Reading, doing, simple steps

I got back from Nepal just over a week ago and decided to vary the manic catch up doing all you didn't do for three weeks routine. Just to shake things up a little and see what how kindness changed things! I had a massage, reconnected with lovely patient family, paced myself with the list of JOBS, slept often, read and was just less rabid generally. Might do it again next time as it seemed to work better than frenzy.Before I left Australia, I read Position Doubtful by Kim Manhood.  Loved it.  On the plane I read Craft for a Dry Lake and plan to hear Kim with my mum at the Sydney Writers' Festival in May. I love her honesty and courage.  Neither were easy books. Not through any fault of the author but because of the subject matter, the journey, and the responses each triggered in me. Very well worth the effort though.  I loved her writing...I pretended I did not really have to do it and began to make left handed preparations.  Mmmm...I am good at those left hand preparations! Anyway, good reads.When I got back I used Breakthrough Colour to help create a new palette to work with. I chose a colour at random (BTC111 for those interested!) and then changed one component, yellow, just to see what I came up with.  Then I wanted to see what the complements of each of the resulting colours were. For those of you familiar with BTC I worked out what would bring each of those colours to 555. So, colour 101's complement would be 454.  Always intriguing to then look at the resulting palette!  I had accidentally ordered a heap of translucent clay rather than the white I desperately needed so mixed small portions of each colour with translucent and then spent days creating textured sheets using all the bits and bobs I have collected over the years for this purpose! Very meditative.I love making these disc beads (we call them rice paddy beads at Samunnat) so made varied sizes really wondering sometimes whether it was all going to hang together. Sometimes I would look at one stack of discs and think Myeh but then alongside a few others it really sang. Go figure.Days of mixing, texturing, baking, boot polishing, oil painting, remaking, sanding, drilling and assembling later, I was really happy with the resulting pieces. More so because they were in colours I would not instinctively have worked with but that I loved.  They made me think of our eucalyptus gums after rain.  I make the cords myself from wonderful coloured thread I buy in Chetrepati. Twisted cords like this mean the necklaces can be worn in several lengths...I like that flexibility!  And the pendants can all be converted to brooches.