The Saturn gets over thirty MPG

Ray and I commute 65 miles (each way) 4 days a week.

He drives.

I listen to NPR, marvel at amazing sunrises (and look forward to the day when I never have to see another one), nap, watch the seasons change, make phonecalls, or bead. For a time I balanced a lap desk between my knees and the lip of the glovebox and did a lot of off-loom work. I was fairly adept, but--though I was careful to pour out only a few beads at a time--potholes and squirrels often instigated bead emergencies and the balancing act caused some nasty leg cramps.

Two years ago I went to Bead & Button and took a bead crochet class from Linda Lehman...and discovered the perfect portable beading technique.

In the comfort of my living room, I prestring a few hundred beads and work a half inch or so of the pattern then clip a stitch holder to the loop. I tuck the whole "ball 'o beads", crochet hook (don't forget the crochet hook), and a seam ripper (comes in handy, trust me) into a small plastic freezer bag and toss it in my purse.

Since late October, most of our commute has been downright dark...but the days are getting longer and now that I've started this blog to chart my creative progress I thought it time to stop staring out the car window and get back to beading.

This is what I accomplished today.

Grumbly Beads??

Early this month, during his concert in Troy, NY; John Prine told a story about listening to his transistor radio (remember transistor radios? They were the size of a standard iPod but three times as thick and, thanks to the required 9-volt battery, ten times as heavy). He spoke of a Fats Domino song with a lyric he heard as "grumbly beads" until he read the sheet music and discovered that the actual words were "promise me". Prine went on to tell of a fan miss-hearing the "half an inch of water" lyric from his That's the Way That the World Goes 'Round as "a happy enchilada"...but that's off the subject.

When I heard the words Grumbly Beads all I could see were my countless tubes, boxes, bags and strings of beads urging me to get to it and make some of the projects that swirl in my head...this reminded me that I had resolved to start a beading blog in 2008 because (and I do realize this is a ridiculous leap of logic) a blog would force me to be more productive.

We'll see how it goes. So far, all it's done is given me yet another project idea--polymer clay grumbly beads.

Here are some preliminary sketches.