Oh Spring, Oh Spring Where art thou Spring? I found a bit of it amongst my seed beads. While the dark color in this necklace may not appear thus, it is a lovely purple that looks like the season I’m hunting. I like how the dark hues bring out these pastels for Spring. This freeform piece began as a small pendant, but as time wore on at the hospital with my daughter, referenced in my last blog entry, I just kept beading and looking for that inner calm that the work can bring. It went from small pendant, to bracelet and finally emerged as a necklace with the structural peyote extending in a narrow band completely around the neck to fasten. I don’t know when I’ve struggled so with a piece, but daughter Kim just kept coaxing me on and making suggestions until it was finalized. Perhaps the nature and emotions of the situation in which a beader creates adds that element of tension to make one think in different directions. Resistance to closure builds until we finally become fluent enough to think of a viable direction for the piece. While UFOs (unfinished) are reasonably common for beaders, there was just something about this piece that couldn’t or wouldn’t be put aside. If you read my last post about the Tiny Diversion, you will understand when I say the necklace reached a difficult point about the time we knew the premature baby would spend time in the neonatal intensive care unit. Perhaps this it my symbol for survival for the child. Determination . . . trust . . . and faith . . !