Spirit of Bees

Who? What? When? Where? Why?

I’m 62, and I’m an artist. I use that term a little loosely. I like to be clear for those of you who like to engage in the interminable discussion of arts versus crafts. While my degree is in art, I actually design and make jewelry, so technically that makes me a craftsperson. In the past four or five years I have also become interested in the book arts, book repair, restoration, bookbinding, etc. I guess that technically falls into the craft category, too.
I am not a hobbyist. I’ve definitely have made a living through my craft.

I had my own production jewelry design business for over 22 years, marketing my work at high quality craft fairs and selling in galleries throughout this country, and in several international markets as well. My spouse was, and sort of still is, my partner in that business. For eight years we also had a jewelry gallery in a nearby northern suburb. Eventually, we got tired of the whole business. And, while I still make jewelry and do the occasional show, and now have a web site selling some of my work, the jewelry business is no longer a primary source of income.

We have instead moved on to selling antiquarian and rare books, and collectibles. We were book readers, collectors, and accumulators for years and then the books got out of hand. C. always wanted to have his own book business, so over the last ten years he has been making a transition into that business, selling primarily on eBay and at the occasional book fair. We also sell collectibles at an antique mall in the city, and sometimes online.

I’m still honing my book repair/book making skills, and have created a nice little niche for myself in book arts making book clasps and teaching others how to make them at workshops here and there.

I started an online original journal several years ago, and, at first, I didn’t really want people to know who I was. I guess I was a little Internet shy. I’ve thought it over, though, and I’ve decided that it’s best to just be me. It’s easy to find out all about me if you care to know.

Expect the usual random blathering, thoughts and plenty of opinions, but not anything that I wouldn’t share with a crowd of people, because I have no illusions that I write in a vacuum. My older grand daughters may very well be reading here so it’s probably going to be mostly PG 13. Oh, yeah, and my 86 year old Dad may read, too, so that means I have to be PG 86. So don’t look for any really good train wrecks.

I started this particular blog as part of NaBloPoMo, so for the time being I hope to update daily, but I may run out of steam. More likely, I’ll be updating here whenever I get around to it.

I have no idea why I feel the need to publicly air my life.But it has something to do with furthering my own creative process to keep a record of my daily life, so I can look back to see where I was, what I am doing, where I am headed and see whether or not I have a chance in hell of ever getting there.

As of today my weekend began to look pretty much exactly like my last weekend. I get to repeat making all the jewelry I made last weekend so I can complete the other half of the order I must fill. My hands still hurt, and my shoulder hurts, and my back hurts.

I’ve done enough complaining over the last several years about how much of a toll this repetitive work has taken on me both physically and mentally. So I can’t very well continue to complain. Truthfully, I am the cause of my own problem. I could quit entirely, but, frankly, I need the money. I’ve done this so long that I am fast and efficient and therefore the return is good. Unfortunately, I have not been able to come up with anything which will fill in the gap that not making these items would leave in my income. The best I have been able to do to resolve the problem is to cut way back so that this repetitive task doesn’t destroy my body completely.

It’s true that I have made some changes in direction, and I’ve had some success in that pursuit. But the thought of actually allowing myself to create something which may result in no payoff at all fills me with guilt, and a certain degree of fear as well.

So in the end, I continue to be a production jewelry machine, and I am left with a huge dent in my creative soul. So much so, that I have all but given up hope that I will ever recover the loss.

Today was the day of the European Food Imports sale. About three or four times a year this food importer has a warehouse sale and marks down the prices on the fancy gourmet food goods and sells to the public. Because we are all about food in this family, my son also came into the city and went with us.

Most of the items are a bargain, some more than others. It’s fun looking at the useless oddball sauces and mustards, flavored oils and vinegars that you really don’t need and will probably never use but which you buy anyway just because you think you are saving money. The cheese is the best deal though. They have to get rid of the overstock before it expires, I assume, so some of the gourmet cheese is marked way down. Then there’s the chocolate. No one needs an excuse to buy chocolate, but at bargain prices, it’s way too easy to justify buying a lot more than you need. Hmmm…cheese or chocolate, cheese or chocolate? I’ll take both, thanks.

