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During Memorial Day weekend The Space had sponsored this free jewelry making event using a variety of beads. I decided to check it out and I made my first new necklace in a few years. Here is what I did.
I found some floral beads along with glass beads in various shades of pink and I thought they looked good together. But then I found this bag full of beads that had words on them and three beads happened to be next to each other in the bag. One said “princess,” the other said “of,” and the third said “play.” The words formed the phrase “princess of play” and I totally fell in love with that label because the way flowed when they were said together. I felt that they had to be the focal point of my new necklace while the pink and floral beads only highlighted the femininity of that necklace and the phrase “princess of play.”
It wasn’t until I had taken the three beads out of the bag and strung them together that I realized that each word bead had two different words on each side. I flipped the necklace over to see what phrase would be created on the other side and it read “like let divine.”
To be honest, “like let divine” made less sense than “princess of play” and the phrase just didn’t flow off the tongue as well as “princess of play.” I will probably end up displaying the “princess of play” side when I’m wearing this necklace.
Here’s a full selfie of me wearing that necklace after I finished creating it.
I was at The Space (a makerspace located in Beltway Plaza Mall in Greenbelt, Maryland), which was doing activities to commemorate National Hispanic Heritage Month back in September. I managed to make a God’s Eye necklace for myself.
Like I wrote in a previous blog post, I attended two festivals in one day. The first one was the smaller Greenbelt Blues Festival, which I already wrote about. After attending that festival, I went to the Hyattsville Arts & Ales Festival, which was a larger event. Here are the photos I took of the event while I was there.
This sign erroneously said that this festival was held on September 10. In reality, it showed up on September 22.
The festival was well-attended and there were all kinds of arts and crafts on display along with local bands performing. The local craft breweries were selling their craft beers and ales. The weather was warm and pleasant (the humidity was low that day). All in all I had a good time and many of the festival goers also enjoyed themselves as well.
I only purchased one item at this festival. It’s a small bar of soap made from honey and it has a bee motif on it.
One Saturday I went to two different festivals on the same day. First, I went to the Greenbelt Blues Festival in Greenbelt, Maryland where I took these photos. Here is the schedule of events that happened during the festival.
There were plenty of souvenir t-shirts on sale.
There was a raffle where a lucky person could win this electric guitar. I already have this exact same black and white Fender Stratocaster Squier so I didn’t bother with this raffle.
There were a few vendor tables where local people offered their services and/or their handmade arts and crafts for sale.
The festival offered compost bins where people can dump food scraps instead of throwing them in the regular trash.
This man was playing his recorder at the festival.
This band was one of the many blues bands who performed that day.
Inside the nearby New Deal Cafe there were a few workshops. I shot this photo while I was waiting for the harmonica workshop to end.
I sat in on the workshop I was interested in, which was how to play the blues guitar. I brought my acoustic guitar with me to the workshop since it was geared towards acoustic guitars.
The Greenbelt Makerspace had a bunch of musical instruments that people could borrow and play.
After spending time at that festival, I went on to another festival in another town, which I’ll write about in a future post.
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I walked around the streets of Annapolis taking a bunch of photos not too long ago.
Annapolis really does Christmas really well with its mix of traditional decorations (such as garlands of pine needles) with modern lights.
The highlight was when I went to the Holiday Art Shop, which is a pop-up shop that is sponsored by the Annapolis Arts Alliance.
I came across some fused glass jewelry that I thought looked like something that a friend of mine does in her fused glass work. It turns out to be my friend’s fused glass work. (By the way, you should check out her stuff at her Profusions of Glass Facebook page.)
I purchased a couple of bars of soap from Soap-A-Saurus. One is for me and the other will be a Christmas present for my mother. Both bars are Frankenscence Myrrh scented, which is pretty appropriate for Christmas.
There were Christmas decorations everywhere on the streets of Annapolis.
The next photo shows the historic St. Anne Episcopal Church.
St. Anne is starting to cater to the increasingly Latino population in the state of Maryland. The sign in the next photo translates as “Daily Vespers Prayer. In Spanish. Wednesday at 5:30 p.m.”
The rest of the photos show a mix of historical markers and festive Christmas decorations everywhere in the historic district of Annapolis.
I recently attended the Gateway Arts Open Studio Tour that went up Route 1 from Mount Rainier all the way up to Hyattsville. The last few times I went on this tour I didn’t go beyond Mount Rainier because I didn’t arrive until late in the day. This time I made every effort to arrive at the official noon starting time but I still didn’t go beyond Mount Rainier. It’s because there were so many things to see in Mount Rainier. (LOL!)
I began my tour at Marsha Stein’s art studio. Here are a few outside shots outside her studio.
Marsha’s art studio also doubles as her apartment. I checked out her paintings for a few minutes before I moved on. While I was on my way to my next destination I took a picture of some of the decorative relief trim that one can find in downtown Mount Rainier.
Next I went to the Gateway Media Arts Lab, a recently opened place that has five creative communications entrepreneurs who do things like graphic design, videos, and storytelling.
I moved on to ReCreative Spaces where I took the next few photographs.
