No One Wants To Date You When You’re Desperate

Nor will they buy from you.  When you work in retail you observe some things that are very hard to explain in “rational” terms. But ask anyone who has been in selling  for any length of time about this one. An item has been sitting in a corner for over a year now. No one has looked at it, touched it, given it a second glance, in forever. It is a toad sitting in the corner. It is invisible at this point. And then someone walks in and admires it. They really want it. I mean they love it. But they already bought something else, don’t have the money, need to think about it, will be back next week after they get paid. Most of the time the item will sell that day. We pretty much agree that the person put energy on it and they are out of luck that they didn’t buy it then because chances are not good that it will be there next week or even tomorrow. I kid you not, this happens frequently and strikingly enough that I would be surprised if there was any small retailer who did not agree that this is a known fact.

And even more commonly known,  no one wants to date you when you’re desperate. It doesn’t matter that so and so has had the hots for you for years. You are now on the market. You were dumped and you must have a date for a social function. They won’t be interested. And we all know that this is true. We’ve lived it.

I use the example of no one wants to date you when you are desperate to explain to other retailers that no one wants to shop with you when you are desperate either. You can pretend you aren’t. But they know! So what is the answer? If you are single, you don’t date. You decide that you are taking a sabbatical from relationships. And the phone will ring off the hook. Likewise, if you forget that you are trying to sell anything and start really trying to tackle the book keeping. People will pour into your store to distract you. I don’t know why it works. I just know that it does.

When you aren’t trying to sell anything, when you are simply present in your life, people show up to enjoy that energy. When you center within yourself, you become the irresistible object. You are your own fairy prince kissing your own toad. You put the energy on you, and without trying, as if by magic, you are transformed into that which is most desirable.

The Reluctant Agent of Divine Love

Perhaps it’s my midwestern roots, but I’m not completely comfortable proclaiming my intuitive side. I feel very much like I am being guided in this life along a spiritual path. Despite those midwestern roots, I was transplanted to one of the spiritual mecas of the world, Santa Fe, NM, at age twelve. I had planned to study science in college but instead received a degree in creative studies and am now the owner of not just a bead store, but a stone bead store. There is a significant difference. Customers expect me to know the metaphysical properties of my stones. Spiritual people are drawn into my life almost daily. It’s not just a bead store, it’s a nexus for inner growth. But those Missouri values, “show me”, don’t quit easily. I am very grounded, as they say. I feel my way in conversations instead of proclaiming my beliefs and letting the chips fall where they may. However, slowly, gradually, I find that I am integrating new ways of looking at the world, embracing my inner knowing and intuition and coming into myself in ways that I can no longer hide. And perhaps I only deluded myself that I ever could. I am highly intuitive. If I can’t perform in a customer service capacity I feel lost, cut off from my primary sense. It doesn’t really concern me where the knowing comes from. Is it subtle body language? word choice? psychic ability? connection to Universal Source? I suspect all of the above. But it really doesn’t matter. In the end, I know that I am blessed to often offer the right thoughts at the right time, to help people to find what they are looking for, to make others feel not just heard or seen but felt. Not an eagle eye but an eagle heart. A friend recently told me that I am an agent for divine love. I am both pleased and embarrassed by that title. Now to find the humility to accept and live up to it.

I am moving in that direction. As I move forward into the unknown life beyond the bead store, I am beginning to custom create jewelry for online friends. Fellow mothers are so wonderful when you and your children are consecutively sick and it takes four weeks to make one necklace. I call my process intuitive jewelry design. It has so far been one of the most fulfilling and exciting things I’ve ever done. Starting with a picture of the person and a little information about them and maybe the reason that they are seeking such a piece in their lives now, I let myself flow with what I feel drawn to choose for them. I think years of helping people with jewelry choices in person has given me a strong base to start from. It doesn’t matter what goes into a necklace, if it’s something the wearer will never feel comfortable with. I use my sense of color and the feelings I get from the stones. I then look the stones up and get confirmation that they are appropriate metaphysically. I have offered a no need to apologize return policy but no one has taken me up on it yet. I think that this life is a journey and this is one more stepping stone along my path. I am at the beginning of this new phase. If you are interested, please feel free to contact me at stonesoup at newmexico dot com. Please understand that this is a new part of my life and not a speedy offering. But it will be made with love.

