Don't you just love the colors of vintage Italian, Czech and German glass beads? How I long for some of those colors to be re-visited by current glass bead manufacturers. For example, the sweet little leafy looking green beads I used as a calyx in Ostara's Emerging Blossoms necklace. I have reserved the last few I have of these precious little beauties for when I teach this in September at the Indiana Bead Society. That workshop will be on Sunday the 26th. On Friday the 24th there are 2 half-day workshops: the hand felted bangle bracelet with beaded bead that was soooo popular again this year at the Bead & Button Show in the morning and the Felted and Beaded Wire and Lampwork Bead Bracelet in the afternoon. On Saturday the 25th we'll hand felt complex cane beads and complete a necklace of them before wrapping up the day's magic. Hope to bead and felt with you there.

As I've mentioned before, the workshop/class proposals for next year's Bead & Button Show are due August 6. I have well over a dozen proposals done plus a couple new ones undergoing final tweaks. One is a hybid of techniques inspired by traditional beaded needle-point like that I've shared with you here in earlier posts showing Janet's work. While at Bella Beads in NH, owner Sue, showed us the beaded needle-point purses that her mother has made several of. The purse is brilliant, beautifully manufactured, with a removable flap so that the beader, like Sue's Mom, can select the one that matches the evening's wardrobe choice. Contact Sue if you NEED one for yourself. Another of the new workshops features vintage Swarovski stones in a beaded lariat that features new bead crochet! (I'll be calling this Lakeside Lariat, as this is where the ultimate design took form.) It is always a mystery which of the submissions will actually make it to the B&B Show class catalog. Rest-assured that I'm teaching them all widely so, if we don't get to share them at B&B we can still share them somewhere, hopefully somewhere convenient for you.

Wednesday we drove from NH to Freeport, Maine. First stop was Beadin' Path. The store is large and bright. The entire back wall boasts their vast inventory of lucite beads. Apparently they offer vintage and have taken the pains to reproduce the shapes and colors of vintage in creating new lines. The music was lively and diverse. When I mentioned to one of the lovely staff that I felt dance coming on, she confessed that she too sometimes breaks quietly into dance, of understated motion she said, but, dance none-the-less. Ya have to love the women on staff here! Pictured are Cindy and Carisa. Carisa made me feel like a celebrity, asking if she could take my picture. Cindy gave me a floral glass bead plus a snakely glass spiral to wear in my hair. Gosh, I have an entire traveler's journal of beads in my hair. Each has a story...the person that gave it to me, the artist that made it or where I was when I acquired it. And there are the beaded beads in there too. There is even an inch of spiral stitch that someone sewed into my hair! It makes my heart sing each time I'm decorated with yet another meaningful bead.

While here we were introduced to two other shoppers. One is Lilla Rogers. She becaem too shy for a photograph. Too bad. Her business card states she is a an artist, agent and mentor, representing artists internationally. Her website is www.lillarogers.com.

We took lunch at the Muddy Rudder. Mine was a perfectly fabulous lobster roll. I should have inquired about the "market price" before ordering. Not that I'd have changed my mind, likely, but, it would have been less alarming when the check came. This architectural feature of the restaurant fascinated me. It made me consider how it would translate into beadwork. Ahhhhhhhh, yet another bit of real world to render in beads. Sometimes it yeilds intriguing results and sometimes it is a lesson in futility.