While I was looking at the official map I saw that there was a home located a few blocks away where Joe Brewer has his own personal arcade in the basement. Here’s a couple of exterior shots of his home, which is typical of the type of home one can find in Mount Rainier.
Only this sign gave away that there is more to this home than meets the eye.
Joe Brewer frequently purchases and fixes up vintage pinball and arcade video games. Going into the basement is such a throwback to my high school and college years when I used to spend my spare time and a lot of quarters playing these machines.
He offered free beverages, which included Crystal Pepsi. I wrote about seeing that beverage in a store late last year and I wrote about my less-than-fond memories of the one time I tried drinking it in the 1990’s. I tried Crystal Pepsi again at Joe’s home and I have to admit that it tastes way better than the last time I tried it. But I still prefer the darker version of Pepsi over Crystal Pepsi.
Here’s some charming string art that I found in the bathroom that includes a map of the U.S. and a famous quote by J.R.R. Tolkien.
I’ll admit that I spent the largest chunk of my time playing those video games and pinball machines. (The fact that they were all on free play made it tempting for me to stay a long while. LOL!) I got back in my car and drove to Joe Hicks Ceramics, which is a studio that’s operated in the basement of this home.
Joe Hicks had a lot of really nice ceramics on sale.
I went to the nearby Washington Glass School where I found a lot of interesting artwork that were all made from glass.
By that point the official end of the Open Studio Tour was soon approaching so I went to the Otis Street Arts Project, which is located next door to the Washington Glass School.
Last fall I was doing some tidying up around the house when I found this fused glass pendant featuring a bunny rabbit that I made years ago when I took a workshop that was offered through Profusions of Glass. (I may have even still been married when I made this pendant. LOL!) Well, anyway, I found it back in November shortly before Thanksgiving and I now have it in the place where I keep all of my other jewelry. I waited to write about it until today because the pink color scheme along with the rabbit just seems more like it’s appropriate for Easter Sunday than last November.
One of my friends from my Unitarian Universalist congregation asked me to do a favor for her. Basically she wanted to sell her fused glass jewelry at the annual church auction but she was going to be out of town for the weekend but she still wanted someone to sell her jewelry on her behalf. (Especially since 50% of the proceeds would go to the church.) So I agreed to do it. I took a few photos of my set up at the church auction.
The next picture shows some of the fused glass jewelry that was on sale that evening. (The flaming chalice that’s in some of the jewelry in the next photo is a symbol of the Unitarian Universalist faith.)
The last photo shows samples of my banana bread that I baked for this auction. (I put two loaves up for auction while I made a third loaf to give away as free samples.)
If you like the fused glass in these pictures, check out my friend’s business, Profusions of Glass.
I spent part of the Mother’s Day weekend at the Greenbelt Green Man Festival. Earlier this month I made an allusion to showing off a new product that I modeled on behalf of a new startup. Basically the startup’s first product is a jumpsuit that’s been pretreated with Sawyer Permethrin so one can go hiking, camping, gardening, and other types of outdoor activities without worrying about being bitten by ticks and mosquitos (both of which carry nasty diseases like Lyme and Zika). I posted a selfie while wearing one of those suits. I was also given packaged suits to carry around with me to sell as I walked around the festival ground.
I didn’t sell any suits. Most of the people I spoke with said that they weren’t into camping or money was tight. But the suit I was wearing did get people to open up to me about Lyme disease because they mentioned that they have a friend or relative who’s struggling with this devastating illness. I even had a longtime friend admit to me that she currently has Lyme disease. I knew that she had health issues, which have affected her mobility, but they never got specific as to the cause until she saw me wear that jumpsuit with a sign affixed to the back saying “Ask Me About Permethrin-Treated Disposable Jumpsuit.”
I wore the suit on the first day of the festival while I walked around taking pictures.
Like I wrote earlier I didn’t make any sales on those permethrin-treated jumpsuits. What was worse was that I saw The Backstabbing Couple From Hell (a.k.a. my ex-husband and his mentally ill second wife who used to be a friend of mine until I found out she wasn’t such a good friend). I left the festival about an hour before closing time because I grew tired of seeing them walking around acting all happy. (I have no idea if they are really happy or not and I don’t care.)
The following day I was scheduled to be a substitute teacher for the English language classes my church offers to recent immigrants on Sunday afternoons. I ended up skipping Sunday morning service so I could check out some of Greenbelt Green Man Festival. I didn’t wear the jumpsuit on the second day because I was only there about an hour and a half at the most and I went straight to church for the English classes. I took a few photos of the second day of the festival.
I bought just two items at this weekend’s Greenbelt Green Man Festival. One was a pendant made from recycled dominos that features an image of Edgar Allan Poe.
The other was a t-shirt featuring an image of Jesus riding on the back of a dinosaur.
Anyway that’s it for this year’s Greenbelt Green Man Festival.
UPDATE (June 25, 2016): You can read about why I’m no longer involved with that startup for whom I was selling those jumpsuits at the Greenbelt Green Man Festival right here.
Sagittarius Dolly 
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