Rules

My oldest daughter claims she will not link me on her blog because I am a "loser" and haven't blogged in a while....guilty. So Alishka babushka let it be known that I am blogging.

Last week at dinner our #2 daughter Breezy Boo was telling us about her business english class at school. She mentioned that her teacher had taught them the "comma dance" She began doing it at the table with moves reminiscent of the Macarena. I had no idea there was a dance, (let alone rules) for commas. I personally like parenthesis and quotation marks. (I use them quite liberally.) I wander if there is a dance for parenthesis? Is a bracket different? (Do I care?)
I tend to be on the slightly rebellious side. Rules challenge me at times, and yet there are other times, like when I drive, that I think "If I have to obey the rules so should everyone else."

In jewelry there are rules. Rules of design and composition,rules of manufacturing, etc. For instance if your solder is "dirty" (or your metal) you will not get a good join. If you use too much solder it will look messy. If you get the torch too close to your wooden bench pin it will catch on fire.

I guess sometimes I am a trial and error type of person, other times I like someone to tell me before I mess up. But if I were to follow a "rule" in jewelry every time someone told me too, where would be the self discovery? There are times I hold back because I am afraid of failing. I only have a small piece of silver left and I don't want to create something that might fail because then I would not have any silver left, so I stagnate and don't create.

Several months ago I tried making a woven wire bracelet. It was my first piece and even though I was told to experiment with cheap copper wire first I chose not to listen. (My husband is rolling his eyes as if to say "what's new".) It was bad. I used a lot of wire. So I did what I do best, I went about creating two pieces of jewelry from a (what we call in the weaving world)a "dog" piece. They turned out quite interesting. (If I do say so myself).