resolutions. Often I pretend not to make any but end up keeping a secret mental list of untrackable and therefore unattainable goals. This year will be different. I have just a few main goals and I'll be blogging about them so hopefully I'll be able to keep track of my progress and actually succeed at something.




#1 goal - more important than anything else - is to establish a habit of caring for my body. I am beyond the upper healthy limits of weight for my body size and I have very little energy for most physical activities. Also, I have been sick at least one week out of each month this year and this winter, one sickness has blended into the next one since mid-October. I know that regular daily exercise will change the state of my body dramatically. I intend to exercise every day that I am not incapacitated for at least half an hour. I'll log my progress each week here. This week, I exercised on Monday and then came down with the flu. I'm feeling better today so I need to spend some time with a video or the treadmill before the day ends. (I welcome anyone who wants to be part of an exercise club or support group that reports regularly here.)




My next goal is to learn how to effectively manage all aspects of my business without allowing them to overtake my life. I am working with a schedule of daily and weekly tasks that include product development, production, photography, posting items, shipping, bookwork & financial management and blogging. I hate spending most of January going through all of the previous year's receipts and categorizing everything for my books. An hour or so every other week this year should help me eliminate that problem next year. I am also developing an inventory system so that I know when to re-order and eliminate my sloppy guestimation system for tax reporting.






























For this blog, I intend to post regularly, including the following topics:

- my progress with my exercising/health goal
- new tutorials for fiber and jewely arts
- new development in my shops
- Etsy Bloggers Street Team monthly topics
- My participation in Sharon Boggon's Stitch Explorer 2009




I'm not sure what the schedule for blogging will be yet and I'm sure I'll post fun stuff about my family fairly regularly, but I'm really more interested in creating a journal of my professional growth as opposed to a family travelogue. Molly Bryn is very interested in blogging, perhaps this year she will start a family blog.










One thing I am very concerned with professionally is how to keep my business moving forward without becoming simply a reseller on Etsy. I love selling beautiful beads and findings and that s certainly bringing in a beter cash flow than my jewelry and scarves but the time I've been investing on that is eating away at my time for family needs and creative time. If I can't create with the stuff, it is no fun to have thousands of beads and hundreds of yards of silk lying around!





That is part of the reson I ant to participate in Stitch Explorer this year. I really love embroidery and I have so many fond memories of atching my sweet Grandmother embroider beautiful things that i want to make it a regular part of my life, rather than just something I drag to Church conferences two or three times a year. Taking on an embroidery project like that should teach me new skills while allowing me to use my beads and silks in small amounts for embellishing my project(s). maybe some of my projects will turn into profitable product lines, otherwise, they will be portable pressure-free creative outlets.

Speaing of time for family needs - it is almost time for lunch. Scattered about the page here are some photos of my new beads and some earrings I worked on last week. They are not all up in my shops yet, but they will be by the end of next week!

I have been very busy of late trying to get my new shop, Goblins' Market up and running on Etsy. What with Bryan looking at heading back to school, I am hoping that it will prove to be successful. I've been having a lot of fun putting together color palettes for hand dyed silk ribbon and cord. I'll end up spending a fortune on PFD fibers alone!




Today I finally had an opportunity to get photos of my May challenge work - such as it is. The theme was self-definition as an artist and I thought about that a lot. I am known for my jewelry and scarves - which is great - but it is also very one sided. Most people don't realize that I also love literature ad intend to write someday when my life is quiet enough to allow that level of contemplation. (Yes, I know - I should make that time now. . . etc, etc.. . Now is just not the time nor the season in my life for writing. It will come.) People also don't realize that I am very interested in 2 dimensional art and am quite a good archaeological illustrator. I decided to work on something unexpected that pulls together my love of literature with my interest in other art forms.

I painted a 6x6 canvas in an abstract style, using techniques pulled from Acrylic Revolution. Once I had the shapes on the canvas, I highlighted areas and drew in details using Derwent Colorsoft color pencils and applied a thick textured layer of High Gloss gel medium. I'm still contemplating what the canvas needs next as I am dissatisfied with the high gloss layer and the amount of detail. I think I may need to apply some transparent gesso and repaint and draw in some more detail. It is certainly not finished yet.



The back of the canvas has a 4x4 inch opening that I built a little oxplow book for. The book opens two ways. (I learned to make oxplow books from Alysa Golden's Unique Handmade Books) In one "half " of the book I have written H.D.'s The Helmsman, one of my favorite poems and a style of poetry that I greatly admire. The other half I have titled "What Georgia Had to Say About Flowers and Dirt and Bones." It contains three quotations from Georgia O'Keeffe about why she painted what she did and about not worrying about whether or not she was conforming to people's expectations of her work. Both sections are too long to post here today, but maybe I'll throw them in sometime in the next few weeks.








