Joy List Monday and some other randomness

It's Monday, again. And, again, another month is nearing its close. Where has the time gone? Can you believe that it's almost the end of February? Next week I'll be starting my third month of Joy Lists. I'm loving making the lists and spending some time thinking about Joy, about what brings me Joy and about how to find (and create) more Joy in my life. It's been fun hearing about your Joy in the comments, too.

Today's list:

• experimental cooking and baking 
• listening to audiobooks (loving her, always, and am looking forward to this)
• a custom Etsy order
• inspiration
• an award

I have to say I'm going to be quite lazy about the rules of the Liebster Award. (Thank you, so much, Kerry!). If you've never visited Kerry's blog, go do it right now! She's always up to creative and interesting stuff (and photographing it beautifully). I think it's great to introduce readers to new blogs, sharing the blog love and getting more traffic to little known blogs, but I try to share blogs as I discover them. And I know how busy all bloggers are and how hard it is to get around to doing a post like this (it's taken me a week and I'm cheating by tacking it on to my Joy List post). So, I'm not going to come up with a list of new blogs to share today. If you're a blogger and you're reading this and you feel like sharing random things about yourself, do it and give us a link in the comments.

As for the other part of the award (sharing 5 random facts), I think I generally share a lot about myself in this space. At least, as much as I want to share. Here are 7 from an award I got last January. Looking back, most are pretty obvious (anyone reading here would be able to discern them). I'll try for a few more.

• I'm a trained (with a master's degree) librarian specializing in services to children, but I'm working in a bookstore right now. I don't know if I want to work in a library again, or what I want to be when I "grow up". 
• I have very bad eyesight and need to wear either glasses or contacts at all times.
• I am very bad at sports and athletics of any kind, but I did ride horses when I was younger (even though I grew up in the Chicago suburbs) and did pretty well. I want to try riding again someday.
• I do still want to get more tattoos.
• I'm an introverted person. In "real life" I hate to talk about myself.

So, there you go. On to my other Joys for this week.

I'd love to share my experimental baking and cooking with you right now, but I'm still refining things. (That salted caramel is dangerously addictive, I might point out). Maybe I'll be sharing some noodle ideas in the near future as that's what I've been working on.

On another food note, I did discover a pretty cool food/art site recently after stumbling on a book at work and then coming across an article in Where Women Create. Have you seen it before? Definitely a source for inspiration.

But the inspiration that's bringing me Joy recently, though, is painting inspiration. I love it when an idea, any idea, actually, grabs hold of me and insists that I do something about it. Paintings work best for me when something calls out to be painted. I have a few new painting ideas demanding attention. And one thing that I'm resolving to do when I don't have time to paint them is capture my ideas in my sketchbook before they disappear. I know from experience with story ideas that inspiration can be so ephemeral. A great idea pushed aside for "later" is likely to evaporate unless you do something about it. I have lots of notebooks with scribbled ideas in them. I'd love to have lots of notebooks filled with sketched ideas, too. (I'm hoping Dana's class will help me be better about actually doing it... have you signed up yet??). 

My other painting inspiration is coming from my quest for new painting books to add to my library (a great suggestion from a number of commenters was to use books on my watercolor journey). I have been frustrated by books so far. But one comment made me look at things differently. Ginny said that "when taking a class we can use or not use the information we receive. As an artist that is our choice". What great advice. Instead of looking at the books with the goal of making paintings just like that artist, I'm looking at them with the goal of finding bits and pieces of techniques to help me make the paintings I want to make. Hello, inspiration!

I'm also feeling really inspired to create some more crocheted jewelry. The custom order that I'm working on reminded me how much fun it is. I hadn't crocheted with my fine threads for a long time. Simply making the swatches for the piece was a lot of fun for me.

(Even though that ball on the left, when I went to download my photos ended up looking like this

thanks to a certain naughty little scamp who's also recently stolen a cannoli, 1/4 of a pizza, a hamburger bun and some cereal.  But Jude loves him 

and I do, too).

I'm embarrassed to admit that I have quite a few unfinished pieces in the works. Sometimes, though, it's necessary to let a piece sit while you figure out what direction to take it. After working on this custom piece (simply a recreation of this necklace in a different color), I am full of ideas for finishing a necklace that's been on hold for months. Actually, strike that, I'm not at all embarrassed. I work best when I have a lot of different projects going on at the same time. I follow my inspiration and I'm happy to do it!

I hope your day is full of Joy.

Oh, and on a non-Joyful note... I know I was singing the praises of Pinterest a little over a month ago and enjoying my recent addiction, but I've since deleted my account. I'd heard a bit about copyright concerns and Pinterest when I first started but I thought that if the photo linked back to the originator of the photo, everything was ok. Not having read the fine print when I signed up, I was unaware of what Claire pointed out on her blog. I also read the post that Claire talked about and the article, too.  My bloggy friend Jenny recently deleted her account and here's one more article I found today when I decided to share this with you.  At first I wasn't quite sure what to do about my account.  I loved pinning images. When my computer was broken, other than blogging, the only computery thing I was doing was playing with Pinterest on my phone. But the fact that images pinned on Pinterest are then "owned" by Cold Brew Labs was scary to me. As a creative person that was worrying. But so too was the fact that the responsibility lies with the pinner (to ask permission to use the image thereby handing over its copyright to Cold Brew Labs) was humbling. I didn't know that even though I had checked the little box that said I had read and agreed to all the terms and conditions. Something to think about if you're on Pinterest and whenever you're signing up for some new account that asks you to read a long list of terms and conditions.