On the Verge

My basement, that is: on the verge of being finished.

I honestly don't get why I have to explain that the threshold should be securely attached to the floor because if it is not, someone will trip and fall, not to mention the cat hair and yarn it will trap.

I also don't understand why I have to explain that a closet door should slide freely and not drag at the carpet that has just been laid, shortening its life at least by an order of magnitude.

Why is this stuff so hard?

Why is it not obvious?

On the plus side, it's most definitely useable now. I can start to move my beading studio back down away from my dining room although I must say, it's been kinda nice being able to bead upstairs in the daylight.

And I have been - beading that is.

The next deadline is Sunday when class proposals are due at the local bead store. In the ten or so years I've been teaching there, I've never raised what I get paid for each class, but this time there's a bit of a jump because they're suddenly taking a fifty percent bigger cut. I'm not super happy for that but I'm not giving myself a pay-cut and I hope it doesn't scare people away.

I'm always scribbling sketches with cryptic notes that I can't read and don't understand but much of the time I just start beading and it takes on a life of its own and turns into something.

I had an idea for a project that I could see in my mind's eye, and while noodling around with beads and coming up with other designs (this lacy one below is actually an earring prototype - sans ear wire - that I might actually work into a necklace focal. If I have time) it's like an itch I keep scratching with no relief.

 I re-sketch and rewrite and then I have to take a break to work on instructions for a beading class and when I go to bed at night I can see what I want and I fall asleep trying to figure out how I'm going to make it happen.

 I spend a lot of time stitching beads that are so badly wrong, and then cutting them apart and trying again.

 I'd been thinking of a seal, the kind you use with sealing wax. Not a ring, but a stamp hanging from a chain - I think I've been thinking of something that was on my mother's charm bracelet, a charm with a frame holding large stone bead that could swivel so that the carved face could be downward to make an impression on hot wax.

 It's not that I care about the carving, I just like the idea of a pendant flaring out to keep the star of the show (the shiny, sparkly rivoli) on the underside, only hinted at.

I'm kinda-sorta there. Almost.

But I'm also almost out of time.