Shiny Happy People

Met the sweetest sisters today. And just all around good kids. I know that shouldn't come as a surprise. All the kids I've met at the store have been stellar. Libby and Claire came in with their aunt (Nancy?...I said I was going to remember all of their names, but that was 4 hours ago. yeesh.) They made mostly-matching necklaces and agreed to pose for a photo that I will put on the new website! (Launching in September). The were such lovely girls, sweet, polite, and silly. It just occurred to me as I uploaded these photos that Libby and I could be sisters. She looks like me at about 12 years old. I'd be a fun older sister. Unfortunately, the photos came out a little shakey. They were cute, striking poses, but I didn't really get a non-blurry photo. (Like that quilt in the background? I love it. My mom made it years ago. Perfect in the store, and perfect backdrop!)

I have been so happy and impressed by the people I've met through the store. Like Bobbi, who came in the other day to show me how much progress she'd made on her chain maille bracelet, and she brought me a little packet of fabric with dragonflies on it. So nice! She said that when she saw it, she thought immediately of me and my crafty mom and figured mom would find a nice use for it (maybe another Friday-night bag?) Or she could consolidate all the dragonfly fabric and make some sort of little quilt. My mom is seriously accumulating dragon-fly paraphernalia by the way. Fabric, knick-knacks...and every time we're out somewhere, she's the one going "ooh! look, this has dragonflies on it!" not that I'm complaining. It's nice to have her so enthusiastically involved. It's kind of catching. I find myself taking a second-look at anything dragonfly. It is stalker-ish of me to now give another shout-out to my stalker in Utica region? Ok, ok, it's my friend Christy, and she's hardly a stalker. But she another quality folk met through jewelry and DFB. I will stop there though, because if I keep listing the great people I'm meeting, I'm sure to leave someone out, and I'd feel badly about that. Bobbi and Christy are fresh in my minds because I just saw them. Not to diminish their greatness. Have I dug a big enough hole yet?

So, apparently people are reading this. I mean, not just people I've told about it in countless acts of shameless self-promotion. But folks are stumbling upon it through the magic of Google, and then they'll come in the shop and say "oh, yeah i read about that on the blog." How neat! And terrifying! But mostly neat. (Hi Blakes!) There was a young girl in the store today (hi Mia) who is taking a PMC class from me on Tuesday and apparently has seen the blog. She was looking summery and breezy. She re-strung a cute multi-color necklace. I should have gotten a photo for the website. Crap. I'll have to get photo of her PMC creations. She and her mom (hi Tia!) seemed excited about PMC, and her mom, who is an art-teacher in Syracuse, recently acquired a kiln! I'm hoping she can get some sort of grant so she can work with maybe the Bronze clay. I feel like that would be a PERFECT thing to introduce kids to. It incorporates science and art, and you can't beat that. Sintering, annealing, melting temperatures, combustion, fusing...oh my! Come to think of it, that's sort of where this whole journey began: in high school, I made scientific models (embryos, zygotes and mitotic division) for several biology classes out ot Sculpy (polymer) clay. Then in college I took an anatomy and physiology class that involved weekly labs with a cadaver. (I passed out the first class. But I swear it was the heat!) Seeing the human form so up-close and personal, but yet detached, I began working on making fairies, trying to concentrate on proportion and form. I enjoyed working with the polymer so much, that when I heard about PMC, it was a natural transition.

Ok, I'm trying to watch the Olympics opening ceremony (I recorded it) and it's very distracting, so I'm going to focus my attention on one thing.