I'm back

From a little unexpected blog vacation.

It was a bit of wild week last week. Starting with Wednesday night when I thought it would be fun to open registration at midnight for Beading by the Bay. Well starting before that as we prepped the website, tested out new inventory program and sent out emails to the interested parties. What was I thinking? Well I was thinking it would be just a bit of fun, but really people would get up in the morning and register. Since we open registration to returning students early it was true that there were a limited number of seats, and a lot of interest in those seats. So folks did indeed set their alarms (sorry East Coast and midwest, next time I will know better) and got up and registered. Which was all very exciting until about 3:00 a.m. when I got back to bed for an hour or two. When I got back up a couple of hours later, we were able to watch the new inventory system in action as it counted down the available seats and posted sold out in place of the Add to Cart button at 7:00 a.m.

Following that bit of fun, a friend arrived for a visit and we spent solid studio time working through color choices for the new book and then beading and visiting. It was delightful as she is an exceptional artist and it was wonderful to be able to talk through design choices of some of the projects I'll be working on.

Which leads me to the dilemma of...it could get mighty boring around here as most of the beadwork I'll be working on won't be of the shareable nature, although I'm sure a sneak peek here and there will work out. So what to do, well I have still have my engagements where I get to run around the world and meet beaders and I'll be sharing those of course. I'm off to Portland on Friday, a venue I've never been to and look forward to. That is almost immediately (yikes) followed by a three week trip to Holland and Germany. In Germany I will join friends Petra, Martine, Kathrin and Sabine and meet many others including Sian from England! This is very exciting as we discovered on another in blog land a couple of years ago and Petra discovered Sian through my blog and they have become fast friends and Sian is coming to Germany!

I'll have plenty to share, just not necessarily photos of new beadwork.

Will this do? It's sparkly, my new little Swarovski studded purse from Kippys, an institution in downtown Coronado. We visited the Artwalk yesterday where I visited with many friends who had booths there this year.



I've panicked myself with that little realization that I return home from Portland on Wednesday and leave for Europe the following Tuesday. I need to organize travel beads as I plan on getting a lot of book projects done. Fortunately I have some excellent palettes to work with, but I do need to order some beads. So I'll be going now. Bead well.