Home again, home again, jiggity jig

Now where the heck did that come from?!?! Some old nursery rhyme that somehow infiltrated my brain as I was typing the title. It's amazing the things that are stored in my head.

So, I'm home. Back to the cold weather, with the snow on the ground. Back to the house that needs to be cleaned and tidied, laundry that needs to be done, meals that need to be cooked. It's nice to be back, though. I'm about theme-parked out. SeaWorld... Epcot... Animal Kingdom... Universal. That's a lot of walking and standing. The economy has obviously had an effect on all of the parks. While it was nice to be able to walk around the parks without feeling like sardines, it was kind of strange to see so much open space. At least we didn't have to stand in a bunch of lines.

The pictures have been removed from the new digital camera. I love the camera I use most of the time, but for vacations it's quite bulky (it's a digital SLR, and I have several lenses that I always want with me). I decided to travel light this time, so I bought one of those tiny Olympus digital cameras. I've figured out so far that if I take a picture of something that's being absolutely still, and I'm being absolutely still, it works quite well. The moving shots? Well, not so good. I'm sure there's some setting that will allow me to get better pictures of moving things, but I haven't found it yet.

Of all the pictures I took on vacation, these are my two favorites:

The Killer Whales at SeaWorld

Baobab Tree at Disney's Animal Kingdom

Now that I'm back, I'm catching up on all sorts of stuff. I have a list about a mile long of things to do, and I'm whittling away at it. One of the things on the list was to update the Bead Art Originals Holiday Gift Guide with Valentine's Day items from our members. There are some beautiful pieces, all of them perfect for the impending holiday of romance, and in a variety of price ranges. Check it out!

Although I have quite a few beadwoven creations finished and waiting to be photographed, I only managed to list one new piece today: Ironman's DNA

I designed this DNA pattern a few months ago and created one version of the cuff in blues and violets, but then my metallic beads began calling to me. When beads call out to you, you just have to listen! :-)

It's been awhile since I entered one of the Etsy BeadWeavers challenges, and my entry into this one is a little out of the ordinary. The challenge theme, which was chosen by previous winner Deb (beadsandblooms.etsy.com), is Ancestral Expressions.

My challenge is that I really don't know much about my ancestry. No one in my family ever talked about ancestors arriving here on a boat, and no one ever even mentioned anything about ancestors from another country! I always had a suspicion that there might be some Native American ancestry, but I have no proof of it. That theory stemmed from seeing pictures of my great grandfather's family, all of whom were very dark complected, had those long stereotypical Indian noses, and had black hair. The surnames in my family didn't give me that many clues either -- Wilson, Sparks, Justice, James, Boggs. I only know that some of them are English and Scottish, but I didn't ever try to trace any of them. Maybe if I'd had children I'd have been more concerned with that, but since I've lopped off this branch of the family tree I just didn't ever pursue it.

So what does one create for a theme called Ancestral Expressions when one doesn't really have any idea about ancestry? My mind went to the purest form of ancestry -- DNA.

I'd been playing around with a design that had two ropes or ribbons twisting around each other, and that design was well suited to create the double helix form of DNA. Anyone looking at this might think I'm heavily into science, but that's not the case at all. Although I did well in school, science and biology were probably my least favorite subjects (I was a big fan of math and literature).

Today's the last day for members of Etsy BeadWeavers to list their entries into the Ancestral Expressions challenge, and voting will begin on the EBW blog on November 9. There are some other entries listed already, and I'm amazed at the amount of thought and talent that went into them. Click here to see the entries. And don't forget to visit the blog to vote in a few days! I'll bet you thought all the voting was finished, didn't you?

While you're visiting blogs, don't forget to check out the Bead Art Originals blog to see all the Items of the Week specials offered by our members. There are some incredible pieces included, and all sorts of great deals - just in time for your holiday shopping!

One last thing for today, November 5, 2008. BARACK WON!!! Hooray!!!!!!!!!!