Just keep swimming

Sometimes, when I keep going, trying to make things right, it just doesn't work. I throw good beads in after bad, and, in the end, everything has to come out anyway. It's worse, of course, when I've suspected all along that it was going to happen that way.

Other times, it works.

Happily, I'm in the second position tonight; the first three rows were iffy, but now, with the beginning of the fourth row, I think it's going to work. I'm glad I didn't pull it all out; I'm glad I kept going.

It doesn't always turn out that way, you know.

Was there ever any doubt?

Of course I'm going ahead with it. How could not? I've heard it said that a little bit of ugliness is what changes prettiness to great beauty; I'm hoping that's true. Haute Couture certainly has its own bits of ugliness, and the photo I've chosen is no exception.

But that's not what has convinced me to move ahead; oh, no, that's just the justification for it. I'm moving ahead because of my own innate tendency towards contrariness; it tickles my fancy to use something so very ugly in this way.

Is that how the designers feel? Do they enjoy startling people by inserting an element of ugliness? Is that what it's all about: daring people to look at prettiness marred, forcing them to consider ugliness turned beautiful?

I don't know if I can pull it off, but I'm going to try.

Ambushed by inspiration

That's the only way I can describe it.

There is a contest that I've been wanting to enter, but I have been sadly lacking in inspiration. The contest is the Haute Couture Beading Contest, and, since it is all about providing inspiration, I'm quite horrified to admit that I just wasn't finding my way into it.

Until last night.

Yesterday, I received a packet of ugly beads as part of a fun challenge I'm participating in, called, of course, an Ugly Bead Swap. The idea is to send off a packet of ugly beads to another participant; by the time the postman has made his rounds, we will all be the proud owners of a pile of, well, ugly beads. You can see the beads that I received to the right of this paragraph.

Oddly enough, I like almost all of them. Okay, that's not entirely true; the orange beads in the middle of the far left column are ghastly. So ghastly, indeed, that I had to begin with them. There are two different types of beads in that bag; four very badly foiled Chinese lampwork flattened bicones and a string of neon orange and yellow oval glass coins.

They just cried out to become beaded beads. To be honest, one of us was crying; it may well have been me. Those lampwork beads are a sin against molten glass, and the coins are bright enough to stop traffic. After quite a few bad starts (and even worse finishes) I came up with a design that I liked. I thought that would be the end of it; I could toss it on a headpin, string it on a chain, call it a pendant, and fulfill my duties to the challenge. We don't have to use all of the beads; just some of them. I'd used the worst of them; surely that was above and beyond the call of duty?

And so, after settling my mind on that, I let my mouse wander off to other, more interesting, pursuits. Once again, I found myself looking closely at the inspiring photographs on the Haute Couture Beading Contest. And it was there that I was ambushed: my beaded bead of ugly beads called out to one of the photos and gave me an idea, all at once.

Do I dare use it?

One down

Our daughter is moving out on her own very soon; she doesn't have a date yet, but it could be anytime in the next two weeks. We are giving her our old futon (also known as our living room couch), which meant that we had to find a new one.

No problem . . . or so we thought.

Yesterday we went down to the Futon Store, only to find that it had closed, lock, stock and barrel. No forwarding address; no suggestions of where people who are in dire need of new futons should go.

We looked, half-heartedly, at several regular sofas in regular furniture stores; we're just not upholstered people. We needed to find a futon store. I googled; there was one option listed near us. They had one left in the style we liked; we bought it and went off to get the jeep so that we could bring it home.

Sadly, by the time we returned with the jeep, they had uncrated it and discovered a problem. Since it was the last one, we had to cancel the deal and look elsewhere. We did a bit more looking at regular sofas; we just couldn't see ourselves owning them. And then, in desperation, we stopped at the local oak furniture store. We'd never seen a futon there before, but thought that perhaps they would have a sofa we could live with.

They had one futon in stock. Mission-style. We love it. It's in our living room already.

Waiting Game

A friend of mine said recently, "I don't mind change, I just hate waiting for it."

Bingo; that's me in a nutshell. I like to just get on with it! Once I know change is upon me, I'm the first one over the wall, my hat sailing merrily before me. I hate to wait; I'm a do it now sort of person.

Oh, would that I were in control of the world! Change would occur at a dizzying rate; there'd be no waiting around for things to happen. Everyone would get things done and make things happen. The word "later" would be struck from our vocabulary.

Obviously, I've not been voted Queen of the World.

Neither have I been voted Queen of my little section of it.

So, here I sit: waiting most impatiently for change of which I am not the agent; suffering through the pain of watching other people miss deadlines and procrastinate their way through things they really ought to just do. I want to get moving on this.

I am not a patient person.