That of course is a rhetorical question.  Necklace 209. Tam's hand-made beads, with swaovski crystals, ocean jasper and copper beads.  $99.  Earring, #288, $22.  Set $113.

Following (if I can get Typepad to print the photos – click on them, they come up if they aren't displaying on the post) are some of the pieces I've recently made using my (very own!) glass bead creations.  Do I need to tell you how delighted I am that I'm already making some I'm proud to make into jewelry to sell?  Class coming up in February with Vitrum Studios to get the basics down well (since I realize I'm already starting habits that aren't the best).  Can't wait!

N210. Necklace with Tam's handmade glass bead, glass chips and pewter beads.  $79.  Matching earring (not shown) #289 $20.  Set $90

I just realized I didn't take pictures of the full piece or matching earrings. 

N211 Tams hand-made glass beads, swarovski crystals, bone beads and copper spacers. $120. Matching earring E290 $20.  Set $128.00

The answer to the posed question about beads is:  there are never enough beads and there is always something new to learn.  Beads have come into my life with hurricane force and are easily matching my passion for clay – and so much easier to work with in the winter.  Even in my garage studio my hands are close to fire and thus warm.  With clay it's as if I put my hands in cold water and then ran outside and pushed them into snow for a while just for good measure.  I have a half kiln load that is still waiting to be fired because I have made only a few new things and I want to do a full load before firing.  Who knew this would happen?!  All I can do is move with the passion – who am I to fight this new found gift?  For that is surely is!

thought for the day:  To create one must be able to respond.  Creativity is the ability to respond to all that goes on around us, to choose from the hundreds of possibilities of thought, feeling, action, and reaction and to put these together in a unique response, expression, or message that carries moment, passion and meaning.  In this sense, loss of our creative milieu means finding ourselves limited to only one choice, divested of, suppressing, or censoring feelings and thoughts, not acting, not saying, doing, or being….The river does not dry up, we block it.  If we want to allow it its freedom, we have to allow our ideational lives to be let loose, to stream, letting anything come, initially censoring nothing.  That is creative life.  It is made up of divine paradox.    Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves:  Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype