For Mother’s day, I had my preschoolers make fingerprint pendants with clay and then string assorted glass beads on hemp thread tied to the pendants. For that project, I pulled out a shoebox tote of my hemp jewelry making supplies that I’d amassed when I worked at a bead shop a few years ago. Ever since then, in the back of my mind, I’ve been itching to make some hemp jewelry again. So last night I pulled that tote out again and made a bracelet. I finished it in about a half hour! Then I started a necklace. It was so weird and nice to start and finish a project in one sitting. That doesn’t often happen with knitting.
Also in my tote of hemp jewelry supplies is a bag of necklaces and bracelets I made and once had up on Etsy to sell. I looked at them wistfully as I remembered my first Etsy shop. Last year, I turned that shop into Squirrel Seeds, a shop just for seed beads. The advice I saw everywhere was to have your shop focus on just one thing. And that seems logical enough, until I tried and failed to start three separate shops with different types of items, and struggled to have enough stock to make the shops worth it. So last night I thought, why not put all of my things in one shop? Seed beads, jewelry, knitted items, and patterns? Maybe a more eclectic shop that more reflected my interests would be more sustainable for me and end up with a following of its own? So I may try it. It sure beats letting my shop lapse simply because of lack of time to maintain three different shops.
Now it’s time for today’s writing. Instead of writing in the morning, like I usually do, I opted to get some gardening done. It ended up taking most of the day, because I had to stop and rest so often (because pregnant and it’s hot outside). But I managed to weed and turn the garden soil (with Chris’s help), and plant tomato and cauliflower seedlings, onion sets, carrot and radish seeds, and a jalapeño seedling. Now I’ve got my early evening writing setup on the deck: a handwoven shawl that I got in Mexico that is the perfect weight and thickness clipped to our table umbrella to block out the sun. Lovely, no?
