Become an art collector!

I know that your true inner-nature-spirit is just as attuned to art and wonder as mine is or else you wouldn’t even be on my site or reading this paragraph! Sure, I make natural stone jewelry, but I’m actually not a jeweler. My natural stone jewelry is art and I’m an artist!! I began my artistic journey as a watercolor-spattered kid in the country and reclaimed my inner wonder-filled artist when I switched from a geology major in college to fine arts and ceramic sculpture. Hello kindred wonder-spirit :D Are you ready to become an art collector?

Begin with my new Stone Poem notecards!

I’ve picked up a lot of amazing rocks on my jewelry-rock gathering missions that aren’t jewelry material, but that I simply fell in love with and couldn’t leave behind!! I was designing some long, shallow shelves to install in my living room to display my rock collection. All of a sudden I got a lightning-strike idea of how I could share these beautiful geologic specimens with you — fine art prints!! (Now that I have a reason to keep a lot of big, interesting rocks around, I’ve got the PERFECT excuse for bringing even more of them home with me. Yay!!!) I’ve begun arranging and photographing the rocks I have on hand and I want to give you the chance to be the first in line!

Sign up here to see the completed set of Stone Poems when it’s ready.

(Some of the Stone Poems candidates! I can’t wait till the snow melts so I can go look for more!!)

Some of the best home decorating inspiration comes from books on artists’ homes!

Here’s a new one I’ve just come across that I thought you’d enjoy — Georgia O’Keeffe and Her Houses: Ghost Ranch and Abiquiu by Barbara Lynes and Agapita Lopez.

Artists are trained to beauty so, naturally, we create beauty in our homes.

We live in homes inspired by our artwork and that, in turn, are inspiring to our artwork! (Too bad mine is also inspired by constant clutter and the mess of life… hmm…)

I love O’Keefe’s style.

Simple, natural and — of course — filled with interesting rocks. I hope it inspires your own artistic house decorating! We are all artists after all :D

Welcome to the beginning of Elrond’s Geologist, my own style guide to inspire women who are ready to embrace what it can really mean to wear river rocks as jewelry!

We’re hip, art-collecting, rock-wearing nature-spirits and we’re ready to own it!!

You can see more of my Rockin’ Statement Jewelry here and also here in my Etsy shop!
Follow my Elrond’s Geologist board on Pinterest for the full experience!

(Here’s my first rock art photograph, what do you think?!)

I started a little rock collection at my part-time job.

One day I was telling my co-worker about how I planned to start photographing rocks as fine art. (Her desk is on the other side of this partition from mine.) She remarked as how I could fill up the top of our partition with interesting rocks if I wanted to. Well, that’s all the encouragement it took! Since then I can’t stop seeing neat rocks in the gravel outside the door to work, so I’ve been bringing them in! There are some interesting cracked rocks this time of year because the freeze/thaw cycle is opening up the natural bedding planes in some of the sedimentary rocks. I’m making a game to see how many I can find ;)

My work rocks, I call them: “Fluvial Under Flourescents”

It’s not about rocks so much as about bringing wonder to every moment.

Yeah, we work in a library, yeah it can be boring. (More for me because I’m so driven by making art and running my business that the tameness of library work palls by comparison.) But, why should it be that there are no wonder-filled rays of geologic sunshine to brighten our desk spaces while we’re there? (Other than the rock jewelry I wear every day, of course!) Rocks aren’t a decoration to me, they’re a symbol. A symbol of the natural wonder that’s all around us!

When you’re called/driven toward a life purpose, you should look for ways to fulfill it, in all aspects of your life!

Notice I said should instead of could!! If my business’s mission is to inspire wonder and make people’s lives better for its presence, then it’s a sacred mandate for me to cultivate a practice of inspiring people to see the wonder already present in their own lives in every moment. (Especially important to inspire myself and those around me in those moments when I generally feel the least inspired.) If you really believe what you say you believe, then it should be present in everything you do!

I’m not saying you should start preaching street sermons or handing out pamphlets at the laundromat. (Please, please don’t do that! Please!) I’m saying we should all be looking for places where the thing that matters most to us can be elegantly, seamlessly expressed as an extension of our being. It’s not always easy! (At least not for me!!) When I’m alphabetizing books and dreaming about all the other fun business things I could be doing, inspiring wonder is the last thing on my mind. But, if we’re going to stand up and declare our deepest passion to the world from our websites, then we need to make sure we’re declaring it from the core of every one of our simplest human interactions! I’ll be thinking about this the next time I’m waiting in line in the grocery store, what about you?

(More rock art candidates! I can’t wait till the snow melts so I can go look for more!!)

Natural heart rock I found on this mountain in Mexico!

I found this natural heart rock in Guanajuato, Mexico last year! And that’s where my own Valentine is spending Valentine’s Day (my cute little husband of 10 years minus 1 day is soaking up the sun for another week!! Lucky, lucky!) I miss having him here with me, but at least he’ll be back soon :D Let the love roll on!

El Cerro de Culiacan, Guanajuato Mexico, 2013

Have you ever been so anxious before a trip/wedding/job interview that you could hardly sleep? Who hasn’t had a night like that?!

The cause of those anxious moments is essentially one sneaky thing. Fear.

You don’t have trouble sleeping before a big trip because big trips can be dangerous. It’s because you’re afraid of the unknown. You’re afraid that it could be dangerous, that the immigration officials might not let you cross the border, that you could miss your connecting flight, that your suitcase could get lost. (My suitcase got lost for half of my three-week vacation one year. Believe me, you can live through it!)

So, what does life in Mexico have to do with fear?

Well, first off, there are more things to be afraid of. I spent the first two days of this year’s trip to Mexico crammed in the back seat of our truck with three other people. No seat belts, curvy mountain roads that had flowers and crosses commemorating dead travelers every fifty yards. We passed by: one roadside in flames (escaped from a nearby field being burned by farmers); one roadside that had a twenty foot drop beside it and some orange cones and lights to protect us from it; one guy juggling flaming batons at an intersection for change from passing cars. You get the picture! I don’t feel like Mexico really more dangerous than America. It’s just that the danger is more visible, not hidden or masked. And here’s the second thing Mexico has to teach us about fear management:

My husband and brother-in-law waiting for truck help when we broke down for the second time on the way to Cuernavaca!

Mexico doesn’t pretend that life is a safe place.

Here in America, we love to pretend that! With our abundant insurance policies and regulations, we feel like we’ll be able to stop a cancer from killing us. Nope. The end result of cancer could still be a premature death. The end result to all things about life will still eventually be death. In America, we tend to be more afraid of death and we distance our realities from it. In Mexico, death is an ever present force. Crosses and dead dogs on the side of the road, the Day of the Dead celebration, and a slew of sayings that scoff at death. “Todo tiene solucion menos la muerte.” (Everything has a solution, except death.) is my favorite!

Every Mexican moment is spent giving in to life.

