Luna's Baublebilities

As previously mentioned, I have 54 yards of silk waiting to be dyed in my studio.  I haven't been able to keep the kitchen studio sink clean long enough to mix up some chemical water to get started.  Maybe this weekend?  Next week?

We're undergoing some serious upheavals in the kitchen in preparation for cupboards coming on the 16th.  They aren't the cupboards of my dreams but I sure am fantasizing about them.  No more dusty spice bottles!  A place to put glasses and plates and bowls and food!

Plus, I get a real kitchen sink & a dishwasher and my studio sink becomes mine - all mine!

It's going to be awesome.

I think I recall that the map to a real kitchen includes a detour through Hades, though.

I need to be patient.

I have beads coming next week, too.  I'm very excited about them. Many of them will mesh well with Pantone's Fall 2011 color forecast.  These are yummy colors.  (But I think I want to hang onto this summer's aquas & teals, too.)

So - in spite of being sick - again.  Sheesh.  (And - no it's not allergies - I just seem to be susceptible to every stinking virus that comes down the pipe.)   I cleaned in the South Studio today.

I actually started in the pantry.  It proved to be too cold for canned goods back there this winter - though a side of beef would have done just fine between November and early March - so I moved most of the remaining food stuffs down cellar, threw away what was unusable and claimed several shelves for studio storage.












Then I moved on to the mess on and around the table and counter in the South Studio.  Now both the table and counter are clean, many studio related stuffs are stored away in the pantry instead of crammed in precariously stacked little bins under the counter and the floor is clean so I can move around it without tripping over or stepping on things.






BUT in the process of cleaning, I unearthed many, many boxes and piles and tins and bins of stuff that needs sorting and better storage.  That all got heaped in the North Studio where I will tackle it tonight - or maybe Monday.  I really need to develop a good system for storing works in progress.  I'm getting better at storing the finished work carefully in boxes and/or bins and I think I'm getting there with textiles but beadwork - Whew!   More than half of what I need to sort through is unfinished beadwork and random beads and findings that didn't get put away when their projects were completed.  Oh!  The tangles and the dust.

I also need to call AGAIN and find out where my dragonflies are.  I've been waiting over two months.  If there were another wholesale source I would switch but - alas - I'm getting them from the people who actually make them.

It has been hot and stormy here for the past few days.  It feels like we have gone straight from early April to mid August.  The leaves are about 3 weeks ahead of schedule and if it ever dries out, Bry will have to mow the lawn.  I'll post outdoor photos here or at the Beorningstead when I get a chance to take some.  Right now I have a little niece and nephew keeping me busy today. 

In the meantime - here's a photo of my daughter's new color.    The purple goes well with that orange Zombie Prom shirt, no?















And here are some photos of my needle case in progress.  My photography table is still buried in junk (see messy studio photos below) so I took these under halogen lights.  NOT a good idea for getting accurate colors.  I adjusted the color temperature as best I could but it's still not quite true. 


I've got a lot of trapunto and embedded objects going on in the midst of all those french knots and seed stitch.  I'm really enjoying the process and am eager to experiment with it some more.

Tomorrow my goal is to get my studio cleaned up a bit so I can get photos of some beadwork I've been working on - some really gorgeous and sparkley Right Angle Weave bracelets, a sample bracelet for my upcoming Herrignbone weave bracelet class and a few bead strung necklaces.  I also want to do some silk screening and I need to work on some cotton voile scarves for summer - a new line I'm trying.

So wish me luck- this is what I'm contending with right now.  But we've built some new storage and re-thought our se of the pantry space behind my studio so mavbe I'll be able to organize better so I can work smarter in the future.  Or maybe I'm just always going to be a slob!














.......

Let's face it.  I'm depressed.  It's January.  It has been freakin' cold and a lot of the supplies I had stored in my South Studio (enamel paints for filigree, acrylics, specialized glues for jewelry and textiiles)  froze and are ruined because we had to seal off that section of the house in order to make headway in the battle against Winter.

My North Side Studio looks like this.

It is the only warm spot in the house some days and this is where everyone wants to huddle.  My dye table is covered with other people's junk and stuff from other projects that I would rather do in the South Side studio but can't.  Because it is cold.






See the plastic?  Some days it billows out like there is some enormous, liquid animal trying to push it's way through into the rest of the house. 










The kids have been hacking and snotting and puking for over a week.  I've had a low level of ongoing physical malaise for most of the month.  I've been mentally incompetent and my work ethic is just gone.  Completely.