Naturally, after we bought all that food we had to continue our food adventure by going out for lunch. We decided to go to the huge Korean market, Chicago Food, and do the food tour there, topping it off with the reward of some cheap lunch treats at the odd little lunch counter in the rear corner of the store.

Altogether an enjoyable day of family togetherness, sharing in overstocking, overspending and overeating.

Burrrrrrrrrrp…

OK, I admit I am grasping at straws here, but Wednesday and Thursday are the days I do child care for my granddaughter, and I am always reminded once again of just how busy a mom’s (or in this case a grandma’s) day can be. So in between hunting up amusements for the baby, I’ve also hunted up a little one for you.

Behold! A mighty useful invention, for storing your used chewing gum, brought to you from one of the Dover Publications containingwacky inventions.

Detailed instructions on how to make a sandwich found in an old pamphlet…
And just in case you needed some serving suggestions for that sandwich…

You look pretty good for being 86 years older. But tell me, Great Grandpa, is everyone in this family bald?

Dear Papaya,
You are so cute, so sweet and so beautiful, and so perfect and trusting, when I look at you, you make me want to cry happy tears; and then I think of you growing up into this not so beautiful and so imperfect world and it makes me so sad that I want to cry again.

Love, Gramma

By the end of the day today I had completed 95 pairs of earrings, 10 pins and 15 pendants. All that work done over the last four days. Ready to ship tomorrow.

Suffice it to say that I have no extra energy, creative or otherwise, to spare this evening, so there will not be any interesting posts here. I can only be creative in one area at a time, it seems.

But, I’m not going to feel too badly about that having just spent about an hour randomly going through some blogs of other participants in the NaBloPoMo ring. As a rule I’m afraid that I found most of them to be even more boring than I am.

It was really late when I finished working last night. Making all those earrings took all the energy I had. So making dinner, too, was just out of the question. Neither of us wanted to bother.

In spite the horrible rainstorm here, we drove up to a restaurant in a nearby suburb. Half way there, when C. announced that we had no more power steering. We were close enough to the restaurant that we decided to just go anyhow and have a decent meal. As we left we were commiserating with the owner about the weather and mentioned the power steering. His thought was that the belt probably got wet going through a puddle and that it would probably be OK once it dried out. We decided to be hopeful.

Today we discovered that was obviously not the case. In fact, the serpentine belt, which we had recently replaced, had fallen off. At least it’s not going to be something as horribly expensive as we thought it might be, but driving that car for any distance was really not going to be possible. And our mechanic does not work on Saturday or Sunday.

Still, we had to get to the studio as I am in the midst of making this huge order –>(see previous post about procrastination)<--- which has to go out on Monday. And life was obviously just not planning to make it any easier for me.

We were able to borrow a car for the day, though, so we took the bus to get the car. OK, that problem solved for the day.

A couple hours later, Life decided to remind us again just who is really the boss. C’s big computer monitor decided to go kaplooey. But luckily we had a spare, and it did work. Second problem solved.

They say things happen in threes. I hope that is not true.

I did manage finish the second part of the job and, hopefully, I will be able to finish the third part tomorrow, barring any new stumbling blocks thrown in our path.

Did I already say once how tired I am of this morality lesson?

In the true spirit of the procrastinator that I am, I waited until the last minute to post tonight and of course blogger is not loading. Whether the problem is due to a glitch with blogger or to this lousy Netscape browser, I couldn’t say for sure, but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to make the deadline.

Ironically, I was going to post about what a professional procrastinator I am.

In the past week and a half I’ve had two deadlines come up, and true to form, a day before I sigh and say, well, that’s due tomorrow I’d better get to it. OK, maybe not exactly the day before, but close enough so that I’m stressing to the max, I’m rushing to complete the work and I’m having to work twice as hard and twice as fast to get it all done. When I’m finally done, my body feels like someone beat the crap out of me with a rubber hose.I am my own Master Procrastinator.

Today has been one of those days. But, damn, I made a lot of earrings.

And I am going to finish the order in time.

And it looks like I am going to luck out and get this post in just under the wire, too.

Edited to note: I did get this post in originally at 11:54 last night, but I went in to edit a misspelling this morning and somehow lost my post which I had to recover. Thus it republished itself as if it were today’s post.