They surrender the false sense of control over life’s circumstances for a more authentic and practical worldview. If something bad comes up, then you work through it. If the bad thing that comes up leads you to death, then you die. It has to happen sometime. The best part of constantly giving in to life is that your waking moments are lived more fully and with less anxiety, less fear.

You can cultivate a fear-free life!

Start by letting go of the need to control the uncontrollable. Start small! Make the process of letting go of control be one of gentle reminders. Even letting go of the need to control your process of letting go!! Sure you can have health insurance, it evens out your chances of having to pay too much money for important, life-prolonging medical expenses. But don’t forget that you will die someday no matter what kind of health insurance you’ve got. Play off death like the punchline to a bad joke! Instead of spending time worrying about all the bad things that could happen if you take a trip/get married/wear a blue dress to the job interview instead of the red one, go ahead and take the first step toward those exciting possibilities and then follow the path where it leads. Even if it leads to failure, it’s a success! Because you showed up. You played the game! Sometimes you’ll win, sometimes lose, but you’ll have lived more fully and less fearfully :D

Todo tiene solucion, menos la muerte!

It’s easy to see the beauty of cactus when you come
from a place where they are few and far between!

We’re down in Mexico visiting my in-laws right now and there are prickly pear cactuses EVERYWHERE!! Cactus is beautiful, edible and easy to grow. I took all of these cactus pics this morning in the little patch of plants my mother-in-law has growing by where they keep the cows.

She’s got a little collection of different prickly pear
varieties that are good for different things.

One variety has big, fat pads and no prickly spines at all. It’s bred especially for it’s thick, juicy cactus hearts (the inside of the pad with the thick skin cut off). There are some varieties that produce lots of thin, succulent cactus pad shoots (just slice off the spines and cut ‘em up and cook them with some dried chile, onion and cilantro – so tender!) Some varieties make better fruit than others. Some are weedy and not good for much of anything.

Cactus is a nutritious vegetable that’s said to be sort of a cure-all.

Since the remedy to almost any ailment is a healthy, vege-filled diet, I believe it!! Even with all the fancy cultivated varieties of prickly pear available, the people around here still harvest young shoots from the wild cactuses when they’re in season, continuing a long culinary tradition from before the Aztecs even thought of building their lost city on our mountain (el Cerro de Culiacan).

Welcome to the world of Cactus Beauty!!

Hickories provide food, shade, firewood and tool handles. (It’s our hottest-burning native hardwood!)

I’ve sung the praises of Hickory trees before, but yesterday I stumbled on a gem of a video that shows how to split hickory for different wood crafts (tool handles, hay-rake tines, cordage, a hickory bark seat) and with lots of fun facts and hilarity thrown in on the side. (He even makes a hickory-water mixed drink at the end!)

Here’s the video “Hurray for Hickory” by Roy Underhill, the Woodwright hero of my childhood. (I love that he’s still making his Woodwright show after all these years!!)

The time of year when the twinkling lights begin to mock us. When the inflatable, blinking polar bear in your neighbor’s yard starts you thinking about global climate change and American over-consumption. (Let me interject real quick that I LOVE getting Christmas presents but that I don’t love climate change.) Well, life is a complicated place, but let me go out on a limb here and shout that THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT IS STILL ALIVE AND HUMMING and you can unleash it in a chain reaction that can have a very small carbon footprint!

It’s the little things that mean the most Christmas.

About a week ago, I had to stuff my mailbox so full of outgoing natural jewelry packages that I had to open it up and rearrange them a couple of times so that the door would close. The next day (after making some peanut butter and chocolate Ohio Buckeyes for my own family) it popped into my head to leave one in the mailbox for my poor mail carrier!

All year long he takes little brown kraft-paper packages of natural jewelry from my mailbox and never complains. Heck, he even waves at me and smiles when he sees me walking around the neighborhood! I think he likes being a part of my business and I’m more than grateful for all those saved trips to the post office! He’s my first unofficial employee, so I thought I’d treat him like one :D The next day, I left him a little treat to lighten his holiday mail carrying :)

Well, small gestures have a way of coming back to you.

A couple of days later, there was an envelope in my mailbox with my name scrawled on it but no stamps. It was a Christmas card from my mail carrier! (Aw!!) Inside it says “Thank you for the gift. Mailman Jake.” Anytime, Jake, anytime!! But this is about so much more than making two people a little Christmas cheerier.

Small gestures also have a tendency to multiply.

A bit of Christmas cheer here, a bit of Christmas cheer there and pretty soon you’ve got a Christmas Spirit Explosion on your hands. An explosion that you helped spark! So, don’t worry about your neighbor’s polar bear, let go of criticizing our consumer culture. Simply start with some small gestures and unleash that Christmas spirit explosion! If you want it to be a carbon-free explosion you could donate to a world-healing organization in your friend’s name. (My favorite is Heifer International, they give livestock to people in need, with the condition that some of their progeny be given to someone else in need. A gift that keeps on giving!)

And if you want to spin the Christmas Spirit Explosion into a real frenzy, tell someone else about it. Here I am telling you! My facebook followers got to hear about it in real time :D Spread the spirit around and you can help change Christmas from being about getting more stuff to being about increasing caring and love and improving our human condition! (Which may include getting and giving a little bit of meaningful, thoughtful stuff that comes from the heart!!)

If you’re looking for a meaningful, thoughtful, low-carbon Christmas gift, you can still get some of my natural river rock jewelry in time for the holidays! I’m offering free Priority (2-3 day) shipping through tomorrow, Wednesday the 19th, at noon! Jewelry made from rocks found on a beach. The natural choice! ;D

p.s. If you like my nature pics, you’ll love the gorgeous nature photography I dig up on Pinterest, check it out!

A sweet little feather I found on the ground in the cemetery! Wonder who it came from?

Really cute little snake we came across! A lot of people are afraid of snakes, but they’re so warm and interesting!!

Pink and Orange Seedpods: Too strange and interesting to be made up! I found these on an ornamental bush on my neighborhood walk one day :D

Really awesome fossil that my husband found. It’s in a huge chunk of limestone, I think it’s some kind of coral??

A shell fossil in the same chunk of Wisconsin limestone! It’s about the size of a 50 cent piece :D

Sunshine, lichen, shells, bugling elks, rippling water…

Sometimes dreams bring more than just the unraveling of all the events of the previous day. Sometimes they bring an achingly beautiful poetic vision that when you wake up leaves you feeling haunted and lost because real life can never quite match up with that level of perfection.

I woke up from a dream like that last week. I was marveling at a beautiful necklace made up of crystallized memories and sensations and life. Warm sunlight through your eyelids, the echoing bugle of an elk, cool lichen on rough bark, rippling water across a bed of slate, brachiopod fossils on a sandy beach. It was the most amazing necklace I could imagine!!

The coolest part was when I woke up and was thinking about the dream. I realized that I make necklaces like that all the time! Every rock that’s a part of my natural stone jewelry carries a whole history of moments just like the ones in my dream necklace. Every single stone on every single beach is the crystallization of eons of natural history. One pebble might have been silt in a river overshadowed by giant fern trees, another might have been bedrock under a great buffalo herd. Now, that’s something worth marveling at!

