Adding more hours to the day

It stands to reason that if I don't have enough time, I should add more hours to my day. So I got up around 5:30. I made 32 pumpkin muffins (from the best pumpkin bread recipe ever... coincidentally, this recipe also makes the best pumpkin muffins ever). Got Thad his breakfast, made his awesome lunch (deli turkey sandwich on sourdough, Cheeto puffs, organic apple, and coke zero) and got him out of the door, managing to pray a blessing over him and everything.

I also managed to make some jewelry this morning and here I am to show off some of my stuff before I get started on the rest of my day!

First of all, here's my latest handspun yarn. It's about 336 yards or so of a fingering weight yarn, peacock colored wool plied with yellow and purple silk. My friend, Barbara (the same lovely Barbara who is letting me borrow one of her spinning wheels as I'm paying off the one I have on layaway now), dyed the silk. They were spun from silk hankies, or mawata, and it was really fun to do them. I really love the fact that this isn't just handspun, it's got some hand dyed stuff in there, too. Makes it even cooler. I'm calling this one my Cleopatra VII yarn.


Here are the earrings I made yesterday. I got stuck on these citrine beads and decided to just go with it. I couldn't decide which of these pictures I liked better, so I'm posting them both. I like the arrangement in the top better, but I prefer the background of the other one.



Production mode desk looks like this:


This is before I clean it all off and pull out my torch for stitch markers. I think I'll do that later today. I may clean everything off and pull out my clay stuff, though, for shawl pins. I just can't decide. We'll see how the day shapes up!

And here are the pieces I made so far today: four pairs of earrings and two pendants. I tend to really love certain beads at certain times and I always used to force myself not to use them (how DUMB) because I didn't want all of my stuff to look the same. But this time around, I have finally realized that if I get "stuck" on certain beads one day, I will most likely find new favorites on another day and eventually, in the big mix of time, I'll end up with several varied pieces. So, holy DUH. Today I was all focused on these absolutely lovely prehnite beads I've had for pretty much forever. I wanted to use all of the rest of them, but their holes are so tiny that to use up my remaining four beads, I need to get some 28 gauge sterling wire! Crazyness. So I pulled out my citrine again and had fun, and did a bit with crystals.


I used to always be so paranoid, too, about the cost of the final item as I made things, and I would make decisions in my pieces, trying to make them cheaper so that people would be more likely to buy them. I've decided to stop that, too. Forget stupid Target and Walmart and all the crap they sell for $3. Anyone who can't already tell the difference between my stuff and that stuff wouldn't care about the difference anyway.

So, yeah... It's been fun! I'm enjoying just doing what I want creatively without worrying about whether anyone will buy it or not. If I can't sell any of it, then I've got a huge, AWESOME stash of gifts now or I have a whole bunch of awesome jewelry that I can wear. Woohoo!