Stringing along

I have been asked many times if I teach classes, will be offering classes, what classes I offer, classes and classes of class requests. And the truth is I am totally lost when I try to imagine giving a class. I’ve never taken a class I say. I don’t know what I would teach. How would I structure a class? What would people expect? Would I …. Yeah, I’m chicken. Up until now. I have thought about taking a class to make classes less intimidating. I have looked at beginning beading books to see what others think of as the basics. From what I can tell, the basics really are so basic, that a class is mostly a social engagement to make something, with a pinch of guidance thrown in. Now, I’m not talking about the complicated stuff that people do with weaving seed beads into soft sculptural jewelry. I think there must be a lot to learn about different stitches and patterns and stuff I can’t imagine because I’ve never gotten into bead weaving.  What I do is really just stringing. Most beading is just that, stringing beads together and putting a closure on the end. Simpler than threading a needle and very straight forward. But there are a few things that I have to share.

Because I work primarily with stone beads, I use a beading wire to string. It’s a miniature steel cable with a nylon coating. There are at least four brands and then there are different numbers of wire within the cable and different thicknesses of the wire. I happen to like Beadalon (registered trademake). I don’t have any reason why that is the best. It’s just the brand that I use. I do have a strong preference for using the highest number of wires possible. For most things this is 49 strands. There are fancy forms that are silver or gold plated or have colored plastic coating and those are usually 19 strands at the highest. The nineteen is acceptable. The original bead wire that I know of was three or seven strands and they called it tiger tail. The problem with fewer strands is that they kink pretty easily and they break. So, the more strands, the better the drape and the stronger your wire. Thickness is related to strength and different thicknesses are rated for how many pounds of pressure it takes to break them. The most commonly used is .018. This size is the best balance of drape, diameter to fit through most beads, and strength.

These wires come on a spool with a clear plastic cover that is open and can be taken off and put back on the spool to keep the wire from completely unwinding. I like to unwind slightly more than I think I need and put the cover back on without cutting the wire. It gives me a sort of base to work from and I change my mind about length or even put everything back if I decide against making the piece. Then I string whatever I’m working on. Most of the time I don’t work with a bead board. If I am stringing a very complicated pattern or a variety of small beads, I find the channel to hold the beads handy. Otherwise I usually lay beads out along a yard stick on my work surface. I often recommend using a shoe box lid or rimmed cookie sheet, lined with a low nap hand towel, when starting out or traveling.

Once I have what I want to make strung, I use what are called crimp beads, to attach the clasp to the ends. I prefer 2×2mm crimps. These are mini compression tubes. You string one on the end of your beads before stringing the clasp on. After passing the wire through the ring of your clasp, you bring it back through the crimp bead and sometimes back through several beads as well. It is important to have at least enough wire to grasp at the end to adjust the size of the loop through the clasp end and to keep the wire from popping out of the tube as you secure it. If you make the loop through the clasp end tight, the wires will rub back and forth over the metal and break one at a time. I do use the beadalon crimping tool on the crimp bead. Instead of simply flattening the tube, this tool puts a dimple in the tube and then bends it lengthwise so that the tube is both secured around the wire and has a thin profile. There are much clearer directions with pictures available everywhere. What I think is important is that this is not enough. The tool is great for creating a thin bead instead of a rectangular flat piece of metal. The problem is that in some cases a sort of air pocket is left and the wire can wiggle into this space and pop! your beads are everywhere. So after using the crimp tool, I use a flatnose plier to flatten the crimped bead. Then nip any tail that you have as close to the crimp or last bead it’s gone through.

A Bag of Eyes

All parents tell stories about their children. I called a swimming suit a wimming dute. I sang twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are, like a dime up in the sky. And of course, there are usually a few embarrassing stories. Driving in the Midwestern college town of my childhood, my family passed a little person in theatrical costume. My younger brother about jumped out of his skin and with eyes as big as saucers pronounced that he had seen an elf. I matter-a-factly told him, “Oh Paul, that wasn’t an elf, it was a dorf!”

I am collecting my own stories about my children. My older boy was three or four when he found a pair of flippers I was saving till his feet and swimming skills grew into them. All children love to dress up in costumes that don’t fit them and he began happily waddling around the house and pronounced that he had found ducky swims. My younger son is now two and a half. Recently at bedtime he started saying, “soft me mom.” I finally realized that he wanted me to rub his back, just like we softly pet the dog.

But there was one story from my childhood that I never quite understood why my mother told. We had been visiting her mother who is a quilter and crafter. She had been making large beanbag frogs with big plastic eyes while we were there. Now home, I was sitting on the floor with bits of this and that scattered around me. As she stood behind me she heard me say, “now if I just had me a bag of eyes.” Every time my mother told that story I wondered what was the funny part? Was it my grammar or my materials or perhaps I lacked the skills to make a frog? I couldn’t quite see how any of that was funny enough to bear repeating. But I could remember how much I had yearned for a bag of eyes, the magic ingredient.

Last week I was sorting through my many pet projects and beads I’ve set aside for myself in my store. I came across a bag of random beads. There were agates and rhyolite and rhodonite and just a very strange jumble, until I looked closely at the individual beads and realized, it was a bag of eyes! I even said it out loud, it’s a bag of eyes. And I started to chuckle. I finally have a bag of eyes. Eye beads are beads that when they were cut from the natural stone, the banding within the stone was revealed as an eye. They have been used throughout history as protective amulets. The first glass beads were made to imitate agate and especially these natural eyes. Over time I have taken eye beads out of strands I was working with and set them aside. At some point I guess I rounded them all up and stuck them in this bag but it wasn’t until I looked at them without knowing what they were that the realization that my bag of eyes was My bag of eyes, hit me.

Naturally I’ve been asking the same old question about that story, why was it so funny? And I think I finally understand why my mom told that story. I’m not sure I can put it into words any better than the story itself. I am someone who wants to create. I have bits of this and that and I just need a little magic to make it all come together.

The Cat Not Taken

Is there anyone who did not read Walt Whitman’s poem about the road not taken?  My life has taken many twists and turns and while I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about where I might have gone, Schrodinger’s cat has begun to make me think about those other roads in whole new ways. If quanta exist in both the here and not here  until observed, is it possible that I also exist in the here and not here, have split off along all of these paths, existing in multiple universes, one of me an archaeologist, another a used book store owner, one a physical anthropologist, one perhaps homeless and so on? And yet, all of the strange meanderings of my life have come to here, in this reality that I am observing.

As I reach another cross road in life I am puzzling over which path to take and wondering what direction I would take if I weren’t looking and which direction I will take because I am observing. I find myself listening to my dreams, teasing out the messages I am sending myself. Synchronisities take on new meanings and every day events settle into the patterns of tea leaves. 

I am at a cross roads. As the economy changes and business slows down I am questioning whether having a store fits into my life anymore. Does it make sense to rush out the door everyday, hurriedly getting children and self off to school and work, lunches packed and clothes perfect to greet the world. Perhaps I should be listening to the winds of change, slowing down, simplifying, paying attention to what really matters, my family, my health, growing a garden and feeling the sun on my face. So I’m preparing for that other reality, the one without a store. I have loved it so much. But I’m not sure it’s the right thing anymore. And I think that my expectation can’t help but influence the outcome. When I open the box, the cat will be dead and I will have taken the path less traveled for me. The road that leads home.

A Bit About Buying Beads

So where is the best place to buy beads? The place where you find them. Now, I wish I had a bead store the size of a city block and ten stories tall. Then I would have a pretty good selection. But then again, not really because it would be overwhelming and no matter how well organized, hard to find anything. And there is a lot of fun to be had, exploring different bead stores, going to the swap meet, poking around online and reading through catalogs. I find that I like one company’s this another company’s that and the mixture I pull together is part of what defines my store and my jewelry.

With so many possibilities, how do you decide which beads to buy? I personally, buy what calls me. Not very helpful advice for most people. So a few things that are helpful… Take your beads shopping. Pick out beads you have that you would like to match, string them on fishing line and put them in a baggie and drop it in your purse. Next time you find yourself in a bead store, you have them to reference. Color really is next to impossible to remember.  Look for beads that either make what you have work, or for beads that make your heart sing and you can’t stand to leave them behind.

Stick to your budget. Decide ahead of time how much you can spend. Then go in planning to spend about half of that. The planned half is for the necessary beads., the spacers or the beads for your Aunt Madie’s necklace. The other half is for pure love. It’s very rare to spend time with beads and not find something that makes your heart beat faster. Budgeting for joy will keep you from going over and from heartbreak!

Different stores sell beads in different ways. Some stores are filled with little dividers of loose beads. This can be fun to buy one of this and two of that. And on a tight budget, it allows you to spend a small amount and get a good variety. But understand, there is a very high mark-up when you buy beads this way. It’s good for occasional beading but not so great if you bead a lot. I don’t sell loose beads in my store mainly because I think I’d loose my mind, trying to remember what to charge for each. Stone beads come temporarily strung on fishing line or string, usually in 16 inch strands. Sometimes the size of the beads don’t divide evenly into 16 inches. Strands with the little tassels on the end come from India and are often more like 14 inches or even much less for expensive stones. Half strands of 8 inches are also becoming more common. Glass beads are often sold by weight.

Buying online can be tricky. It’s great when you can’t find what you want locally or can’t get out to shop. Catalog sellers try very hard to have items match the picture. But inevitably, things will vary and you have to be somewhat flexible. One nice thing about the big sellers is that they really do try to have everything. There are also smaller companies that carry or produce some really unique items. And there is Ebay. Ebay can be a good way to buy very inexpensively as many manufacturers sell directly there. However, you have to be very very careful. Items often do not match the description. That is, there is a picture and a description, but the only thing turquoise about the beads being offered may be that turquoise is a color and not just a stone. And like all auctions on Ebay, watch the sellers feedback, shipping charges, etc.

I think most beaders are tactile and there is nothing like getting your hands on the beads, studying them up close and being surrounded by their beauty. By all means, support your local bead store. By building a relationship you will have someone to ask questions and will help to insure that the store is there when you need them. Besides small bead stores you may have access to a craft store, which can be a source of cheap tools, stringing supplies and sometimes even decent findings (clasps, earwires and stuff to put things together are called findings). If you don’t have bead stores, plan to visit some on your travels!

Places you might not have thought to look for beads include swap meets/flea markets, antique stores, thrift stores and garage sales. When you start to look at premade things as assemblages of parts, some items that no one in their right mind would wear, have some really great beads!

Oh, and the shows! Shows are a bit like that ten story building I imagined. There are usually so many beads that your vision goes white the first time you walk into a bead show of any size. Tables and tables of beads stretch across huge rooms. Where to start? Go with a list of what you would most like to find. Walk around and get a feel for the room. You are likely to find that there are certain tables that really call you. Go back fast! And stick to your budget. There will always be more that you want than what you can buy. It’s a lot like auction fever.

I’ll try to come back later and add some links to a  bead store finder site and a few online sellers I like, one I want you to support cause he’s so funny, I don’t ever want him to stop writing his catalog.

The Creative Process

I’m always encouraging people to get started beading. People come into my store and look longingly at the stones and share that they wish they could bead. There are few reasons that they don’t and I’ll share my solutions with you. One of the most common is, “I’m just not creative.” Well, if you can pick out clothes to dress yourself, you can create jewelry to wear as well. A necklace is often as simple as a strand of beads, just restrung like a strand of pearls. It’s a classic. The wonderful thing about making it yourself is that you choose the color and the length and the type of clasp that you like. From there you can experiment with more complicated designs. Look everywhere and notice what you like in other peoples designs. We all get ideas from one another. And unless you are copying bead by bead, it’s inspiration, not copying.

The other thing that I often hear is, “I don’t have the time.” There are a number of ways to fit beading into your life. I often recommend finding a friend to bead with. Spending time with friends and balancing your life with creative expression are both important. And the best part? You can trade beads! 

The unspoken reason not to bead is money. Ha! Beading is one of the most economical crafts. Try deciding that you don’t like your oil canvas and getting your paint back to start over! And beads never go bad. You will always have something to whip up for a gift. And what you would have spent on the gift, becomes your bead money. And they’re recyclable. I always recommend that people start in their own jewelry box, take things apart and reuse your no longer loved or broken beads first. Don’t have any? Ask around, I know that someone in your family or circle of friends will be thrilled to give their jumble to you.

Lastly,  there are the people who used to bead. They are often stuck on something, don’t ever seem to finally realize a design and get it completed. Creativity is the opposite of a plan. Now if you like a plan, there are loads of magazines and books with pictures of finished jewelry, where to buy the beads and detailed instructions on how to make the piece. And that might suit you. Another way to go is to embrace the creative process. You don’t usually sit down and just make a piece the first time you look at your beads. Play with your beads, sort them, see how they look next to this and that and oh, how about if I add this color? That’s the joy of it, is playing. If you can’t allow yourself to play, you should only bead from a plan.

There is a  little trick that I learned from a customer, which she called puddling. I wish I could credit the person who originally had this concept. Unfortunately, I have a mind like a steel sieve. You put your beads that you want to work with in a bowl and put it somewhere like your dresser. The idea is to see it everyday. And your subconscious works on the ideas. When you sit down to bead, the design flows! I think this is why playing with your beads works also, you give your mind a chance to work with the colors and shapes. I know that I have always created puddles.  Just ask my mom!

Why Didn’t Anyone Just Tell Me This?

For years I searched for a book that would show pictures and descriptions of all of my favorite stones. And there are great books out there, just none like what I wanted. I’m drawn to the agates and jaspers. Most books have an entry for jasper and an entry for agate. And the picture is of one kind of jasper or maybe three. Sometimes there are a few common types of jasper listed. The same for Agate. So I have learned the stones one by one, in person. And really, a book is only a field guide, meant to be referenced as you interact with the world. Now, I imagine if I had ever gotten past the first two classes in geology I might have learned this already, but a few years ago, I finally got an explanation that I understand and that ties so many of the stones together. Quartz is one of the most abundant minerals on the face of the earth. That part about the face is important as feldspar is more common below the crust of the earth. Quartz is a large crystal structure. Think of salt. If you hold a thin piece of aventurine to the light it really looks like lots of salt cells. Aventurine is quartz with mica inclusions by the way. When quartz has microcrystals we call it chalcedony. Throw in some minerals so that it’s opaque and you have jasper. Band the stone with layers of clear and opaque and you have agate. Yeah, those of you who took geology already knew this. This little bit of information has helped me to understand so much though.

Stones Don’t Care What We Call Them

I love stones that don’t behave. You ask me, “what is this stone?” Well, hmmm. It was supposed to be fancy jasper. Except that when it’s all green with red spots we call it blood stone. And when it’s also got yellow, then it’s rainforest jasper. And some of these beads are moss agate. So what is this strand of beads? No, it’s not a mixture of separate stones. It’s how nature creates. Imagine that you are baking muffins and you throw in some chocolate chips over here and some blueberries over there and a bit of coconut and only stir it a little bit. Some of your muffins will be all of the above, some will be blueberry or coconut or chocolate or plain. Mother Nature cooks a bit like that. There is usually an ideal for whatever name we give a stone, like rose quartz. We picture it as being a baby soft pink and a little bit cloudy. But sometimes it’s really cloudy with bits of yellowy orange. Sometimes it’s so pale, it’s almost white. Sometimes it’s more translucent as the crystalline structure tightens and it’s really more of a pink chalcedony. But because it’s in a batch of rose quartz, there it is your strand of rose quartz beads. The big bead sellers try to avoid these variations so that every strand looks just like the picture in the catalog. And that is good, if you want your beads to look just like that picture. For me though, I want my stones to do their own thing. I want the wild stones, the ones that won’t behave. I want the stones that defy naming, the stones with bits of something else thrown in, the stones with a chemical change here and there that make them a bit of something else. Stones don’t care what we call them. There are plenty that do fit our definitions. And those are nice. But I love the stones that make me take note of how they are all interconnected. The stones that make you think about how they came to be call to me. So sometimes I know just what a stone is, and sometimes I can only tell you what it’s related to or maybe I’m only guessing. I love the stones that don’t behave.

Beadginning

People often ask me how long I’ve been beading and how I got started. I don’t really know. I can remember that I was always fascinated with making something out of nothing. I had a wonderful babysitter as a child. She was like my grandmother and I loved her fiercely. Her lifestyle was very much influenced by the great depression, yet I never saw that as a drawback. She had coat hangers twisted so that we could roast hot dogs on the gas stove. Her old treadle sewing machine was slow enough that we would sometimes be allowed to work the peddle. She was very proud of her roses and liked to tell people about how she had started all of them under mayonaise jars. Sometimes on rainy days, when we’d already played many games of go fish, she would open a dresser drawer and let me play with the dolls that had been loved to pieces. I was always trying to put together one complete doll.

My grandfather was a rock hound and the idea that you could pick up a stone and cut it and have something so beautiful always interested me. The tiny landscapes, odd color combinations, complex patterns or just simple infinite shading were all a wonder. As he got older arthritis made working the stones more difficult and he began to make enamel over copper beads and to string or wire his beads. That was probably when I was really introduced to beading.

At first the beads I had were from taking things apart and finding new ways to use old and often broken jewelry. Single earrings make great pendants. Earrings are great to make because they require relatively few beads and are good practice in design and balance. Taking things apart teaches many different techniques. Instead of knowing one way of beading, I am aware of many techniques. I mostly only use a few but I think I have an easier time thinking of how to do things because of all the different ways to hold beads together that I’ve really observed. And even now, I look at a strand of beads and look for the two that will make a perfect pair of earrings. I work mostly in stone so the beads can vary a lot. I pull the most exciting bead to center, move the ugly sisters to the back by the clasp and try to maintain a sense of balance and randomness at the same time.

Beads are the ultimate recycled art. They never go bad. Wearing them doesn’t diminish them. Time only increases their value. They can always be taken apart and made into something new and fresh. And unlike those doll parts, they can be mixed.