Hummingbird wings, fungus gills, berries, photosynthesis…

Want to know where you can buy this beautiful stone necklace? You can find this and more of my natural stone jewelry here in my Etsy shop :D

to manufacture flavored and colored water that’s fortified with empty, petroleum-grown calories that we don’t need and that are bottled in petroleum-made containers that we’ll discard… what if we just picked some leaves and twigs and seeds off some plants and poured hot water over them?

I know it sounds wild and radical, but work with me here!

I think we could call this drink… “TEA.” You know? A simple name for a simple beverage. ;) (Haha, yes, I’m kidding, tea already exists!)

Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy the occasional soda.

Heck, I even enjoy the occasional fast food burger with my soda, too. Sometimes those bubbles and childhood memories are too hard to resist!

But I’m absolutely smitten by the realness of tea!

I started drinking tea in high school to be different. Even then I wanted to cultivate an appreciation of tea because of what it stood for. Now, I drink tea because I like it and because the caffeine in coffee is WAY too strong for this little girl.

Tea’s gotten even more wild and radical for me lately :D

I started drinking my looseleaf tea with the leaves/seeds/twigs wild and free in the cup which is what inspired this little tea-alogue! It’s like drinking tea gone native. A return to the tea of ancient times. It’s the tea we’d be drinking if all we had in this world was a tin cup and a campfire and some bushes. Which brings me to the point of all this.

Tea is the most handmade, democratic beverage! (Well, besides water!!)

• Anyone can make tea from wild plants or home grown plants.
• It’s better for our bodies (no sugar, no high fructose corn syrup)
• Tea brings the drinker closer to the source (drinking a product of plants instead of a product of manufacturing)
• Tea drinking is steeped in ancient human culture, it brings with it a rich human tradition.

Heat up some water, friend, let’s pour ourselves a cup!

Looking for some new tea sources?

I just found Davids Tea in Canada (recommended to me by Chris Brogan, who is awesome!). My favorite of their blends so far is the organic North African Mint, it’s minty but with clove and peppercorn and cardamom!! And the best part? $5 shipping to the United States and free shipping for orders over $50!! (Not affiliate links, just plain enthusiasm!!)

I heard about the Hooples Antique Gold apple from a friend of mine who is working at the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa.

She told me that they had an apple tree with my name on it in their heritage apple orchard, and I got super excited! You see, everything that has to do with Hooples has to do with me because of a family name change when Jurgen Michael emigrated from Germany. And a couple of weekends ago, I went to visit my friend, and my apple, in Decorah.

Not only did I get to meet an apple tree that was developed by a distant relative of mine, but I got to eat a Hoople’s Antique Gold Apple!

It is delicous!!! Crisp, fruity and tangy. My favorite kind of apple! The skin is a lovely golden yellow with that nice, rough, russeting texture. My friend is going to hook me up with the guy in charge of the orchard and see about me getting some scions to propagate!! Sweeeeet! Here’s what I found out about the apple’s origins from the Southmeadow Catalog:

HOOPLE’S ANTIQUE GOLD – A russet-skinned sport or bud mutation from a standard Golden Delicious tree in the orchards of Mr. Harry Hoople of Hoople Fruit Farm in Otway, Ohio. This is one of the most beautiful apples we have ever seen with a russet skin of amazing antique gold coloration. The flavor is also of extraordinary merit and indeed its universally favorable reception from those who had tasted it was the reason Mr. Hoople sent it to Southmeadow for propagation. Hoople’s Antique Gold varies from the original not only in beautiful skin color but in crispier flesh and intensity of flavor. We are most grateful he has enabled us to make this superb new variety available to fruit connoisseurs. Season same as Golden Delicious.

What do Hooples have to do with you??

Family is a big part of The Answer. Not just my answer, The Answer. All Hooples are related and family is really a big part of what this life thing is all about, right? Family is where we come from and informs where we’re headed. Suffice it to say that I get really excited about Hoople family history! So, now, if you ever meet a Hoople, you can let them know that there’s a funny, stone-jewelry-making girl in Wisconsin who would love to shake their hand and tell them about our family roots! Oh!! And that there’s an apple with our name on it!!!

We Hooples are very lucky to have a little geneology book called “The Hooples of Hoople Creek” written by Elizabeth L. Hoople. That’s how I know that all Hooples are related to each other (as far as we know) and that anything that has to do with “Hoople” has to do with me. With us! When I meet new Hooples I get really excited and tell them all about how we’re related. A lot of times they’re excited, too, and sometimes they are wary. The wary ones aren’t used to being a part of the family, but we’ll grow on them!

Here’s a brief rundown of how all the Hooples are related.

A man named Jurgen Michael (last name unknown) was born in 1717 in Germany, “some time later” he emigrated to the United States and as with so many people arriving in the new world, his foreign name was completely botched by the immigration officials and he became known as Michael Hoople. He got married to a lady named Elizabeth in 1754 (she had also emigrated to the United States from Germany) and between 1756 and 1770, they had four sons: George, John/Johan, Hendrick/Henry, and Franz/Francis. They were born and lived in Cherry Valley, NY. As far as we know, these are the forefathers of every Hoople alive today! I am a direct descendent of Henry Hoople who got together with Mary Whitmore of the Whitmore Massacre (She was captured by native Americans with her little brother and then became a “Medicine Maid” of a different tribe, there’s a whole book about that written by Elizabeth Hoople, too, it’s awesome!)

A funny endnote to all of Elizabeth’s stellar Hoople family research:

She found out when researching the Hoople geneology books that she, herself, had been adopted and is actually not related by blood to any of us. (That’s okay, Elizabeth, if it were my say, I’d let you into the club!!)

And, yes, everyone asks about that famous Hoople band.

As far as we can figure, Mott the Hoople’s name has something to do with Hoople, North Dakota which was founded by my ancestors, so, yes, it has something to do with us after all.

Stay tuned for this Saturday when I reveal the Hoople apple tree that I got to visit!!!

(Think these bunnies are cute? You should check out my Bunnies Are The Best board on Pinterest, there’s more where these came from!)

Source: Uploaded by user via Jenny on Pinterest

Stone Cutter and his Rabbit © Madeleine de Sinéty
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Source: snopes.com via Jenny on Pinterest

Flemish Giant with his Human Dad.
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Source: daintysquid.blogspot.se via Jenny on Pinterest

Is that a bunny in your pocket?
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Source: knusprig-titten-hitler.tumblr.com via Jenny on Pinterest

Yes, I would ride a motorcycle anywhere with this man! ;D
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Source: karl-johan.com via Jenny on Pinterest

Karl Johan Larsson Photography
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I’ve decided that I really believe in brass.

Not only is it the perfect metal to combine with natural stone colors. It’s also symbolically, historically connected to beach stone throught the tradition of using brass on maritime vessels. And the same properties that make brass the perfect metal to use on sailboats are what make it a great, heirloom quality metal to use for natural stone jewelry.

Brass and natural stone are so pretty together!