 The other day I took some time to thumb through some old journals because I wanted to revisit some favorite doodles.  And because I was too lazy to get up and do any actual work.  I discovered a few things;

First,  I was a much more interesting person before I became Maxx's Mommy.  I think that I might become more interesting again in the future - I remember feeling pretty burdened and lame when MB was small, too.  (So - if you have a friend who used to be lots of fun, deeply intellectual, insightful, creative and generally good to talk to and she now has kids and is a total bore - be nice to her, O.K?  It sort of sucks sometimes to have that part of yourself forced to the back burner or into total hibernation so that you can manage your kids and house and etc...)


Second, I found a great doodle I made during a talk by Pres. Monson during the April 2006 general conference.  Isn't he adorable?  Don't you feel bad for him?

Third, I found a good prose poem that applies pretty well to my state of mind this month.  I scribbled it sometime between 8/2000 and 5/2001 - certainly it is a winter poem and was written before we had to put our old Springer, Roxanne, down.  I miss her.

I know that what I need is to get the house clean, get some exercise and banish everything but fabric and dye from my North Studio & give myself permission to drag some beads and findings from the frozen tundra to the livingroom.  Emmeth encourages this.  He would like to help build a necklace.  Or take one apart. 



Anyway - here's the poem.  Careful.  It's ugly.








Welcome to my BioRythmic Trench

a trench = a ditch; a place to channel unpleasant/unwanted stuff from one place to its disposal; a place for smelly men with guns to lie in while they reload and to crouch in while they fire at the enemy; a long hole in the dirt; a place where people piss;

an entrenchment = a thing that soldiers dig and build to keep people out - to keep the enemy on the other side.

Who's the enemy??? 
Surely it is this old dog.

Blind, deaf, lazy, fat, stubborn, inconvenient.

I could just kick her.
But I don't
I know how she feels.

Earlier this week there was a rather serious security breach at Etsy related to a programming goof on some new tool.  (Sellers' full legal names instead of shop names were listed in Treasuries for about 45 minutes)  Etsy Bitch and the Forums exploded in panic begging Etsy to get sellers' private information hidden and, later, in rage and frustration at Etsy's perceived slow response and initially dismissive attitude about dealing with the problem. 

Etsy has offered apologies and claims to be beefing up security but they aren't saying anything about implementing better methods and procedures for rolling out changes to code.   This particular "glitch" would have been averted if Etsy had bothered to roll out the change internally for some testing before sending it out live to the world.   This is one of the major problem over at Etsy lately.  They have been rolling out new features and tweaks to old features for months and many many bugs keep popping up.  They have 60 engineers.  Dop you think they might take some time every week to review their work together, maybe help each other proof read a bit?  Have one or two other employees who know the site sit down to test the changes before making them live?  Apparently not.

That's a problem.  But the even bigger problem is their response to one (previously) very successful seller who posted her concerns about the breach in the forums somewhat stridently.  Today, her main shop has been shut down plus her other account and her husband's shop have been forum muted.  Admin have refused to help her or answer any of her questions.  They just kept closing down threads that she and friends started in forums asking Admin to please contact her.  Their responses are all run along the same line of  'we can't talk about private accounts here in the forums.  Why don't you contact live help, etc . . . this thread is closed.'
It sounds a lot like "We're going to take you to a secure location.  Where you'll be safe." 

Yes.  Their response makes me feel very reassured.  About this woman's ability to continue to conduct her business.  About the security of My own information which Etsy still has, even though my shop is on vacation and I don't intend to re-open it.  About Etsy's concern for seller well being.

It makes my blood boil.

Which is not hard today, what with me being estrogen poisoned again.  I'm exhausted.  My productivity in the house and studio is at an all time low.  The studio problem is probably best explained by the illustrations here and above.  It's just not there yet.  I keep hoping that the storage issue will resolve when we get the workbench turned back into a dyeing table and I have that under counter  and shelving storage available.  There's a plan to take out the closed grey door (which you can't see - in either photo, it would be just to the left.) and install 'pass through' type shelves there in the door frame.  That should help.

Maxx has been a handful.  He was sick all last week with a cold (Tuesday through Friday) watched too much TV and has been sullen and surly just about every waking minute for the last week or so.  He generously shared his virus with Bryan and I so that we could be stiff, headachey and miserable for a few days.  Now that he's well enough to go back , he is being particularly troublesome about getting ready for school.  He would rather play in his new tree house. 

(Can I blame him?  Not really.) 

