Friends of Friends of Friends!

May I just say I have the best friends, and friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends EV-VER?

My college roommate Beth and I have the most interesting relationship -- she challenges me, and chews me out, and I ignore and love her for it! (You need to know that this is her way of expressing her undying devotion!) But, besides being a royal (but sweet-in-her-own-way) pain in the ga-zot-nick (my mother's term for a$$), she promotes my jewelry and books by telling her friends how dumb I am for not selling my stuff in every gallery and boutique from here to the lake (and the SI swimsuit issue to boot)!

The funny thing? In a slightly dysfunctional way, her charming ways have benefited me!

Beth turned her friend Mary on to me (as dumb as I am) and my jewelry, and Mary visited my home studio. While here, she purchased my Army Pin necklace (featured in Junk to Jewelry) which perfectly complemented a sweet calico sundress she wore to an outdoor summer wedding. (Mary is a size negative 2, but we'll forgive her since she has impeccable taste in jewelry).

So, I suppose Mary wore her necklace (around her size negative 2 neck) -- and talked about where she got it and this kooky jewelry designer who makes necklaces out of weird things like army pins -- to her friend Joann.

Fortunately, Joann has no idea how dumb I am (the beauty of three degrees of separation in this case) and has signed up for my Steel Wire Intensive Master Class at the Racine Art Museum later this month!

It's amazing how my sassy friend has been a marketing asset despite her best attempts at discrediting me. With friends like Beth, who can do without 'em?

Peek of the Week No. 3

I'm behind on my Peek of the Weeks! (Don't ask this designer to do anything that's at all structured, like give you a peek -- a tiny cropped image -- of one of the projects in my upcoming Steel Wire Jewelry book!)

I'll give you a hint of what lies within this time: the bits of blue and gray are from a stone via the wonderful world of Gary Wilson. Boy, that guy can cut a stone! As a matter of fact, that guy cuts and cabs (and beads) many, many wonderful things. For those of you who aren't familiar with Gary's work, he'll be at two different Tucson venues (where you will see me bent over every tray, head down, and eyes glued. See you there!

What's Your RL/EO Quotient?

Sometimes I astound myself (in a not-so-good way). You'd think after 47 years, I'd know me pretty well. And to be honest, most of the time I'm pretty astute about what makes me me and what I can and cannot do. But this last little task I took on just hammered home the point that I'm a little dense in the what-can-be-accomplished-in-real-time-and-space world (a.k.a. what you can get done in real life).

You see, this girl's an eternal optimist. And, she's a little slow on the uptake when it comes to committing to deadlines. She says "yes" automatically before weighing a project's actual doing-ness. I blame it on my analytical side -- the side that on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being the largest) is a .5.

So, next time I nod my head to drawing 70-plus sketches of 30-plus projects (which guide readers through the process of making the jewelry in say a book called something like Steel Wire Jewelry), I'll say I need two months instead of one. And I'll really draw sketches instead of schematic models that look like they're from an engineer's drawing board. And I'll start the project before there are only two weeks left to deadline. Ahem ... did I say that my procrastination quotient of big projects is also a .5?

What's your Real Life (RL) vs. Eternal Optimist (EO) quotient?