I’ve played around with using different metal colors for my natural stone jewelry, but these latest three pieces were the ones that really convinced me of the beauty of brass with natural stone colors. (And especially combined with skin tones!) There are natural stones that are more colorful than my native Lake Michigan beach stone, but for the subtle greys, browns, creams and blacks of my indigenous Wisconsin stone, nothing compliments them like the greenish gold of brass.

And then there’s the history of using brass on sailing vessels.

My Grandpa Good loved sailing and loved taking me out sailing with him! One of the (many) things I learned about sailboats is that if it’s a piece of metal on a boat, then it’s made of brass!! It’s one of the only metals inert enough to resist the constant humidity and salt of the sea. Which is the other reason it’s perfect to use for natural stone jewelry!

Brass is a long-lasting, heirloom quality metal.

Perfect for making heirloom quality stone jewelry that’s not unreasonably expensive and in keeping with the casual elegance of natural beach stone. There’s no finish to rub off over the years, it won’t tarnish like silver and you won’t have to sell your kidney to afford to buy jewelry made out of it. Which is good. Kidneys are extremely useful!!

So here’s what I want to know from you!

What do you think about combining brass and natural stone? Do they seem like the perfect combination, or am I a raving old sailor who’s had one too many pints of grog out of my brass flagon?? Share your brassy thoughts with us down in the comments!

(Like what I’ve dug up here? Follow me on Pinterest to keep the mossy times rolling all day long!!)

Source: bing.com via Jenny on Pinterest

Ceramic and Moss by Mineo Mizuno
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Source: Uploaded by user via Jenny on Pinterest

Moss Tiles in the Bedroom
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Source: etsy.com via Jenny on Pinterest

Marimo Moss Ball by PinkSerissa on Etsy

I called two outdoorsy friends with cameras and they called two more friends who they thought would agree to model and voila! Normal people who all happen to work on the same small organic farm in northern Illinois and who are all wearing things they found in their closets. If they can can pull off natural stone jewelry, so can we!

Wisconsin stone cairn necklace

Rock collection necklace!

Behind the scenes at a Natural Stone Jewelry model shoot.

Stone on stone. (The Zen Stone Necklace, on of Authentic Arts’ most popular styles.)

The golden prairie and red tree branches, what a combo!

The Slate Cairn Necklace, handmade from Finger Lakes slate.

What a Natural Stone Jewelry photo shoot looks like.

Simple Zen Stone Necklace in mint green.

Falling Rocks necklace, my favorite style to wear!

Slate Cairn necklace

What Authentic Arts is NOT :D You simply can’t walk by a photo opportunity like this one!

I was playing with a journal suggestion from (the awesome) April Bowles Olin of Blacksburg Belle when I ended up with this in my sketchbook. Her journaling prompt that I started with was:

“What is happiness to you?”

Of course, I started with the specifics, and since I LOVE making lists I came up with a whole lot of very specific answers very quickly. (These are the just the last 3!) And then a little light came on in my head and the purple marker came out. Happiness is: a million happy moments and the one state of mind you can bring to every moment. *insert Tibetan gong sound here*

Back here on Earth, I’m getting an idea:

I’m thinking this could be a fun idea for a handmade book or something. It’d be soulful to try and capture hundreds of these little vignettes of happiness in one spot, maybe with the “Happiness Is” revelation at the beginning of the book as an introduction… Something people could read through when they wanted a little extra happy. Any suggestions on ways to present this? All my own happy moments? A collection of lots of people’s happy moments? In a little handmade book? Fill up a little journal? Make an ebook? Scraps of handwritten paper in a shoebox?? Hundreds of people commenting after this post with their own happy moments?

What about you?

Share some of your happy moments with us down in the comments, let’s keep the wheel of the happiness dharma rolling!

Beginnings are endings are beginnings :D The first frost of the year just hit us! We’ve got bushels of jalapenos and celery in our fridge, a huge bouquet of zinnias on the table and I just bought this nice little Italian parsley plant for my kitchen window.

I don’t usually make impulse buys, but when I saw this healthy little herb plant at the grocery store on the eve of the first frost, I just had to get it!! I haven’t had parsley all summer because *someone* kept forgetting to bring parsley home for me from the farm he works at and we never grew any here at the house.

So finally this winter I’ll get to make some chimichurri sauce with my little window parsley :D (Chimichurri is a salsa from Argentina that goes GREAT with steak tacos or any kind of steak for that matter!) My husband doesn’t like it that much, but whatev’s! It’s delicious!!

Chimicurri Sauce (I forget where I picked up this recipe, sorry!):
1 c. italian parsley
1/4 c. cilantro
1/2 c. olive oil
2 garlic cloves
3/4 tsp. red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp. dijon mustard
1/2 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 c. white wine vinegar

Finely chop the parsley and cilantro, add the olive oil, crushed garlic, the spices and the vinegar. Stir it up and let sit for at least 20 minutes before serving at room temperature with the steak. The best way I ever had this was with steak sandwiches. The bread was toasted with garlic, so yummy!!

Goodbye summer, see you again next year!

“Fish Scales” river rock necklace by Jenny Hoople

When I drill rocks with my dremel, I do it under just a little bit of water.

If the diamond-tipped bit heats up, it wears out almost instantly because the glue holding the diamond chips on can’t take the heat and lets go of the diamonds! I’ve already showed you how to drill rocks, but just recently I got an extremely helpful tip from a reader to make rock drilling safer!

Water and electricity aren’t the safest combination as you already know.

I haven’t had any trouble drilling my stones under water and am comfortable living with a little risk, but recently a reader, Jennifer, asked “My husband is concerned that I am going to electrocute myself dremeling in water. I pointed out that you survived the process long enough to share the ‘how to’ on your blog, but he is unconvinced. Anything I can share from your experiences to put his mind at ease? :)” Well, I didn’t have much to share except that I’m always careful not to grab the dremel with wet hands or to let the water drip up to where the motor is. Not a whole lot of help when you’re trying to argue with a concerned loved one. Happily, another reader, Wade, shared with us the key to maximum water/dremel/rock drilling safety!

Source: etsy.com via Olga on Pinterest

To avoid electrocution while using electrical devices near water, use a GFI outlet!

What’s a GFI outlet? It stands for “ground fault interrupter outlet”. They’re the little guys with red buttons that you’ve probably got in your bathroom right now. As Wade says: “If you’re really concerned about the electrical hazard, plug your drill into an outlet with a ‘ground fault interrupter’, or GFI, for short. They are expressly designed for this sort of thing, which is why all modern construction codes REQUIRE them in kitchens, bathrooms, basements, outdoor outlets, and any location near water pipes or dampness. They constantly watch for electric current going someplace where it shouldn’t be (like through your body), and instantly shut off all power to the outlet if and when such a current is detected. These devices have been around for years, and are a technically mature and reliable product, and also not terribly expensive.”

