Laughter and just another necklace

My gorgeous sister started a bit of a tradition with a card she sent me in Nepal years ago (and I apologise for the quality of the photo but I have not been able to track down a better image). This card was for the first birthday I had after leaving a lot of secure stuff- casting off from the shore so to speak...leaving my job-my profession, taking off to Nepal and declaring I wanted to be an artist.  Inside she wrote (in that fabulously loving and perceptive way that sisters can) who else but you could swan around with such purpose but no actual JOB! And the funny card thing started!Another very apt card came from Pick 'n' Z who lived in the flat below us in Nepal. ( Can I just say  that Z's jewellery wearing increased markedly after a few years under me. So to speak.) On the card are very wise words really.And this Christmas, my bahini (little sister) showed again her great skills in finding the perfect card.  I have looooong been a fan of Cecily, the creation of Celia Allison from NZ.  This year Susan gave me a Cecily calendar and a card with this Cecily print, which is so apt for my life over the past few years that it is frightening!  Cecily is magnificent and every month's new page will be a joy.  And look, rather than try to cram a million Cecily prints and quotes into one already busy post, maybe I will post one a month in the blog next year and share the lurve and laughter. Sounds like a resolution I could keep. YES I WILL! Wonderful Robin Hill at Flourish Arts in Birchgrove is a die-hard Cecily fan (even wears her glasses) and she stocks lots of Cecily paraphernalia there.  In Albury, Sally, another fan, has them here.And, #52....gosh, there is a weird feeling associated with the final necklace for 2012.  The process has been a fantastic discipline...giving me the motivation to have a go and the incentive to be a bit more disciplined than I might have been.  And it is interesting looking at the necklaces made over the year.  People may see links to the journey this year has been: reminders about the fragility of life and the temporal nature of our existence, acknowledgement of the things that are important or the characteristics I strive to develop; an urge to celebrate the people around me and the fact that I have woken up for another day and have the capacity (functional hands, functional eyes, ideas, time, passion) to even make another necklace; my regular forays to Nepal;the massive impact of the being with the Samunnat ladies; explorations of new techniques and ideas; rediscoveries of old bits and pieces, rejigging things that haven't worked, adapting designs to what I had...a year measured with mala (necklaces).  Many of the necklaces will hang in my exhibition in August 2013 (breathe Wendy, breathe) and some have gone to the people they were made for.  Or the people it became obvious that they were made for.  Others may be rejigged!  It's been fun.  You have to laugh.While I am sitting here feeling reflective, I've had a thought...anyone who posts a comment after this post about which of the 52 necklaces they'd nominate for their necklace of the year will go into the draw for something!  Maybe the first necklace of 2013!!!  And I leave with with a small photo of all the beads I wore home from Nepal as part of load shedding...part of my attempt at nonchalantly carrying my cabin baggage.