It’s national Delurking day! And what better way to celebrate than to stop lurking about on my own blog?

Today is the day to come on out of the woodwork and make yourself heard — comment away — all 2 of you who still have this old blog in your google reader 🙂

I know vague directives to “comment away” makes me want to just click away, so how about this — tell me what name you WISHED you had been given by your parents. Either now, or maybe when you were a kid, or whatever. I’ll go first.

When I was eight and me and my best friend pretended to be princesses/ pirates/ mermaids/ stowaways/ treasure hunters/ horses/ unicorns/ pegasus/ flying unicorn pegasus/ enter-your-chosen-pretend-personae-here, I always wanted to be named Alexa, Alexia, Alexandria, or Diana. I thought they were just the most beautiful names in the world.

I’m fine with Amy now though 🙂

As you may or may not know, James and I will be moving our family to Denver, CO this summer. (ahem. I haven’t been that prolific on this here blog, of late, so if you didn’t know, uhh…. now you know! We’re plannin’ a move, and are very excited about it!)

Which means this will be my last term teaching at Stars Beads in the Washington DC metro area! (Northern VA to be exact.)

I decided to make my very last class at Stars, a project that is very near to my heart, and also one of my best selling kits – the Shenandoah pendant. In every one of my classes, there is always someone that spots this piece and asks when it will be taught in a class. For some reason, I’ve always held back on making a class for it, but if you are one of these folks who have begged me for it — now’s your chance! I decided I might as well go out with a bang for my very last class at Stars — my “going away” class, if you will, we will be making the Shenandoah Pendant.

I’ve also added another new class – full persian. This one will be lots of fun, I just love this weave, it’s so slinky and SEXY!

I’m also doing some old favorites — Celtic Visions bracelet, and the Celtic Visions Star Pendant, and Byzantine Love Knot bracelet.

With the price of sterling silver reaching for the sky, I will be bringing project kits in sterling, copper, and jewelry brass to all my classes so that you can pick whatever metal you like, and even mix them up.

Hope to see you there!!

Saturday, January 22, 10-2pm Byzantine Love Knots Bracelet class Stars Beads Vienna, VA	Saturday, January 29, 10-2pm Celtic Visions Bracelet class Stars Beads Vienna, VA	Saturday, February 12, 10-2pm Full Persian Bracelet class Stars Beads Vienna, VA
Sunday, February 13, 12-4pm Celtic Visions Star Pendant class Stars Beads Vienna, VA	Last Going Away Class! Sunday, April 3, 12-4pm Shenandoah Pendant class Stars Beads Vienna, VA

This morning I created a monster.

Well, 2 monsters, really.

Every morning (unless we’re on the ball and up and rarin’ to go — yeah, not usually happening!) when I hear a kid stirring, I give our family whistle, and wait to see if a little blur comes running into our room. After a few whistles, we usually have 2 little hot water bottles climb into bed with us for a little morning snuggle.
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Look at you! You have grown so much, into your own little person. That’s the kind of statement someone says about a much younger child, maybe a 3 or 4 year old, not someone 6 going on 7. Maybe it’s because you’ll always be my baby. But you are so uniquely you that I marvel at it every day.

You are almost always happy (except of course, when you are not (ha!)).

When I pick you up at daycare after my workday is done, I always ask, “How was your day today?”

And you always reply in the same way. A singing voice proclaims, “AWE-SOME!”

In fact, on the days that you say simply, “Good.” or “Fine.” You stop and correct yourself, “No! It was — AWE-SOME!” in that same sing-song voice.
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November kicks off a first for one of the Etsy teams I’m a part of — CREST (Capital Region Etsy Street Team!) a blog CARNIVAL!

This first month’s topic is: “How did you get started in your craft?”

I had started with simple stringing — beads on beading wire, remaking projects from a book.

It was when I took a class at a local bead store, Stars Beads. It was a simple wire wrapping class, which was a fantastic way to learn the basics of wire wrapping, loops, wrapped loops, clasps, pins — you name it! It was a fantastic start, and like a race horse champing at the bit, I wanted more.
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Yesterday, someone purchased this lovely copper byzantine romanov bracelet from my Etsy shop. It was one of my (rare) one of a kind pieces, and also was one of the first chainmaille pieces I made. I must say, I’m quite attached to it and a tear almost came to my eye when I sent it off into the postal system! An entirely different feeling from seeing it languish at craft shows wondering, “Why doesn’t anyone else love it as I do?” — see, I’m fickle and just can’t be pleased, Regardless, I’m sure it will be cherished by it’s lucky new owner!

This is the bracelet – I named it Autumn Splendor. It really is “micro” chainmaille, as the rings used are quite tiny – 20 gauge wire, wrapped around a 2.75mm mandrel, and then precision cut with my saw. The entire piece is really sweet and dainty, especially with the little swarovski crystals I used to compliment the copper colors.
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James and I hold our breath every time Ethan seems to be in a “good stretch” — in behavior, in not getting into trouble, in getting his homework done, etc. It seems that everytime we feel like we can let out a sigh and relax a little bit, that is when things take a turn for the worse. We’ll get an email from his teacher, or there’ll be some altercation in the neighborhood, and it seems to spark off a hellish 4-6 weeks of sullen behavior, and/or reports of not doing work at school, and aggressiveness.

So it’s hard to actually breath that sigh of relief — knowing that in the past, right afterward usually comes the kick to the gut. But we tentatively are, and we’re making sure that Ethan knows how proud we are of all his hard work.

He is doing awesome in school. This year he has a male teacher, and Mr. A has been great. His special ed teacher is also male, and Ethan is really stepping up to take charge and be responsible for his work.
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Since the last 3 posts is probably the MOST I’ve written in my blog for the last YEAR combined, I think I should probably keep up the momentum, don’t you? 🙂

Least you think the only thing I’ve been worrying about is copyright issues, I have a craft show in ONE WEEK! And 2 more coming after that, though not all at once, thank goodness.

And.. ahem.. I haven’t really been worrying about it ENOUGH!

EEP!
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Now that I have had a few days to reflect on all of this, and read through other’s comments on copyright in chainmaille, I thought I’d outline my thoughts on the matter.

This has raised interesting and valid copyright questions. If a weave is freely available to all, because it’s a “construction technique”… then at what point does one’s designs become copyrightable?

I think a few of the ones Sara copyrighted qualifies, but not all. One of the copyrighted designs is just a length of the Stepping Stones (SS) weave hanging from a chain. If she states that the SS weave itself is not enforced and belongs to the community, then how could that that particular piece be copyrighted/enforced, if there are no changes made to it other than hanging it from a chain? (I am in no way trying to state that she is attempting to do so, I’m using this recent situation to discuss the copyright issues at hand.)

But I mean really, when we are all using the same weaves as our starting point, at what point after that does ones pieces become copyrightable?
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Since posting about my copyright infringement saga, a number of people have come to my defense, and the entire internet drama has really reached a clamor and come to a head. I want to repost a few things here for the record.

I really don’t want to get into the background of what’s been happening before and after I published my previous post in the mailling community (and I recognize there’s lots of other places other than the maille artisans site) but there is an entire thread on weave restrictions going on here, on the Maille Artisans site, which you can read if you like. I do want to point out a few things in this situation, and in so doing, I’ll just repost a post I made to that thread:
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