I already knew about these magical little outlets, but for some reason I never connected the dots on my own. A big thanks and a wave to Wade for helping me and Jennifer out with our dremel/electricity/water question! I’m going to have my little fix-it man change my work bench outlet for me soon. In the meantime I might run an extension cord in the bathroom. After all, prevention is the best medicine! Wishing you many happy and safe rock drilling adventures :D

Want to see the full rock drilling tutorial? Here it is!!

I had the coolest experience when I was out walking through the cemetery today. I was paying attention to the foliage to get more pictures to share with you when all of a sudden I became hyper-aware of tree-tops. It was like I was floating through a place I’d never been before. A magical place with giant, fluffy plants. Then I realized, we live in this magical place every day!

The next time you’re out for a walk, imagine what it would be like for a person who’d never seen trees, a person who’d lived in a grassland their whole life, to walk around under these giant, fluffy plants. It made me feel like the Lorax was gonna jump out at me any minute! Happy autumn, friend!!

So, here’s their authentic Mexican enchiladas recipe:

(which, in fact, I am making right now!)

Hot Salsa Ingredients

• 7-10 dried chile de arbol
• 5 medium tomatillos
• 2 jalapeños
• marble-sized piece of garlic
• grape-sized piece of onion
• pinch of oregano
• handful of cilantro
• salt to taste

Tortilla-Dipping Salsa Ingredients

• 6 chiles guajillos (also called new mexico red chiles)
• 2 chile de arbol (optional for extra spice)
• marble-sized piece of garlic
• grape-sized piece of onion
• pinch of oregano
• salt to taste

The Rest of The Ingredients :D

• corn tortillas (3-4 per person)
• potatoes (~1 per person)
• carrots (~1 per person)
• shredded cabbage
• queso fresco (you can substitute cooked, shredded pork for the cheese)
• sour cream
• lots of oil to fry it all up with (we use peanut)

Things You Can Do Ahead of Time

1. Put potatoes and carrots on to boil. (I usually peel the carrots and wait to peel potatoes until they are cooked) When potatoes and carrots are cooked, pour out the water and leave to cool, peel potatoes. Then dice the potatoes and carrots. Refrigerate if it’ll be a while until you eat.,
2. Make salsa for dipping the tortillas in: Remove stems from chiles guajillos and 2 chile de arbol, boil chiles until soft (5 minutes?), blend with only a little water and the garlic, onion, oregano and salt. Pour through strainer into a shallow bowl. Set aside.
3. Make hot salsa for on top: remove stems from chiles de arbol and jalapeños. Boil chiles, tomatillos, and jalapeños about 5 min, then blend with the garlic, onion, oregano, cilantro and salt. Pour into a little serving bowl without straining. Set aside.
4. Finely shred the cabbage. Place the cabbage in a bowl with water, a dash of vinegar and a dash of salt. Cover and refrigerate until ready to eat.

Things You Should Do 20 Minutes Before Eating

1. Fry the potatoes and carrots in a little oil with salt to taste (in a non-stick or cast-iron pan) until nice and hot-looking.
2. Heat the corn tortillas on a hot, dry griddle, flipping frequently until soft and pliable.
3. Now it’s time to make the enchiladas! (See photos at left!) Heat oil in a non-stick pan (just enough to cover the bottom, add more when necessary.) One at a time: dip tortillas in the guajillo salsa and fry for a short time on each side in the hot oil. Remove to a plate. If you have a helper, have them crumble some cheese (or place shredded pork) onto each tortilla and roll them up as you make them, so they don’t get too soft and fall apart which would taste just as good anyway. (If you don’t have a helper, stop frying and roll them up after every three or four) Note: You can also make this recipe with bread instead of tortillas, you just dip the bolillo (mexican roll) in the guajillo chile and fry in the oil on all sides and fill with the enchilada ingredients. It makes for a very messy sandwich!
4. To serve, layer on top of each plate of enchiladas: shredded cabbage, potatoes and carrots, sour cream and hot salsa on top (in that order because Raul says it looks prettier that way).

“What about southern Wisconsin inspires your work?” Well, now, that’s a good question. Is it the flatness, the industrial parks, the urban crime, the corn fields? Of course, the first real answer that pops to mind is the shore of Lake Michigan. Seems the most obvious choice, right? After all, I make natural stone jewelry, I go to Lake Michigan to hunt for stones. Well, Lake Michigan is an hour and a half drive away, so I rarely get over there, and when I am there it’s all business. (Got to find as many good stones as I can while I’m there!)

As inspiring and wonderful as The Great Lakes are…

The most inspiring nature spots in southern Wisconsin are my yard, my house, our fishing spots, and my neighborhood walk that takes me through the oldest cemetery in Beloit.

There’s a surprising amount of natural wonder even in a well-mown and manicured cemetery. The large trees, the solitude, the squirrels. And since it’s right down the street from me, I can go there every day!

Yesterday, I stood still in the cemetery for 10 full minutes watching a family of crows going up branches and down, cawing, swooping closer, swooping further. They even escorted me to the cemetery exit when I left. Guess they were watching me, too! The cemetery might not look like pristine wilderness, but it’s still full of moments of wonder.

Green and refreshed: lichen on a tombstone after a rainstorm.

You don’t have to live in the middle of a national park to be inspired by nature!

The empty lot next to your house, the unmown weeds out by the ditch, the cemetery down the street. THESE are the best places to go to be inspired by the natural world because you can visit them every day. Don’t get me wrong, I love national forests and wild lake shores and great sweeping canyons, but the most meaningful nature spots in southern Wisconsin are the ones right under my feet! What about you? Where do you go to be inspired by nature? Share your wonder-spots with us down in the comments!

If you’re in the Wisconsin area and are looking to shop local this year, then check out some of these handmade Wisconsin jewelry artists!

All of a sudden last week when I was walking down the sidewalk in the rain, my eyes unfocused and my field of vision transformed from “sidewalk, grass, street” to “one palette in shades of green”. Right where boring and everyday had been, was a magical olive green path with tree green puddles in it, and bright green grass all around. It was like looking at a painting!

It was just then that I remembered something my yoga instructor had told us.

That meditation was a state of single-pointed awareness with multi-faceted attention. You park your conscious mind in the one state of awareness instead of letting it think about things, but the single-pointed attention within that awareness is multi-faceted. You’re not only noticing your breath or the sounds of birds tweeting. You’re noticing all of it with equal attention all at once.

“Single-pointed awareness with multi-faceted attention”

This is the perfect way to describe what it’s like trying to find rock jewelry on a beach full of stones. At first the rocks on the beach overwhelm me with sheer numbers, but if I can park my mind in the state of awareness, then I can actually SEE all the stones at once instead of getting confused by the jumble. When I can see all the stones, then my instincts, my subconscious mind, starts to pick the stones out for me. This techniqyue is just as important for stone-finding as it is for finding awesome clothes at the second-hand store or even for finding which life path to take out of the infinite possibilities available to us.

Want an easy way to get started in Mindfullness?

