Trip to Jerome AZ - Changes

Taking a day trip to Jerome AZ should not be such a big deal for three girlfriends since we live in Prescott – not so far away.  Finding a day that worked for all of us took a while!  I’ve wanted to go to Nellie Bly ‘the biggest kaleidoscope store in the world’ for 16 years!  They have been open for 25 years but I’ve only known they existed for 16. 
 We left at 10 a.m. and lunched in Jerome at ‘Grapes’.  Each of us ordered a different dish and shared great food and fun.   Sounds like a girl’s day out, doesn’t it?  We visited just about every store.  Of course, I stayed in Nellie Bly’s a long time.  I just missed the annual workshop teaching how to make those incredible tubes of color and changing shapes.  It’s on my calendar for next year.
If you haven’t guessed, I’m crazy for kaleidoscopes.  Once when there were many things happening in my life, I took a class called ‘Changes’.  There was discussion on why and how changes affect us, what we could do to help ourselves travel through the change and come out with a positive attitude.  One suggestion was to select something that would signify change and help us see it for what it was.  I chose kaleidoscopes because each time I looked through one, there was a difference configuration.  Each change of color and shape was beautiful and new.  Kaleidoscopes remind me that with each change comes a shift, an unsettling that becomes new and exciting – an adventure and a new picture.  Now I collect a kaleidoscope with each big change in my life.  I could have stayed in that store all day and will just have to go back again and again!
In a store “Lola….whatever she wants” looking up on a high shelf, I saw wonderful manikin heads from the 1920’s and 1940’s.  Spectacular!  Oh to have one to display a hat.
On and on we went visiting most of the stores.  I guess I will confess: outside the last gallery I was spellbound looking at the revolving sculpture and fell face forward into a very large bush of lavender.  It broke my fall so I was not hurt and it happened so fast that I just remember the fragrance that surrounded me.   The plant and I will survive and Jerome will forever be associated with kaleidoscopes and lavender.

Labels:
Location: 593 State Highway 89A, Prescott National Forest, Jerome, AZ 86331, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Learning As We Go!

Image
Viking knit is the oldest method of chain making and I've become fascinated by it.  Once I conquered the single knit, I decided to add beads.  I could have googled or asked how it was done but it seemed like something I could just figure out.  And I've learned a lot as I proceeded first with tumbled turquoise beads and then with pearls.  I thought I'd share a few of the things I've learned.   Iif you want a great tutorial on viking knit technique, Trina Ann at http://blog.trinaann.com/  has written a clear concise easy to understand tutorial.  I highly recommend it.    Tumbled tuquoise beads in viking knit  I used tumbled turquoise beads in the first viking knit chain and I did not really know what I was doing.  But I went right ahead and as it turned out, I liked the end result.  Since the beads were irregular in shape there was a random quality to the finished product. During that process, I beg...
Read more

Polymer Clay Conversation

Image
One of the polymer clay groups on FaceBook is 'Polymer Clay Collective'.  This is a group of artists working in polymer clay who share ideas and support each other.  I'm so glad to be a part.  A new feature of this group is the 'Polymer Clay Collective Conversations' where a different member answers a set  of questions.  I get to be first - the trailblazer! I hope you enjoy learning a little more about me and in two weeks I get to learn more about someone else. • Tell us a bit about where you live. I live in Prescott AZ right next to the national forest.   When I look out my studio windows, I often see large black ravens swooping between the pine trees.   Binoculars are always available for close viewing of our smaller forest birds.   You’ve probably read about the forest fires we have had in our area this summer.   The monsoon rains we are having are so welcome. • What do you do when you're not polymer claying? As of 2010, I...
Read more

I'm Back with New Pieces of Art Jewelry

Image
It’s been a while since my last post and while I missed writing them, I hope you also missed sharing my adventures!  Between a road trip to Berkeley and having painful (very painful) shoulder tendonitis my activities really slowed down.  Now I’M BACK!  Ready to explore new techniques and have fun. When I see a good tutorial about something new that catches my fancy, I buy it and eventually the day comes when I just have to try it.  Staci Louise Smith wrote a tutorial “Gold Rush: The Rustic Crackle Technique” for Craft Art Edu.  I loved the pictures of her necklaces and wanted to see what I could do.  If you like the crackle effect  on my pieces or want to try something new, check out her tutorial on   www.CraftArtEdu.com    They have good classes on many subjects. When I started following tutorials, I expected my pieces to look like the instructors.  That just did not happen and it is not the fault of the tutorial or ...
Read more