When nature says "I don't think so"

Not today anyway, as it did say to warm weather and sunny skies yesterday.  The tree, which I see from my front porch, is one of those things that make me smile, I find it amusing, like nature flipping the bird in landscaping form.  It just grew that way, it was not sculpted as such.  It was downright cold in the morning, the 40's being near freezing for this island girl and the 50's were not much better.  It did finally hit the 60's in late afternoon but I never took my jacket off, still too chilly for me.

But I did finish one chime and start another and ran some errands so I was busy all day.  The above little English cottage (or whatever it resembles to you) is but a mere block of 4 x 4 that someone turned into something pretty and I thought would make for a beautiful wind chime.  I should finish it today but that is what I started with.  

Yesterday seemed, also, to be reach out and connect with a sistah day as I called one of mine and then another called me, lovely catching up with them and hearing thier voices and what is going on with them.  They are thrilled that I am back on the mainland and I confess that it is nice to be within reasonable visiting distance, one a drive and the other a quick flight, where on the islands this was not so.  There is just nothing like hugging someone you love in the flesh and seeing thier beautiful face(s).

My sistah Kelly is my inspiration and motivation and I would be lost without her.  For it was her that gave me the idea to do my chimes, not directly but that is where I went with it and it has become one of my varied passions.  That and writing and photography, which already were well developed, no pun intended, before the chime thing came along.  Then, it was using my pictures to make postcards and I had a mailing list of 50+ fine people that wanted to receive them and did every single week for a number of years.  Until I was unemployed and buying that many stamps was not within reason.  Though I do hope to start that again one day.  

Many of them I had never met in person but were my online virtual friends.  I don't believe that makes them any less of a friend, we love and care about each other and isn't that what friends do after all?  Plus, they trusted me with thier mailing info and I believe that says alot about my character and thier judgment.  I am not some stalker who will show up at thier house and promised them as much because it was, is, and will always be true.  The bonus was that many of them I had exchanged phone numbers with and we talked from time to time, still do.  Friends.  I am blessed  with many.

Mostly, these days I am just into making my chimes, selling them and doing my blog and for now that suits me perfectly.  I have not had a bad day since I arrived here and even though it was cold yesterday and I have only been here 8 days, that is the start of a good run of great days in my humble opinion. Still getting up very early, when there is no need to, and just really enjoying my life as it is right now.

And I got the story on the bears that are all over town.  I asked.  Bearfest, started in 2003 at the request of a gentleman who was the president of a bank and 20 were hand made, not molded, and given to local artits to decorate, did so and named them.  In 2014 there were 145 of them and I believe he said 20 are created each year, some have been auctioned to donate to local charities.  Pretty cool.  And though they are not all in town, they are in a museum of sorts, I think he said the Bear Lodge, but I could be mistaken.  But a lot of them are in town and I think when new ones are done they house them (the older ones, not the new ones) at the lodge as a collection.  Oddly, it never occured to me to Google it.  I like the local flavor of a local story.

Today will find me working on my little chime and starting a large one that I already have in mind and running into town to the post office to mail a chime I sold.  And was given a custom order for a curtain, in wind chime form, to cover a picture window.  That one may take awhile but I am up to the task and if my life's work is to be able to do what I love for a living, all the better.  Plus what a great idea, that someone sees my art in a different way than I had imagined making and custom ordering to fill thier dream.  That will, when it is hanging in her dining room, be posted here, without a doubt.  Not that I need it but high praise is a wonderful thing.

As I praise you, amazing readers, for following my antics here, it means the world to me, it really does, that you are even curious, if not outright happy to hear whatever I feel the need to share. I also know that no matter how mundane you think your life is, it really is fascinating, everyone's story is, from anothers perspective.  People are all the same, moreso than different really, and so no matter what, all of our stories are about rising above our circumstances I think.  Or at the very least, making the best of them.  At the core of it we are all just souls, in human form, who came for the experiences of being human. You, essentially, are not a body with a soul, you are a soul with a body that other souls can see and when your body ceases to be, what is left is the soul, forever a soul.  But even so, I will always thank baby Jesus because he did what no one else has ever done and I kind of love that.

It is still nippy out here, a whopping 53* but sunny, so there is hope that it will warm into another lovely day.    So I am off to work on that little chime now.

Be well and all my love.