Meet Scarlett....

But before meeting Scarlett, California continues to welcome me home with these stunning displays. This is the view from my verandah...

Scarlett first came to my attention early last year when I was asked by Beadwork magazine to participate in their new Designer of the Year series, along with Jamie Hogsett, Lisa Kan and Jean Campbell. At the time Jean was doing the technical edits for my book and we were having daily email conversations.

Jean mentioned a beadwork artist who would be a contributing editor to the magazine, named Scarlett Lanson. Having not previously been aware of Scarlett's work (where have I been?) I immediately googled her , found her website The Beaders Muse and was quite impressed at what she'd been up to. I had seen the amazing nautical purse in a Beadwork issue, but my retention being what it is these days hadn't remembered the name of the artist, yep, it was Scarlett. I've been following her work since then, including her new column in Beadwork and man oh man what a talent she is. And now she's put together a bead contest that you'll definitely want to go have a look at. And since I am going to Tucson and the Swarovski party this year, I'll get to meet Scarlett and see her work in person!

And speaking of Jean and Tucson, are you reading 'Beading Daily'? Jean wrote an excellent article on Tucson shopping. As Jean suggests I have a list to keep me focused. Since most of my Tucson purchases are things I use in kits, I typically have a sample of what I need. So I create a 'visual list' with the required goods in a 2 x 3 ziplock, and all of the ziplocks on a ring binder. This makes it really easy to show a vendor what I'm looking for.

This visual shopping list looks fairly shopworn because it's last years list, I really need to get going on this years list, now!