Handmade clay beads with soapstone and agate chips by Tammy Vitale

Back to the Bead Boutique yesterday afternoon for their grand opening gala.  I’ve had these handmade clay beads since 12/05 – I know because I dated one on the back – not one I used of course, that would have made too much sense.  But I have two more large center pieces I can make into necklaces.  And, hey, look Mom I made it myself! At least the necklace.  The earring design, which I never know how to put together, was created and made by Tricia Darrow, owner of the Bead Boutique.  Pretty cool, huh?  It was Tricia’s birthday and afterwards she, her friend Jane and I went to the Dry Dock for dinner with the girls.  Husband and I love the Dry Dock and our favorite behind the bar person was there.  It was so crowded we had to eat at the bar (doesn’t change the fact the food is always outstanding) and they treated Tricia to strawberries  in liqueur with a candle at the end of the meal(she’s wheat and dairy intolerant, so they put this together especially for her).  Grand night.

Before that I took myself on an artist’s day stopping in at a new home and garden design shop, Stella, also in Prince Frederick.  Gorgeous interior and a lovely little room upstairs with a couch and clothes armoire and small table that didn’t feel at all small even with all that furniture in it.  Anne, the owner, tells me the couch is sold, but I would love to stand in that room and figure out how they made it feel so big.  We chatted a bit about my art and I left a card with her to see if we could do something together.

I also stopped in at Chesapeake House of Frames and Arts Commission of Calvert County Gallery just to see what was showing and feed my Muse a bit. 

And before all that, in the morning, I spent some time actually organizing my photos and getting them up here in the albums (to your left).  I guess all that playing with photos for videos made me aware that I really haven’t been keeping up.  While I have a ton more work to put up, what’s up currently is a good representation of what I’m doing now.  Take some time and browse through them. Enjoy!

thought for the day:  With all due respect for the wondrous ways people have invented to amuse themselves and one another on paved surfaces, I find that this exodus from the land makes me unspeakably sad.  I think of the children who will never know, intuitively, that a flower is a plant’s way of making love, or what silence sounds like, or that trees breathe out what we breathe in.  I think of the astonished neighbor children who huddled around y husband in his tiny backyard garden, in the city where he lived years ago, clapping their hands to their mouths in pure dismay at seeing him pull carrots from the ground.  (Ever the thoughtful teacher, he explained about fruits and roots and asked, ‘What other foods do you think might grow in the ground?’  They knit their brows, conferred and offered brightly, ‘Spaghetti?’).    I wonder what it will mean for people to forget that food, like rain, is not a product but a process.  i wonder how they will imagine the infinite when they have never seen how the stars fill a dark night sky.  i wonder how I can explain why a wood thrust song makes my chest hurt to a populace for whom wood is a construction material and thrush is a tongue disease.  Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder:  Essays