Gaia Necklace, 20 " strand with 2.25 raku focal bead, leopard and ocean jasper, round pearls, SS ear wires, pewter clasp, by Tammy Vitale.  NFS.  Created for a Sacred torso (still to be made).

I am participating in CED2008 or CED (Creative Every Day), Leah’s (of Creative Every Day) inspirational, year-long community activity for the artist in everyone.  Here is my official CED blog button, which I will actually get onto my side bar at some point during this year, maybe even this month, but that remains to be seen.  My creation today is the Gaia Necklace and earring  set above, which will eventually (definitely within the next 2 weeks) adorn a torso who presented herself to me as I made this necklace.  That’s the best kind of inspiration!

Today I set about cleaning the closet in my office to set up my beads since they are currently set up where I originally anticipated finally and actually having desk space.  I was cleaning because I seem to have misplaced my mileage book for 2007 (omg – I have pixies – how can I lose 2 sets of keys and now this most important item worth $$$$ in tax deductions?!!!! all in one year?!) and so was doing double duty cleaning and looking at the same time. (The closet looks very nice.  The book has not yet appeared, but I’ve been through all the trash so it has to be somewhere else.  I will trust that it will return itself to me shortly) Trotting some rolled wire downstairs where it belongs, I traipsed into very wet floor – the laundry sink overflowed all over the basement floor.  And since that is also my studio’s floor, I got a bit of a head start on cleaning my studio!  Isn’t the Universe kind to give me a little push in the right direction?

After that Husband drove me across the Solomons bridge (which is very high, and it was very windy today and I’m freaked out in the van because I can see over the sides anyways) so that I could load my work out of Room with a Brew and the old Heron’s Way/now Leonardtown Galleria.  It is time to get really organized because this year, my Sacred line is going to take off and I will need to know where things are.  And while I’m at that, I will make sure I start the jewelry off right with a proper file of pictures and inventory notations.  Really.

Today, the holiday bills started rolling in.  And instead of staring in disbelief, I instead went to the very nice coupon I got from Husband for spa niceties, and scheduled myself a full on fruit pulp facial (the most expensive) at the Bronze Door Spa, where I will do double duty and load out after being quite pampered (are you impressed?  look at all this multi-tasking I’ve set about accomplishing!).  That’s next week.  Can’t wait!

All in all a grand start to the year, with a bit of a taste of everything to come.  This is going to be a fantastic year!  Let us all welcome beginning!

thought for the day:  The island where I live is peopled with cranks like myself.  In a cedar-shake shack on a cliff – but we all live like this – is a man in his thirties who lives alone with a stone he is trying to teach to talk…Reports differ on precisely what he expects or wants the stone to say…Nature’s silence is its one remark…At a certain point you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready.  Now I will stop and be wholly attentive.  You empty yourself and wait, listening.  After a time you hear it:  there is nothing there…You feel the world’s word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same.  This is it:  this hum is the silence…We are here to witness…The silence is all there is.  It is the alpha and the omega.  Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk