It was a sunny beautiful day with just enough breeze to keep the mosquitos away, but not so much that it kept us from taking Angie and Marly to one of our favorite places.
Waiting at the Co-op for Bruce to pick us up in the Barbara Ann.
It was a little choppy and the skiff is small so Bruce rowed us in to shore one at a time.
Lunch on the “Dancing Rocks” after a walk across the island.
Bye bye Baker’s.
Tomorrow is a day for bronze clay and bread.
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I spent the day doing errands off island today, but this little goldfinch was back at our dining room window for day number 3 of strange behavior.
He seems to be defending his domain, as described on the Wikipedia site about goldfinches:
“While the nest is being constructed, the male will act aggressively toward other males who intrude into his territory, driving them away, and the female reacts in the same way toward other females. This aggressiveness fades once the eggs have been laid.“
He is not crashing himself into the window, but flying up and down against the glass as if to ward off the foe that matches his every move. Sometimes I have days like this too. I feel so defensive and testy, only to realize that I just I spent the day doing battle with myself.
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Alone Moose Gallery , where I have my work in Bar Harbor, is celebrating their 36th year of business with a show.
“36 Brooches…Made in Maine” will open on Saturday, and I wanted to be part of it as soon as I heard Sherry Rasmussen’s plans for the show last winter. Did I design and make a brooch last winter? Um, no. I am a last minute girl who needs the pressure of a deadline for just about everything I do. (Hmmm…no wonder I like living on an island with a ferry schedule to follow.)
When Sherry e-mailed me last week asking if I was still going to participate in the show, I figured I’d better get going. I actually had been thinking about this brooch for a while, but just couldn’t come up with a design until I sat down at the bench with my metal clay. Since beach rocks are a part of my everyday life, I decided to go in that direction.
The brooch is slightly heavy; probably more suited to being worn on a sweater or jacket. The pin findings are soldered on, but the two smaller rocks were attached and fired in place in the kiln.
I like the shape of this elongated beach rock, so I decided to explore it a little more.
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In a cold rainy spring, the lupine have opened up to bring some well needed color to contrast the gray days.
It’s also about time I got back to posting more regularly on this blog. (So much for the Post a Day Challenge lately!)
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…just about anything. For me, this included making up a bunch of different sized Argentium jump rings. Tomorrow I’ll get out the torch and fuse these babies to make necklaces and clasps.
It’s pretty easy to make jump rings by winding a coil of wire around a mandrel, and then cutting down through them with a jeweler’s saw.
A few of the small ovals will become part of an adjustable clasp for the leaf necklace (disassembled) in the background.
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We’ve now seen the sun for two days in a row. Highly unusual this spring, and a welcome break the cold wet weekend. Despite the cold and fog on Saturday, people wandered down to the Town Dock around 6:30; drawn by warm sounds, reminiscent of an evening the Caribbean.
The Sunbeam was in.
And people were listening…
…to the energetic music of Planet Pan, a steel drum band comprised of high school students from the Blue Hill area.
Two seals even came by to see what was going on, but I was a split second too slow with my camera.
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Among the pieces I dropped off at Alone Moose today, was an asymmetrical necklace designed around one of the ceramic bird beads I bought from LeAnn Weih in her Summers Studio Etsy shop.
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“In your studio? Along with the other small bowls?” This is a question Bruce asked me last week. I had to ‘fess up. Yes, all kitchen bowls of a certain small size were in my studio. All full of beads or doodads or whatnots. All in use. All holding something important, I thought, but what they were really doing was holding me back.
I am not good at focusing on one thing. A deadline helps, but even when I am faced with one, I will dance around the edges of whatever needs to be done, not quite able to sit still and accomplish the task at hand. Eventually I complete it, and sometimes I manage to finish a few other things I had no idea I was going to do.
This weekend the Alone Moose Gallery opens their doors for their 36th season in Bar Harbor. I have chosen the jewelry I’ll be taking over there tomorrow, but at 9:30 p.m. I still do not have it priced and inventoried. What the heck is the matter with me? I really hate doing this kind of work at night and this time I was determined to have all my pricing done before dinner. Didn’t happen. And now, here I am posting a blog before I finally get my work done for tomorrow.
But I did get all my little display cards made ahead of time, and that really is one thing finished on time.
The other thing I did was to empty out and return all the little bowls to the kitchen where they belong. (I have plenty of “studio little bowls” but they were also full.)
The last bits of the collection. Emptied and ready for the dishwasher.
It was no mean feat to get the dishes returned to the kitchen because it meant cleaning my studio. (Again.) When working with beads, one of the fastest ways to clean up is to dump the beads into a little bowl, to sort out later. This works for a while, until I run out of bowls and/or they take up too much space on my workbench. Without going into long detail, because I still have that jewelry to price, I sorted out beads from all these bowls, along with throwing out some magazines and rearranging some storage in the studio. After 2 days, I have 3 very tidy work surfaces and the ability find things without making a bigger mess. Tomorrow I’ll be off the island, delivering my start of the summer inventory, getting groceries, and visiting my mother. My friend Susie will be arriving on the 4:30 boat, the same boat I’ll be taking. On Friday, there will be more people arriving for the holiday weekend. I’ll want to catch up with all of them, but if I get a few moments to work in the studio, I might actually be able to focus on what I’m doing. It is so much less distracting to have access to an uncluttered space.
After, after and after:
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A friend, I had forgotten about, accompanied me on my walk this morning. At last!
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Sunny Saturday, low tide.
Yesterday’s snow is still on the mountains of Mount Desert Island, but not on the beaches of Little Cranberry Island.
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Barbara S Fernald Jewelry 