My sixth grade teacher hated math. I wasn't that fond of it either. Together we and the rest of the class avoided it nearly every day. But one rare day, as I approached her desk to check my finished math page, she took out a blank sheet of paper suddenly, gave me a ruler and told me to draw a line across the page that was even in distance from each edge. I did it. "Hmm, I thought so!" She showed me my page with my line clearly drawn at an angle. That's when I knew I ha

It is easy to make a mistake when beading. The pattern may be complicated. The beads are often tiny. Time goes by and suddenly you notice it: there is a bead in the wrong place. Sometimes it is clear what you need to do and you begin to rip out the work. Try not to think about the time spent. Focus on how patient you've become. Patience is a good thing, right? You may decide to go back because the beads won't hang together as they need to if you don't remove that one d

It all started with guilt as many things do. A friend of mine tried to convince me to take an evening ceramics class at the school where we worked. The class was given by a mutual friend who was going through a messy divorce. "I'm not good at that stuff and I don't want an evening commitment that takes me back to school after being there all day!" My friend argued that our enrollment would be supporting someone through a tough time, but I remained unmoved until she promised t