Sunday night, while finishing the fish, I was so unhappy with the colors and how they were turning out (and I had not yet seen how jarring they are in this photo!) that there were moments when I thought I might never do another of these animals. I was bummed by the colors but also by the fact that the square edged beads fit together in the curves so badly. You can see here how I put in golden 15s to fill the gaps. I refused to bead the lips and even left part of the front fins undone in my haste to get this one off my beading tray. I tried all my home remedies for depression: chocolate, singing, Jennifer Cruise books, but my mood stayed dark. I cleaned away the beads from the fish and tossed it up on the table. One of my thoughts had been, if I do another animal there will be no color changes in it; maybe one of the all brown beasts? As I righted the fish, and delightedly found it could stand if balanced on the fins, my hand brushed "Steampunk Pussy" which I had made a month ago and thought was finished. Bu Kitty had been playing with it and I had taken it away from him and carelessly tossed on the table.

I began to sew black beads (well they did fit my mood!) around a leg and was courageous enough to add a white paw. Then yesterday I moved on to the head and I saw how much the beads enhanced the embellishments. As I worked I realized this was the direction I wanted to go with these beanie babies. I want to stop just repeating the designs or patterns in the animal but make major changes as I did here in a moment of inspiration. Suddenly no more gloom! I was blissfully happy beading on Steampunk Pussy all day. Another thing I realized was that all the brass stampings, other than the large dark centerpiece had been given to me by Brenda Sue as thank you gifts in my orders from her.

You can see here how differently the grass-green beads look when they are sewed to light yellow (on the face which is the same as the tail) and the under orange of the body. Maybe I can blame this phenomena for my inability to find the right colors.
I am continually surprised how many beads these babies take. I ended up with three green beads when I got those areas replaced.
I was still debating whether I "had" to cut out the red fin beads when Werner walked by and almost without looking and without pausing, said, "That red is too dark."
It was good that I removed them as I found a new way of sewing the beads down so the rows look more like the spines in fins.
Today I need to pick a 'tail' color. At the moment I am thinking of either a greenish blue or bright yellow as is on the front fin as trial. Suddenly those completely brown animals are looking more attractive! At least they would be easier to figure out the color combinations since my color sense seems to be in meltdown.

After unloading and unpacking my stuff from the vacation with B and Dorje, my first job on Tuesday was to check my email. To my utter delight someone had bought and already paid for two suncatchers on Etsy a week ago. Fine. My plan was that when I get off the computer I will dig them out from the boxes of things posted on Etsy. However, in the afternoon when I finally got my tired body out to the boxes there were no suncatchers in them. Panic. This was my worst nightmare! Having someone pay for something I could no longer locate reopened the trauma of having lost a library book in the third grade.
I fussed and stupidly revisited old fears all night. I had begun to suspect that in my eagerness to bring lots of things to the CHAC gallery I broke my own rule and had taken them there. I could only see if this was so, if one or both were still unsold, on Friday when the gallery opened again. In the morning I was determined to confess and offer the lady a complete return of her money.

I actually woke early to get this job off my soul. Surprise! no Internet connection. Even after the cable company said they got their part of the problem fixed I had no connection. Many phone calls with instruction to do this or that did not help. They would have to send out a guy with a new modem on Thursday. I ached with the need to send out an email.
Only good news on this day. It was not my modem (saving $75) but the cable company's problem which they fixed and now my service is up to speed again. I immediately sent an email to the lady and offered to refund her money. I was so ashamed of my flakiness! To my surprise she said she really wanted the suncatchers and would accept substitutes.
Yesterday I could finally call Rose at the gallery and one suncatcher was still there. So I went in, took in the new batch of animals, and got the star-chain suncatcher on the right. I picked up the center one to send as apology and thank-you and then last night, using a photo taken from the Etsy site, duplicated the one on the left. So Linda, here are your suncatchers! I will pack them up over the weekend and Tuesday when we go to town, we will mail these off to you.

Seeing the picture I posted yesterday and especially after adding the light green last night, I saw how wrong that color I hoped was a purple actually showed up as a mud reddish brown. In the tubes it looked like just the purple shade that went with the other blues, but now it looks all wrong. It could have been because it was transparent so that orange came through turning the red elements to brown. Now I can see that the red on the fins also looks like brown more than it is red so today I will have to cut those beads off, too. It may be the dark blue will then be too dark with the light green and blues and I will have to remove that too. At one point I thought of just getting out another fish (I have three) and starting all over. But in the end, at 10 o'clock, I picked up the scissors and started cutting and now I am committed to making this one work.

One day without internet access and I was nuts. Today two guys came and found the trouble was out on the lines and that explained why my access has been getting slower and slower. It also meant that I had no charges and did not need to shell out $75 for a new modem. The other good news was I got a lot of beading done. Both sides of the fish are this far along. I found the original colors too cutesy and now when I see this I am wondering if I have gone too dark - over-reacted. I feel I will only know when I get the piece done. While talking with B. she encouraged me to bead 'totem' animals feeling that they would be important enough for a buyer to pay what all this hand-sewing is worth. My buyers may have some other good news. As I do more of these I am learning new ways and methods and I feel each beaded animal is an improvement over previous ones. That means I can lower the prices on some that I find less successful than others. Also in a call with Sharon she told me of the excitement at The Dolphin when she found the animals on her first shift this week. She said people crowded around and raved about the pelican. Julia Gerlach, editor of Bead and Button decided to use the picture of the rooster instead of my photo on the online project. I find that a much better use of photography.

In addition to lots of talking, listening to Janet Evanovitch's novels on audio, and dips in the hot tub, I did get the ladybug done. Used up all my rhinestones so am debating whether to get more or to make the spots some other way. I liked the way I did the feet. I realized how much I have learned doing these.

The order came just on the day I took Werner into the doctor's for his check up so there were enough orange beads to finish this. Sorry his eyes do not flash as they do in reality. Am eager to do this again with a more interesting body patterns. That was just too much orange in one spot!