Learning the technique of turning any moment into every moment is easy! Check out my post from the other week about turning your neighborhood walks into meditations by simply listening to the bird calls around you! Listening to bird calls, that’s it! It’s easy to get started in meditation, but the key to getting better and better at it is through repetition. The techniques themselves aren’t hard to learn, but getting yourself to practice them daily or weekly. Now, that’s the toughie! :) (I have trouble, not just with finding the willpower to bring meditation into my every day, but with REMEMBERING to even consider it! Once that conscious brain gets started with projects, “frivolous” things like mindfulness get thrown out the window!)

Continue your journes down the path of awareness, read about how to turn your next neighborhood walk into a meditation by just listening to birdcalls!

Trying to find good jewelry rocks on a beach full of rocks is like trying to see the picture in a Magic Eye puzzle. The harder you try to find what you’re looking for, the less likely that you’ll find it.

When I first get to a beach full of rocks, I get all excited and then I start to freak out.

The feeling of excitement is quickly replaced with a feeling of being overwhelmed, which is quickly followed by a feeling of desperation. “How am I ever gonna find any good rocks here?! There aren’t any!!”

Luckily, the pounding of the surf and the calm of the lake shore are conducive to a soft, unfocused, meditative state.

Lo and behold, the rock jewelry starts to jump out at me from the busy, rocky background of the beach! Just like with those Magic Eye puzzles they used to have set up in front of the science store at the mall. The picture jumps out at you only when you unfocus your eyes and let the rocks come to you.

The rock strewn beach becomes a blank field that I sweep my eyes over, waiting for the most awesome rocks to jump out at me. There’s no specific type of rock that’s good for jewelry making. Every rock holds possibility. The magic happens when the jeweler (me!) combines and imagines ordinary rocks into something extraordinary!

Clockwise from left: Paleolithic Rock Necklace, Fish Scales Beach Stone Necklace, River Slate Sun Poem Necklace.

Strangely, when I get the rocks home, the same moment of terror strikes when I sit down to create.

“None of these rocks are any good!” my mind screams. Again, it’s a matter of rolling the rocks back and forth, sifting through them, sorting them by shape and/or color and/or texture and just waiting for the jewelry designs to jump out at me. :D

This technique also applies to shopping at garage sales, antique malls and thrift stores and also to weeding the garden and harvesting vegetables! Who would’ve guessed that the key to solving Magic Eye puzzles would end up becoming a core life lesson?!

Like the beach stone jewelry here on my own website? Don’t forget to check out my Etsy shop full of rock jewelry :D Since every piece of the stone jewelry I make is one-of-a-kind, it’s essential to check both stores!

Green Salsa With Avocado (good with steak tacos, pork tacos and quesadillas)
Boil: 5 tomatillos, 3 jalapenos
Blend with: garlic, onion, salt, a small handful of cilantro
Then dice up a ripe avocado into it. :D

Reddish Salsa (for tacos of any kind, this is the standard family salsa!)
Boil: 5 tomatillos, 1 small tomato, 2 jalapenos, 10 dried chile de arbol
Blend with: garlic, onion, salt, a small handful of cilantro

Tinga (this is a watery, soup-like salsa that you put thickly shredded beef into. It is way too hot for me!)
Boil: 2 tomatoes, 5 tomatillos, 1 jalapeno, 5 chile de arbol
Blend with: garlic, onion, salt, 3 whole cloves, a pinch of cumin and 3 whole peppercorns
Boil beef (with lots of salt, onion and garlic) until it shreds easily, then shred into little chunks. Fry the shredded meat in a little oil until hot, then pour the blended salsa through a strainer and onto the meat. Let boil for about a minute. Serve with hot tortillas, lime wedges and pinto beans right out of the can (or pot).

So, last week I had this revelation that my art and my river rock jewelry is really about helping people who have lost their true childhood spirit come back to themselves through nature and through art. It came to me in a flash after doing an exercise at the end of Martha Beck’s awesome book (that I talked about last week, too!) Let me give you a brief rundown of the exercise so you can try it out for yourself!

Some First Steps to Divining Your True Life’s Purpose:

1. First, you list 10 of the most tragic experiences of your life. (feel honest and safe, you don’t have to tell anyone else what they are!)
2. Then, make a list of 10 life skills you’ve got at least 10,000 hours of experience doing. (the equivalent of working at the same skill for 5 years of working 8-hour days. These skills are often the things that really turn you on, mine included noticing things in nature, finding interesting color combinations in the world around me, making natural jewelry and harvesting vegetables. That one doesn’t turn me on, but I’ve DEFINITELY spent 10,000 hours doing it!)
3. Finally, mull over what connections there are between how those life skills have helped you overcome those deep tragedies. You might be surprised at what you come up with!

How the Excercise Worked For Me:

I discovered that one of the most tragic experiences in my own life was the two-time loss of my childhood spirit. Growing up I’d always known I wanted to be an artist, but somehow by the end of highschool I was thinking I should be a secretary or a scientist, or who knows what. True childhood spirit lost! So I started studying Geology in college (which I loved!) Two years into my studies I let myself take an art course for “fun.” Suddenly and happily, I switched to an art major and came back to my true childhood spirit of wonder and creativity. The second time I lost my childhood spirit was when I left college and moved to the midwest to work on an organic farm. I was lost without the structure of school and my close community of friends and suddenly immersed in 12 hour days filled with hard labor and mud and aphids. I lost my childhood spirit again. It was there under the surface all the time, but it didn’t know how to get out and how to be purposeful. I found it again when I started making my natural jewelry and I’m NOT letting it get away from me again! The really cool thing is that now that I’ve logged in 10,000 hours of learning how to reconnect with my childhood spirit of wonder in the face of nature and art, I’m in a position to (and am passionate about!) helping you reconnect with yours!

I hope this exercise gave you some flashes of insight? The magical thing about my own insights is how they connect so many threads of my life together and help a whole lot of what didn’t make sense before really come into focus. My insight was probably so dramatic because I read Martha Beck’s whole book first. It’s really super awesome and I highly recommend that you check it out of your local library! If they don’t have it, then tell the reference librarian, they can probably get it for you!!

The energizing thing about raw rocks, fossils and crystals is that so much more of their wild story is still there for us to read!

For a geologist, a fossil is next to meaningless without the story that can be read in the rocks around it. The millenia of seafloor ripples underneath the fossil and the large, sudden section of sandstone conglomerate on top of and encasing the fossil might tell the story of a violent, unusual storm flood event that buried the animal alive. The rock that crystals are growing out of tells the story of a layer of rock deposited, cavities dissolved by ground water and then crystals that grew from the slow seeping and dripping of mineral-rich water.

Whereas the interest in cut and polished gems is the interest of a more human story.

Humans found and shaped the gem, kings possessed them, wars were fought over them, blood spilled, curses placed, museums acquired them. At least that’s all I see when I see those super pristine, perfectly cut gems, a status symbol worn to the opera by a wealthy Victorian dame. The more dramatic the human story behind the gems, the more “precious” and “valuable” they get! For us now, seeing the gems in a natural history museum, they’re springboards for jumping into the world of human gossip from ages past. Even a rough, hand cut “poor” grade gemstone bead tells a more interesting story to me than those fancy “perfect” gems. A story where the wild origins are still legible even through the human history that’s been written over their parchment. :)

Like how I think about rocks? Check out the stone jewelry in my Etsy shop :D Since every piece I make is one-of-a-kind, there’s a lot of pieces there that are really different than the ones here on my own website!

