Thanks to the holiday weekend, I forgot to post this last night. After all, TODAY is what felt like Sunday!

• Laura Sparling lets go of her control freak tendencies over at Watch Me Create.
• Also at Watch Me Create, Kerry Bogert shows off her studio re-do.
• I find out the hard way about letting flammable crud accumulate under my workbench. Eeek!!
• Rachel looks for inspiration in art, nature, and color, and shares her tips for having a successful show. Her fourth tip is especially worth paying attention to!
• Lori Greenberg desperately hunts for one more bead and finds everything but.
• Jelveh shares some eye candy along with her thoughts on copying.
• When Nina Bagley can’t find the lampwork beads she needs for one of her pieces, she calls on her sister Ellen to save the day.

I’m running a bit late thanks to travel and the holiday, but here’s a short but high-quality Best of the Week!

• From the Etsy Storque, we have a quickie review of ColourLovers with Samantha Hahn.
• Seraphim Flameworks, they of the marvelous tube beads, has been spending mucho time lately testing out the newest Double Helix odd lots and test batches. Their generosity in sharing their results will either result in gratitude or envy, I’m not sure which!
• Kerry Bogert talks about taking a lemonade stand approach to art for Watch Me Create.
• Finally, a badly needed Overload of Cuteness from the Itty Bitty Kitty Committee. All together, now……AWWWWWWW!!!!!

Best lampworking blog entries for the week ending November 18, 2007:

• Watch Me Create — Rosemarie Hanus goes off-mandrel
• Jennifer Miller on beads going bad
  
• Kandice Seeber says Vetrofond must love orange
• Luann Udell does an intervention on booths gone bad
• Luann also suggests not overwhelming the customer with choices in your booth
• Deborah Gregory talks about pricing your work on eBay
• Bethany (Gwacie) Adams suggests some ways to handle lack of motivation
• Flaming Hot — Susan Sheehan talks about her studio
• Flaming Hot — Gwacie joins in the studio conversation
• Finally, ShebaMakeda (aka Evelyn) gives the lowdown on bead poop in the first episode of GlassClass 101

Flaming Hot’s Tuesday Tip is to have more than one creative outlet, so that when your creativity goes south in one area, you have something else to work on.  This shifting gears lets other parts of your creative energies get exercised while the exhausted area rests, and is supposed to get you back on track more quickly.

I’ve actually been doing this for a long time.  Back when I was a weaver, I almost always had two different projects going on two different looms.  Often I’d be designing and warping up one project while I was weaving off the other, which worked because those are actually two very different processes.  Or, if I only had one weaving project going and it just wasn’t working at the moment, I could turn to my spinning wheel and just Zen out with some fiber.  Before that, I’d have two needlework projects, or a needlework project and something else, going so that I could switch back and forth.

With lampwork it’s a little bit different, though.  If the boro isn’t working today, I can drop the kiln temperature and switch over to soft glass.  If beads are acting poopy, I can play with off-mandrel work and make pendants or marbles.  Still, there are days when the glass just isn’t working. Then I turn off the torch and pull out the crochet, or the spinning wheel, or put together a book, or even work on my web site.  Or, for that matter, I can go read, or vegetate, or sleep!

Even at work I tend to do this!  I can only work so long on one thing there before I have to switch gears and do something else.  I sometimes wonder how I managed to teach class for four and a half hours straight without going nuts — that’s a long time to be doing ANYTHING without a change of pace.

This week’s highlights from the world of the lampworkers’ blogs:

• Winter
• Flaming Hot — Finding Inspiration
• Watch Me Create — The Process of Making Glass Face Beads
• Setting Goals: Part 2 - Make a List
• The Strange Woman Next Door
• Flaming Hot — The Witching Hour?
• Watch me Create — Lesson learned. . . Next time I’ll take notes!
• Flaming Hot — Location, Location, List Time?
• A lesson in fusing…or how not to
• One Reason to Have a Studio Tour…