Stopping to catch breath

Happy New Year! Wow, I couldn't believe it was so long since I had posted last. It's certainly been a roller coaster since then. Our son in law had a nasty accident at work, and things were touch and go a while there. I'm glad to say he's slowly coming good, it will be a long haul, and I'm only too conscious of the distance between here and Kalgoorlie.

Added to that things have gone 'pear shaped' to coin the vernacular with our shop lease and rather than persist, we have decided to take more care of ourselves from here on, and will close the retail outlet of Kay's Artycles. The website however, will, once we have moved and settled a bit, be upgraded and added to extensively. There soon will be all the beady delights and temptations formerly only available at the Loch Shop available online. (now the imagination could get a little carried away with all that statement I suppose!) We intend to stay in Loch and find suitable accommodation enabling us to work from home and I will place work in selected galleries and retail outlets as well as sell online, my own work. The move will take place around mid February and this involves both the residential furniture etc and inventory from shop being relocated...UGH!

On a brighter note I'm proud to have been awarded a scholarship by Bead Society of Victoria in conjunction with Fibres Australia, to a workshop with Karen Torrisi in Ballarat in April. This is in the domain that I'm most comfortable, dabbling with fibre and beads together. So I'm sure to get a whole lot of benefit from this exciting event.

My piece from the four seasons 'Winter' went into the Finals of the Create Your Style Creative Beading Awards. I'm champing at the bit to find out who wins this prestigious award and would love to be up there in the prize winners circle, but will have to have patience until they finally announce the winners.

I've been hard at work, however, have very little to show you for all the hours I seem to be spending at my beading desk. I'm pretty much just popping out popular styles that sell well over this busy time for us. We are open every day from 10am to 4pm, so apart from Christmas day we've been on duty since late November.

I can see I am going to have to take the Christmas tree down tomorrow or I'm going to look a bit sad, being the only one still 'Celebrating' Christmas in our village streetscape.

I'll leave you with a pretty little bracelet now on it's way to South Australia, not a very good photo but it still shows I've not been idle.