His little surly act is getting very old very fast.  He has also been having a LOT of potty accidents.  Right now I'm chalking it up to an hour ride each direction every day to school and back and trying to re-adjust after summer vacation.  If it persists for more than another week or two, we may have to go see the doctor about it.  Doing laundry is a problem - we still have no washer over here so pissy laundry on a daily basis is really wearing me out.

I was supposed to take THIS in today to get it fixed before it produces more just like it.  We used to have 3 cat carriers.  Could we find any?    Go ahead - guess. 

No carrier.  No fix.  Maybe next week.

I have a new calling which suddenly has several responsibilities landing in my lap.  I can delegate but even that takes some energy and planning - you know, I'd have to actually think about it.

We ran out of construction money and need to send the bank a packet of receipts and a progress report/estimate for finishing up stuff.  That requires thought, too.

Oh and to top it all off - I need a trip to the dentist.  I haven't been in a veeerrrry long time.  We do not have family dental.  I am askeered.

And - yes.  that cat DOES have that much attitude.  She's very sweet about it but really.  She is the queen.  Or goddess.  Or something else infinitely better than me.

oh - it all moves soooo slowly!  I can tell that this process is going to be like pulling teeth without anesthesia.  We have begun work on the Beorningstead and I took some pictures yesterday so that we can remember things at their worst this winter when we are getting discouraged about our progress.  I hope by then we'll be able to say "But look how far we've come!"





Here is what my new studio looks like right now. It looks terrible but the rest of the house is much worse.  If I could secure all the doors and had a potty & a heat source, I would move my stuff over there now to work!  One of these days I'll draw out a diagram of where my work spaces will be. That will be handy as we get further along with renovations, anyway.





Here are pics of our bedroom.  Though I love the green (ahem) I think we'll be re-painting all of the walls in the house.  This room had us a bit worried about roof leaks but the Amish said they didn't have problems with the roof.  Then I thought about certain family members who have lived in the house in the past and realized why there might be a LOT of moisture in one little upstairs room.  Hydroponics, maybe?  It is a pretty evenly applied drizzle stain. . . . .




More about the rest of the house over on the Beorningstead blog.







......

So, I still have plenty of special commission scarves to finish this spring and I've been experiencing some challenges getting to them. I've been experiencing challenges getting to everything, lately!

I have, simply and irrevocably, outgrown my studio. The place is a mess. Yards of fabric are folded and heaped on top of the fabric bins that are too full to hold them, the fabric bins perch atop one another in front of the shelves that are too full to hold more bins. Bead jars containing saleable beads and project beads are scattered across every flat surface in the room. Water jugs, dyes and chemical bottles compete for space on the uppermost shelves. Used studio towels litter the floor, a massive box of Uline paded envelopes lurks under the table - Ziggy is quite put out at this intrusion - and inventory that needs to be photograped, stored, posted in my shops and generally managed is scattered everywhere.

I am losing my mind.

But the good news is that we are moving to a new home soon - assuming that we can make the bank happy enough to give us a very small mortgage. Our new home will have a new studio. Twice as big as the one I'm working in now. With running water.

Let me say that again - my new studio will have running water. Running water uncontaminated by cow poop. I cannot begin to tell you how happy this prospect makes me.

I will have separate, dedicated work spaces within the room which means that I will be able to leave a scarf drying on a frame on the dyeing table and move immediately to a sewing or beading project at the dry table. I will be able to mix my dyes and clean my tools in the same space that I am working in - no more running up and downstairs with buckets and jugs of water or trying to wrangle stretcher frames and chemicals all around the house! No more 7 hour days trying to dye devore scarves on my hands and knees on the livingroom floor before the holiday season. I will have little shelves to house all of my bead canisters on so that I can see al of my beads at once and find what I need without picking each canister up individually and peering in to determine the contents.

Here are photos of two new scarves I painted yesterday. I recently made two new swallow resist stamps - featured in these scarves. They are backlit but you can still see the designs pretty well. I'll post a stamp making how-to in a few days.

Now on to housecleaning, scarf curing, and class prep!

October's take it Further challenge is to think about our work spaces and how they affect our work. Way back in January, I posted photos of my messy studio and shared some information about the challenges associated with my space. As my business grows, and I have been expanding into selling supplies as well as creating accessories, I am coming to realize that my space is simply not sufficient. I need at least twice as much room as I have now, possibly three times as much, as well as better storage options and a reliable water supply.


I've been fantasizing about having a yurt studio. Bryan thinks I'm nuts - or just obsessed with yurts because I've also been suggesting that we ditch our bat infested, polluted water home in Ft. Jackson and go live in a yurt at his parents' while we build something smaller, greener and more suitable to the lifestyle we want to be living.