I’ve been playing with listening to birdsong as a fun, easy way to transform my neighborhood walks into meditations! I got the idea from this (amazing!) book by Martha Beck :D All you need to try this out is 20 minutes of free time for a walk.

The first thing you may notice is that you don’t even hear any birds chirping!

That’s all right, you will :) If there’s no birdsong, then pay attention to all sounds trying to pick out if any of the really far away ones are bird noises. Then every once in a while you’ll hear a bird chirping from a nearby tree, a crow calling far away, some bird chirping really loud in the tree you’re passing under.

You may notice a pattern, the closest birds sound like they’re scared to see you!

That’s when Martha Beck suggests trying to pull your presence closer in toward your center to see if you can keep the birds from alarm calling as you go by. This is fun, but if you’re not ready for the advanced class yet, just keep listing to all the bird calls, chirps and songs as you make your way around the neighborhood.

By the end of this walking meditation you’ll be surprised how aware of sound you’ve become!

Last week, at the end of one of my birdsong walks, I was hearing squirrels chuttering (not that loud alarm squirrel cry, but gentle squirrel talk) then I heard a woman cough, but when I looked for her, I realized she was inside her house! The coolest thing I heard on the home stretch was when I thought I heard a bicycle coming up behind me on the street, but nothing passed by though the sound continued. I turned around and saw it was the sound of tiny leaves falling from a tree in a yard across the street.

Thanks for stopping by :) I hope you’re inspired to try the birdsong meditation on your next walk, it’s really fun! And if you’re interested you should check out Martha Beck’s book, I read it cover to cover, no lie!

Summer’s winding down and it’s time to start planning for a beach wedding on some lush, tropical island!

Here are some of my favorites :) Andie’s Specialty Sweets is THE place to get amazing edible cake decorations (can you say: realistic chocolate filled seashells, sugar coral and white chocolate starfish?! Awesome!) And what better beach wedding centerpieces than those lush, colorful succulents? Let’s get this party started, somebody get out my marimba!

I was out picking ripe Job’s Tears beads the other day and being startled by the occassional grasshopper jump.

About three grasshoppers into the harvest, I started to think about why I like seeing them in there eating the plants I’ve worked so hard to nurture. There are two reasons, first is a general feeling of empathy toward all creatures. The grasshoppers (and me and the Job’s Tears plants for that matter) are just following along with the way existence works, doing their best to survive and make more of themselves. I don’t like waging war on fellow creatures unnecessarily. The grasshoppers are part of a balanced ecosystem out there, which is worth a few less seeds for me.

The second reason is what actually brings me a smile when I see the grasshoppers munching on the Job’s Tears plants!

The grasshoppers remind me of biblical locusts munching on ancient fields. Why does that make me smile? Good question! It’s because the Job’s Tears plants are from biblical times and were grown in that region of the world and probably WERE munched on by locusts. So, having a few grasshoppers in my little patch of Job’s Tear plants is a thin thread that joins us (human, grasshopper, plant) to our ancestors.

Job’s Tears are a natural bead, they grow with a hole right through the middle! You can buy some for yourself here :D

One of the “sea creature” sculptures I made in college, it’s sitting on top of my fridge!

I was once accused of overly romanticizing nature in my artwork.

It was the very first day of our Junior Seminar college art class and I was the first person to have to present to the class what sort of artwork I’d be making that semester. I had been making 3′ tall ceramic sculptures that resembled sea creatures and I loved them, but I didn’t know why I felt compelled to make them. I tried to explain this to my peers and that I wanted to use the coming semester to create more and to actually figure out what the heck the sculptures meant to me. Then my peers were encouraged to critique my idea and as they went around the room, it very quickly snowballed into everyone talking about how nature is so often portrayed as benign and good and romantic when it was actually “red in tooth and claw”. Well, I’m no idiot, but I felt like one and since my ideas were in such a formative stage I kind of freaked out and stopped moving or talking for the rest of that class period, eyes glued to the door knob. As soon as class let out, I ran away and cried about it.

The poignancy of untimely death is also beautiful.

End result? I scrapped the whole project and did something else that I hated.

Luckily, my spirit wasn’t permanently crushed and I let myself create a senior project slowly and true to what was inside me. The piece at right, especially, was created in response to my fellow students who had unwittingly traumatized me by falsely accusing me of creating shallow, nature-worshipping artwork.

You are not a wishy washy sap for thinking that nature is beautiful!

“Terrible” and “gentle” are words that our human minds assign to nature based on how we see it in relation to our own existence. Nature is actually indifferent, but I would still argue that it is beautiful. Beauty is a concept that transcends “good” and “bad” the way that the Buddhist concept of Joy transcends “happy and “sad”.

Nature is beautiful to us, not because it is good, but because it is REAL.

Time spent in nature is meaningful because it’s a return to our true selves. Whether this comes in the form of a home-destroying hurricane or the gentle flutter of butterfly wings through your garden, nature is awe-inspiring. I for one am going to raise my hand and stand up in front of the class for all of us who believe that nature is something worth celebrating, in all of it’s incarnations! Has anyone ever made you feel silly for loving nature? Let us know about it in the comments :D Testify!

Oil painting of a pirate by Howard Hoople (My grandpa!) – I love the funny way the pirate’s looking at the parrot :D Clearly, the parrot’s plotting something!!

Collecting rocks and lichen covered sticks and other objects from nature fills me with wonder and connects me to the bigger circle of existence, but what connects me to human experience is my childhood and my family. That’s why the only thing I really collect other than rocks are family momentos! Some of the momentos I’ve collected go way back, like my Grandma Hoople’s Grandmother’s blue and white china set. Some go a little way back, like my Grandma Jean’s burgundy and gold china set (the one we always ate Thanksgiving dinner on when we were growing up!)

And new momentos are being made all the time, like the painted deer skull that my brother made and gave me.

It’s interesting that childhood and family are such a big deal for us humans because lots of bad things happen when we’re little, too. And sometimes our family is hard to understand :) But family and childhood are our home base, the place we return to when we’re trying to understand something about the world that doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s a survival thing, maybe we’re just hardwired to form this strong attachment to family and childhood memories? But, I can’t deny the sense of warmth I get when I remember the way Grandma Hoople used to wave like British Royalty, with *twinkle fingers* or the day I noticed that my dad waves the exact same way, but with his hand held down instead of up. And I smile every time I notice that I’ve just waved to someone that way and I can see a glint in their eyes that says “Huh, what a different way of waving.” *twinkle fingers* *ta-ta* *toodle-oo!*

Family is who we are. Childhood memories are where we come from. That’s a big deal!

A book that my parents had when we were growing up on our back-to-the-land farm. LOVE this book!!

