Fun at InterQuilten!

While I was visiting my parents, my mom wanted to stop at a little quilt shop in Interlochen, MI. From the minute we pulled up, I knew this was somewhere special. (Please forgive the quality of my camera pics; I have no photo editing software installed on this computer.)



The door was intriguing. It looked like the door to a new realm; it reminded me of a hobbit dwelling. The whole design of the building on the outside was unusual. I could hardly wait to see the inside.



And the inside did not disappoint. The walls and the ceiling were all entirely lined with wood. There were natural wood accents everywhere.



There was a dazzling array of fabric everywhere I looked.



The interesting thing about the quilting world and the beading world is that they often intersect. I sometimes sell beads and cabochons to quilters, and often beaders are quilters and quilters are beaders. There is bead embroidery on quilts, and beaders are becoming more aware of incorporating unusual materials in their beading, such as fabric.

One of the things we have in common is the tendency to stash yummy materials. We have racks full of beads; quilters have closets full of fabric. We love to hoard our supplies! Patterns and materials and tools, oh my!

Another thing we have in common is that color is so important to us. As beaders have a palette of beads, quilters have a palette of material.



Just as we have a rainbow of stringing materials, quilters have a rainbow of colored threads to choose from:



Everywhere I looked in this shop, there was succulent fabric to choose from. Wonderful colors and textures and amazing quilts, too!



The shop owner, Tawni, was incredibly friendly and helpful.



What a wonderful gem of a store! I'm so glad I was able to stop in and see her amazing shop. You can see InterQuilten online here. or stop at her store on M137 in Interlochen, MI (about twenty minutes from Traverse City) if you get the chance.

Better late than never

So. I totally meant to post while I was on my business trip. I brought my laptop with me and also a selection of photos.

Alas, it was not meant to be. Within twenty-four hours of arriving in Wisconsin, I was sick. Sick, sick, sick. I could barely drag myself out of bed to do the things that had to be done. It was not an auspicious beginning to the trip.

It took two weeks before I was well enough to even consider doing something besides the main task. I had to concentrate on breathing, honestly. It took a lot of time and energy. I did manage to tweet, but then it turned out that my phone ate all of the tweets. I was wondering why no one was replying.

Anyway, once I finally felt better, then the trip went into overdrive and I didn't have a lot of time. And now that I've returned, I'm just swimming in beads. OODLES of beads. Delicious, amazing, straight-from-the-Tucson-gem-shows beads. Red creek jasper, lodalite quartz, opalized ammonites, bloodstone, silver leaf jasper...it's all so delicious and amazing that I can't wait to design new things.

I also bought a closeout of vintage cabochons. Most of the cabs I've had before, but there are a few new ones that are making me giddy with delight because they're so beautiful. I'm so excited to start listing!

And then it was time to leave for Michigan. Always sad, because I will miss my WI friends so much. Still, it was wonderful to see the Chicago Skyway...



It's the gateway back to Michigan. I love the old-school lettering and the toll booth attendants and the press of cars, all scrunched up and waiting to get back on the open road again.

And now I'm home. Time to set up the photography studio. Wait until you see the new yums I've found!

The crush of everyday life

I've been working extra hard for the last six months. I've started a website, started advertising online, and I've kicked up my jewelry production. I've changed both the text portion of my eBay listings and the pictures; I went from scanned images, which are faster but not as nice, to taking camera photographs. I've had to create a settings formula and a light positioning system to make it work. I've started moving my Etsy listings toward the same thing and have been revising them slowly but surely.

I've also auctioned nearly my entire backlog of industry magazines. I've inventoried beads, processed beads, and changed the way I store them. I've changed to a labeling system for my outgoing packages instead of hand-addressing the boxes.

For me, there are two "poles" in the year; January-February and May-June. During both of these times, I'm gone for an entire month on business trips. So they serve as markers for me, two lines of demarcation that separate portions of the year. There's the first half of the year, which is a little shorter and has spring shows and the last of the winter eBay sales, and then there's the second half of the year, which slowly builds into the holiday season.

I'm quickly heading toward the Jan-Feb trip. In fact, I leave a week from tomorrow. I always have high hopes for accomplishing a lot during the second half of the year, and this time I feel fairly good about what I've managed to get done.

This week I was hoping to get more magazines auctioned (non-beading this time) and finish some other nagging details, as well as clean things up and pack and do the usual things I need to do before I leave for a month. Unexpected things have come up, and we have unexpected houseguests, which would normally be a nice thing, but because it is due to the passing of a relative it is a sad thing. My optimism about this week has been sunk. At least I am home so that I can show my support; it feels so much worse when I'm out of town and things happen, and it all feels scary.

The thing about a long trip is that it really forces you to pause and change directions. I just wish that I could have spent a little more energy in this direction before switching, but honestly, overall it's been a good second half of the year. I look forward to the spring half of my year when I get back.

A few more vacation pics...

These were all taken at Heritage Gardens in Cape Cod. I really loved taking pictures of the flowers; I have only taken pictures in my mom's garden before, so this was a pretty new experience for me. Y'all can tell that I was testing out my macro lens, I'm certain.







And here's a windmill for good measure.

More Cape Cod pics

Nauset Lighthouse:



Scargo Tower in Dennis:



Marconi beach, which was once the home to the Marconi Station, the first wireless station in the US. I'm really fascinated with this because it represents the pinnacle of technology at the time, and it slid into the sea years ago. We move on to each new technological jump so quickly, and the older inventions fade away. There is a mockup of the station in a little gazebo so that you can see what it once looked like.

I have no idea if it actually slid into the sea or not, but my imagination has taken over and I can see the wireless towers rusting away into oblivion under the turquoise waters...

Back from everything

I haven't posted in a while--I just didn't have time between the conference in Chicago and then running off to our honeymoon in Cape Cod.

We had a very nice time, except the timeshare was a bit...er...surprising. It was a motel conversion, and at first glance I couldn't find the bed, only to discover it was in the closet--yes, it was a genuine Murphy bed.

I took some fun pictures, we went to some pretty places, and we had some lovely meals.

One of my favorite things was the glass museum at Sandwich. We watched a demonstration of glass-blowing and pressing glass, and got to see lots of wonderful pieces of pressed glass. They have several rooms containing hundreds of pieces. They also have a very cute display showing what a glass recipe creator's desk looked like, along with an audio recording of his great-grandson explaining how things worked. It was really neat.

Some pictures from the museum:



The different glasses are colored by minerals, which I had heard before. They had one yellow color that was colored by adding uranium to the mix, and they had a Geiger counter nearby to show the levels of the piece.



I love this pic--the matte glass pitchers look so nice together.



This was fascinating: apparently they made targets for Annie Oakley.



I have a few more pics to share, but I'll save them for tomorrow.

Nice to be back and blogging!