I used to want my studio to be integrated into the general living quarters of the house. I'm recognizing that this is not an effective strategy for someone who really wants to be productive. Plus, in order to have a studio the size I would need, that could mean that we would need to have an Enormous house. As things are now, I have to keep chasing Maxx out of my studio so that he doesn't get the scissors or chop up some important piece of paperwork with the craft cutter or get his hands on my creme brule torches (affectionately dubbed "mom's mini flame throwers"). He and Molly invariably seem to need my attention whenever I'm in my studio, which wouldn't be so much of a problem if the space wasn't already so cramped. As it is, if I get one more body in there while I'm working, even a small one, I simply cannot move to reach the things I need. If I had a space of my own that was larger and separate from the rest of the house, it would be easier to say "mom's working," easier to ignore the phone, easier to enforce mom-space rules and more possible to set up a small area for kiddy crafts.

Bry and I also used to think that it would be nice to have our work spaces in a shared structure. (His dream, and he's moving toward it, is to create furniture from recycled barn wood and to learn to make canoes.) Considering that my work is strongly leaning toward textiles and his would strongly lean toward sawdust and varnish, we are realizing that this may not be wise. Someday when all of this is working the way that we want it to, finished furniture can come into my studio for upholstery.

Bry & I had a conversation about my fantasy yurt studio a few days ago. His expression spoke "my wife is off her rocker" quite loudly as he tried to explain that he could easily build me a small studio separate from the house, if he had the materials, for about the same amount of time & money needed to put up a yurt. I looked at him as if he were the crazy one and pointed out that with a yurt, you set up the platform, put up the wall and roof, roll on the covering, install the wiring & plumbing and it's done. DONE. No measuring twice and then cutting and then adjusting your cut. No doors and windows to measure and install. No fiberglass insulation to staple on. No wall board to put up. No painting to do. No surprise expenses at the last minute. It could be all finished in three days to a week and then I would get to move in and get right to work. Just Like That.



He argued against the quirky geometry of living in a yurt. I love quirky geometry. My bedroom in my parents' log cabin was right under the spot where the two roof angles came together. I feel at home in a slanted ceiling with exposed structural elements. I really dislike big, flat planed boxes. I agree that shelving might be a difficult issue, but I'm sure I could find a way to make it work.



This is what I would need in my dream studio:
- really good lighting - maybe some portable& adjustable light fixtures would be handy here.
- a double basin sink with a sprayer and at least one laundry sized sink all at counter top level with running hot and cold water
- a floor drain might be handy near the sink area
- a work station dedicated to sewing
- a work station dedicated to bead work
- a large, long table of counter top height or of adjustable height for silk painting, dyeing, and other arts and crafts
- a small area, well lighted to photograph my work that includes both a table for photographing small works and a dress form against a clean wall area for scarves, wearables and larger works.
- a packing center to hold boxes, envelopes, labels, tape, baggies and bubblewrap.
- small shelves to hold all of my little bead barrels. They are taking over my studio. Something like a pumped up and overgrown spice rack with a white backing would be handy - then I could see everything in each barrel with a quick scan instead of having to pick each one up as I search for what I need.
- a Medium size bookcase to hold my studio literature
- Cupboards or shelves to hold all of my fabric, chemicals, dyes, paints, stamps and other miscellaneous arts supplies.
- drawers under table surfaces for tools, jewelry wire, adhesives, paper supplies etc . . . . .
- a small heating unit - whether that would be a little woodstove or a small propane or electric space heater, I'm not sure.














I'm wondering if a 16' yurt would do the trick - I'm thinking it probably would not be quite big enough. Maybe a 20 footer? What I should do is work out a floor plan with little scale model pieces of what I need and go from there. That would be fun to do today but I have aclass to teach tonight and need to go get ready for that and spend some time on the treadmill. The yurt photos I've pasted in here are taken from the following yurt companies' websites:

Bue Ridge Yurts
Spirit Mountain Yurts
Colorado Yurts
Rainier Yurts
Pacific Yurts

Maybe someday I'll get to buy a yurt of my own!

I mentioned several weeks ago that I would post about studio storage problems and solutions as I cleaned out and re-structured my studio. One issue that I have been struggling with for years is the baggie problem. Not only did I feel a vague sense of unease about having all of these teeny baggies hanging about my house, after years of storing my beads inside baggies inside plastic shoe boxes I began to realize that baggies were hampering my creative process.