I spent my weekend listening to this album and painting a gig poster for a most awesome friend of mine!

Matt’s a poet of song, the Bob Dylan of my life. He’s been writing music since before we were in highschool together, and I just love this kid to death :D You can listen to his newest album here for free, check it out if you like singer/songwriter/folk music! Heck, check it out just to humor me and because I said so :D

Behind-the-scenes Matt stories?

My fondest Matt memories are:

• Meeting his Grandma Winky.
• When he gave me a Counting Crows CD and then tried to take it back.
• When his dad was carving up the rest of the Thanksgiving turkey and singing “I’ve got a brand new pair of rollerskates” in a high falsetto and then Matt’s vegan brother accused us of cutting up a “carcass”.
• Matt quoting Oscar Wilde and Kurt Vonnegut at me.
• When his mom took him aside and gave him a talking to for writing a song about Jesus as a cross-dresser.
• Being planted in the audience at his show so we could yell out answers to his song at the right time.
• Matt embarrassed and trying to prevent his mom from feeding us pizzas when we were over visiting (which we TOTALLY wanted to eat!)

Anyway, listen to his newest album for free here :D

Here’s the poster I made for Matt’s show!! The watercolor in the background is made from natural earth pigments, hematite and sedona earth :D

Tree tops are really good places to sit and think!

I found this beauty in the cemetery by my house, which is also the ideal location. Not too much foot or car traffic, so you’ll be less likely to scare people who suddenly notice you up in the tree and you won’t have to explain why you’re up there :D

There was a tree I used to climb at college.

Yes, I startled people sometimes, but my friends knew where to look for me which was fun! My most memorable time in that tree was one night when everyone else was out partying. A drunk girl getting onto a fraternity/sorority bar-hopping bus sloshily cried out to her friends that there was a girl up in that tree, but nobody believed her. They quieted her down and got her on the bus without incident. Awesome-hilarious! What was less hilarious was about 20 minutes later when I saw a HUGE, ghostly spider run past me in the dark. I shimmied right down and didn’t ever go back up at night! Seriously, that spider’s abdomen was the size of one of those huge gumball-machine gumballs!! Who would have thought that Shelob was lurking up there amidst all that friendly greenery?! How about you? What’s your tree-climbing story?

Here are a few of my favorite sprout-inspired handmade goods. (In green! My favorite color!!) I’m especially enchanted by LouisestArt’s watercolor painting. It’s so simple, but so happy!!

I could see it through the window at the end of the hall. But here I was stuck inside working at the library. :( Or was I? I’d been reading in Martha Beck’s newest book about an exercise for inviting paradox into my life for the purpose of realizing the truth of the oneness of all things. Basically, you take whatever statement seems true to you and then work on believing the opposite of that statement as equally true. Like you think “I’m stuck inside.” Then you meditate on the statement “I’m NOT stuck inside.” and quickly realize that you sure-howdy have a 15 minute break that you can take right now!

I stopped everything and took a notebook, a pen and some hot tea out to the “prairie”

on either side of the road leading up to the library and I sat down in my dress between scratchy grasses on the sun-baked earth and drew and sketched and felt alive for 15 minutes. It kept me from flipping out for 3 more hours of boring and quiet. Mission accomplished. :D

Moral of the story?

If you’re feeling stuck or unhappy about something, try focusing on how to believe that the opposite of that is also true. Examples (they’re not all stuck or unhappy, but it’s important to work with positive stuff, too!):

• My favorite color is green / My favorite color is NOT green. (also true because limiting myself to just one color means I’m missing out on the favorite quality of rainbows and purple and burnt orange!)
• I think Romney is a big, stupid jerk-face / I do NOT think Romney is a big, stupid jerk-face. (also true because I’ve never met him. I think the idea of Romney is unpleasant, but I don’t know him personally, so how much can I say for sure? What are his true motives? Maybe he feels like he’s working toward the creation of a better, more ideal world. Well, me too, so I could respect that. Maybe.)
• I love cheese / I do NOT love cheese. (I mean, what is cheese, really? I love the taste of cheese. I love how cheese flavor makes my mouth feel. I’m not sure how I feel about all the start to finish effects of the production of cheese on the environment. Especially non-organic, big-farm cheese! How do the cows feel about it?)

Keeping all possible views in mind as much as possible can help us move toward joy, so let’s do it! (And if this advice lights you up, then check Martha Beck’s newest book out of the library, it’s super-inspiring! I’m about half-way through and I’m not gonna stop reading now!)

These gorgeous stones come from Bald River Falls in Tennesee!

A sweet lady at the farmer’s market gave them to me! That’s the neat thing about making natural stone jewelry, getting to know different stones from different places, while simultaneously connecting with people from all over the country with one awesome thing in common: We can’t help bringing back stones and twigs and feathers from our time outdoors!

Stones just hanging out, no big deal.

But, tilt them the right way and they shimmer :D Imagine a whole mountainside that does this!!

So, this woman stops by my booth at the farmer’s market.

She said she just loved rocks, so we got to chatting and she said she’d like to show me these amazing stones that she has and I said I’d love to see them sometime and she went along her way. How soul-lifting to meet a fellow rock hound, I thought to myself!

Well, an hour later she’s back with a little handmade basket.

In the basket was a handful of pretty rocks, including these fine iridescent stones from Tennesee! Wow, how awesome that she went right home and brought her rocks back just to show me! I took pics of her and the stones and we chatted some more. She insisted that I keep the stones because she was going back to Tennesee soon. I said that if she brought back more stones I’d buy them from her (cross your fingers!)

It’s not about the stones, it’s about the meaning inside them!

Yes, the stones are super awesome crazy (she says there are whole mountainsides shimmering iridescent in the sunlight at certain times of the day!) But the best part of these stones (and my job!) is getting to make meaningful connections with same-hearted people! It is wonderful how varied the geology of different regions is, but it’s just as wonderful how similar the topography of different hearts can be. :)

I know you’re one of us!

You get this whole rock-love thing, otherwise you’d have stopped reading after the first paragraph :D Let’s create a rock collecting guidebook together!! Share your favorite rock collecting spot with us down in the comments! (Bonus points if you email me some rock pics and pics of your beach combing spot for a blog post feature!!)

(Oh, and here’s the necklace I made from these awesome stones!)

Click on the picture to see more pics of the necklace I made from the stones she gave me!

I can’t believe that this is the first time I’ve heard of Suiseki, the ancient art of stone appreciation! I just learned about it from a Facebook friend who commented on a picture of a box of rocks that I’d posted. I have a lot of interesting rocks lying about (as you might imagine), so I’ll be looking more closely at this Suiseki website to see if any of the big stones I’ve got sitting around would be good Suiseki candidates :D I especially like the one at the top of this post, I found it while beachcombing over by Lake Michigan! I figured a fellow nature lover like yourself would enjoy learning about this ancient discipline of rock watching! We are not alone ;D

This is the box of rocks I had my mom ship me from Pennsylvania! My Facebook friend said they’d be good candidates for Suiseki :D