I am really excited about the June palette for the TIF challenge. I hope I get to play with it before August!

The theme for May's Challenge over at In A Minute Ago is "What do I call myself and why?" Sharon has posted some interesting thoughts about the dilemma many textile artists find themselves in - how to define themselves and their work in a way that the public can understand and appreciate. Why is defining ones' self so difficult?

I have always had a difficult time introducing myself. As a child, I was very shy and then as I grew older and less terrified of other people, I began to hate saying my name. Virginia is a terrible name to go through public school with. If you doubt that, come and take a look at my senior yearbook. The problem was compounded by the fact that my maiden name started with W. On any given day through middle school and high school I was referred to as a German automobile, a very private female body part and/or a virgin. The virgin epithet probably would have fit on everyone in my 7th grade, so why was it so nasty to say to someone and sooo funny to single me out? Maybe I was particularly lovely when blushing.

As an adult, I'm growing into my name a bit better, though I think it will always be too gentrified for me. Most days, I would much rather introduce myself as Luna an let it go at that. (Thanks for the extra name, Gesh, it's much more comfortable than my first one.) On top of all the baggage my given name carries, I often stumble over my reply when someone asks me what I do. It is a complicated answer which could include any or all the following elements: stay at home mom, home-school teacher of all subjects, textile and jewelry artist, class co-ordinator for local arts council, literature addict, writer in waiting, terrible housekeeper, good cook . . . .

Strangely, I don't usually reply that I am a wife - I think that is because my connection to Bryan goes back so far and is such an essential element of my person that I don't feel that it needs to be pointed out. It would be re-stating the obvious, like saying "I am a woman." Duh.

Sometimes when I am working in the gallery, someone will come in and touch one of my scarves and comment on how beautiful it is. When I say thank you, they want to see my other items in the store. I think they become a little perplexed as I lead them through the scarf racks and the jewelry counters pointing out all of my work. It look so diverse at first glance. I'm having the same problem trying to make my Etsy store look unified. There are hand painted silk scarves using serti resist methods, tie dye methods and silk devore methods. There are minimalist earrings and necklaces made with very simple stringing and wire wrapping techniques next to very intricate beaded items that look like they could be straight out of the Victorian era. There are silk fusion items with lots of machine embroidery and hand beading. Coming into my personal studio, you would also see watercolor painting, archaeological illustrations, sewn items and some recent collage, embroidery and acrylic work. There's no simple label you can put on my work or my style but anyone who looks closely and pays attention for long enough would notice that I have a relentless hunger for intricacy and detail. Even my "minimalist" jewelry items will include something with tiny, interesting detail - like the wood grain and speckled glaze on the pair of earrings below.

Having babbled on so about how I define myself, as a person and as an artist, I still have no idea where I will go with the challenge theme. This will require further thought.

In the meantime, I have three yards of complex cloth to work on and send on to the next person in line. Mine came back to me, finished, last week. Pictures are below but they are not good. I need to set up a better place to photograph textiles. I think I've got the jewelry thing worked out, but fabric is so difficult to capture. The final result is actually quite a bit greener than these photos show.

And in closing - I must report success in the Potty Training arena. Yesterday my boy stayed dry all day and followed his own body's prompting to get to the potty on time. This peeing on Lady-bugs thing is really doing the trick! With the spring thaw,ladybugs began coming out of the woodwork and congregating anyplace warm and bright. It was like Amityville Horror meets Ladybug Picnic. One day while attempting to encourage the boy to pee into the toilet instead of willy-nilly all over the bathroom, Bry threw a few ladybugs into the potty for target practice. that was an instant hit. I don't know what we will do when the ladybugs have all moved on. Cheerios sadly lack that tragic victim quality.

Welcome to Luna's Baublebilities! This being my first entry in my new blog, perhaps it would be appropriate for me to introduce myself and outline the reasons why I've decided to start a blog.

I am a 30 somethingish stay at home mom and artist. I work in textiles and jewelry when I have free time from homeschooling. I also work part time at my local Arts Council. I have been working with beaded jewelry since 1995 and with silk painting and complex cloth since 2001. Most of my work in the past has been given as gifts or sold locally as a means of supporting my art habit.

Lately, I have been wanting to expand my horizons a bit in terms of the techniques I use, the way that I interact with the arts community and the market I sell to. This blog will become a journal of my explorations in the online arts community and my current projects. Readers may also find occasional posts about homeschooling, supporting the arts in rural communities, literature and how art fits into the daily life of my family.