This is what beads, threads, sequins, etc.. look like when stored in baggies inside shoeboxes:


Anything could be inside these bags - or not. One can't see past the first layer or two of baggies to find the stuff on the bottom of the box. so I would end up having to pull everything out to get to what I wanted.

Having more than one box of baggies compounds the problem. Instead of being able to quickly put my hands on the beads I wanted, I would often end up with a table full of slippery, slidey, non-stacking baggies full of distracting stuff that needed to be sorted and re-sorted again and again. Two large "fishing tackle/hardware" style compartmentalized bead boxes proved helpful for a while but my bead supply quickly outgrew them and they were simply not portable enough. Sure, I could grab a fishing box full of beads, throw in some pliers and wire and go, but they might not be the beads I want to work with and the boxes take up a lot of room. It is really hard to carry one of those boxes, a purse, a diaper bag and a toddler.



A couple of years ago, I discovered these wonderful round, clear, stacking, screw together containers. You can get them from most bead shops or craft stores for a couple of bucks per set of 4 or 5 shallow stacking canisters. these have proven to be great. They are easy to see through and to store:

I can sort my beads by color, style or project and can easily take the sets apart and reconfigure a small stack or two to throw in my purse or luggage and thereby carry the specific beads I need for a project. Also, I can throw a large number of stacks into my big Art Bin carriers if I am headed out to teach a class. This is very handy for classes because it allows me to easily eliminate any beads that I don't want to share and allows me to group beads by price, color family or style once I get to class. I keep everything in these canisters - seed beads, pearls, sterling beads and findings, briolettes, crystals, etc... I still have sequins living in baggies and my bead collection is constantly growing and expanding so I pick up a new stack or two every time I encounter them.

Yesterday I finally finished cleaning my studio. It was in really rough shape. For some reason my room is the place that everyone in the family uses as a dump when they are cleaning other rooms of the house. When someone comes across an item that they don't know how to put away, they put it in my studio. When somebody finds something that they don't want anymore, they put it in my studio. When the dog pulls something delectable out of the trash can, he carries it up to my studio. When we have company coming and don't have time to tidy everything nicely, everything gets shoved in my studio. Why is this?

This fall was so hectic that by Christmas time my studio looked like this.










There was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth - not to mention shouting and tearing of hair in frustration as I attempted to work on gifts in the short time I had this season. In the end, if there was something I wanted, I had to step over piles of junk on the floor to get to needed supplies and drag them downstairs to work in the kitchen. It was very ineffective, time consuming and unhappy for everyone in the family. I'm committed to not allowing it to happen again.

In the process of cleaning, I stuffed three large garbage bags full of stuff to go away. I've been inspired by Sharon over at In a Minute Ago who just completed a reorganization and weigh in of her studio fabric stash. I did not weigh everything in my studio - there are just too many categories and too much crossover between categories to effectively "label" everything.

What did I end up throwing away?
- Several very old cheapo sewing projects that were begun when I was a sewing beginner. They were never going to be finished and weren't worth passing along to anyone to save.
- Several baggies of junk beads that I saved for my daughter to play with when she was small. She is no longer small enough to be interested in junk beads and I am getting rid of all baggies in my studio. (Come back in a few days to read about getting rid of studio "baggage")
- Lots of stuff that the dog dragged upstairs to chew on or lick out. His favorite in recent months has been empty cat food bags and fish sticks boxes. Sometimes he will steal a toy to hoard up there, too. I think the toys are a response to our 3 year old son who deliberately hides the dog's toys behind a large chair in the study so that the dog has nothing to play with.
- Lots of failed paper art and/or scrap paper, old handmade patterns that didn't make the cut, etc...

I also spent a great deal of time reorganizing various art supplies into small bins to be stored in a more accessible and logical manner. I've been guilty of keeping uncategorized things in cardboard boxes, the aforementioned plastic baggies, loose in drawers and in heaps for too long now. It has been a frustrating few days digging through the heaps and piles and clutter but it was so worthwhile!

Earlier today, I walked past my studio and saw the afternoon sun streaming in onto the clean (ugly - but clean!) carpet and felt drawn to the space instead of repelled by it. Last night my daughter complained that she wants a room with 3 windows and my husband admitted rather ruefully that I've got the best room in the whole house for my studio. It may be that all the stuff in there is going to have to start earning its keep this year or my family will start trying to encroach upon my creative territory!

Time to put a small person to bed and finish my bead reorganization project. I need to order some beads for a class I am teaching next Tuesday at the St.Lawrence County Arts Council and I need to get a good look at what I do and don't have enough of by tomorrow.