It's been unreasonably hot in the Pacific NW - though I grew up in the midwest, it's been a long time since I've had to live in weather that is in the 90's with 50% humidity. Today the heat is supposed to climb to over 100 which would be a record for this area. I've been thinking about childhood summers spent in Michigan because of this heat and remembering summer vacations that we would take. Quite often we would go 'up north' to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where there were lakes and streams and waterfalls and, my favorite, tourist attractions. I have old photos of me as a child standing next to Paul Bunyon and Babe his blue ox statues, pictures in front of waterfalls and in parks full of cement dinosaurs. One of my fondest memories is the summer we spent at Grand Marais on Lake Superior and walking the beaches looking for agates and visiting places where there were old log slides into Lake Superior and the bowl-like look of the water with their concentric rings in various shades of turquoise, blues and greens. The rings were like the agates in a way. I spent the rest of that summer with my little toy rock tumbler polishing up stones we found on the lake shore. I wish I still had some of the souvenirs from those times - I do, however, have an old silver and turquoise ring with an oval stone quite similar to the one in the upper corner of my July page.
When I started working on the July Bead Journal Project page, I really didn't know where I was going. I hadn't beaded in June and was kind of 'stuck' and remembered what I'd read in one of Robin's books about just picking some fabric, picking and bead and beginning and that's what I did. Now the work is turning into the concentric rings of agates and Lake Superior. I'll have to see where it goes from here, but hopefully I'll finish this weekend.
