some finished work and overcoming

 a bit of beading all complete

this started with a challenge to use something out of the ordinary in a piece of jewelry

in this case, the black dividers between the beading is from one of the plastic sleeves they use over a bottle to keep it from banging into other bottles in the bag

while I like this piece (and have already listed it in my Etsy shop), I decided it was not "outside the box" enough to enter in the challenge

so I'm working on this piece for that

the silver rings in this are star washers from the hardware store

not the usual item in a piece of jewelry!  and this one will have a much more organic shape than the cuff does

this is as much of a plan as I have for it right now, so it's sort of a "happening"

earlier in the week I finished this piece -- a tote bag for my daughter

she picked out the fabric and I was happy to do a little sewing for her

this piece is titled "First Saturday in May" -- it was originally made in 2011 for the Hoffman Challenge that year (and is the only one I've ever entered that didn't make the cut to travel)

I decided recently that I wanted to try to "rescue" it

I've decided that the way to do that is multifaceted

I'll be removing the label, the sleeve and the facing and then CUTTING it into two smaller pieces

after that I'm going to do a lot of coloring with Inktense pencils and sticks on the piece with the hats on it to improve the contrast

I'm not totally sure what exactly I will do with the other piece  -- it will be interesting

you might remember this piece that I did earlier this year

at the time I thought about doing a series of pieces based on the moon, but comments in a critique group sort of dampened my idea 

until we had this

and I have decided that while it may not be the most original (read:  never done before) idea, the idea still speaks to me, and I think it may speak to someone else too

if I'm going to do another piece as part of this "series", I want it to be the same size

and since I did the original piece over a home made stretcher bar that the DH had created out of scrap lumber, I went to that source again, and he created me another stretcher bar

now I need to work on some drawings

and speaking of drawings, I recently did this one

this idea has been stuck in my head for nearly a year -- seen in that fugue state between sleep and wakefulness on the morning a friend died, this drawing is much closer than anything else I've been able to put down on paper -- it needs color to be understandable

I'm thinking about doing this piece to be submitted to a show that happens every other year titled "Sacred Threads"

we'll see how this all goes

and then there is this

both of my knees have this lovely taped "octopus" on the inside edge

I've done two weeks of physical therapy and I can say that this is largely a three steps forward, one step back process

which means of course I'm already impatient to be "better"!

trying to just do what I need to do --- progress in this case comes slowly