when the rare is everywhere it stops being made of magic

Sooo, Kella and I drove up to Brimfield yesterday for the east coast's largest spring flea market.

We were planning to spend the night and go back today for more junk hunting, but ....

something felt different.

Maybe junking has just become too trendy for us - the prices too high, the vendors too testy, the weather too cold - maybe too many things are going on right now in both our lives for us to feel like 'shopping'.

(wth!)

Fleaing has always been more like a hunt than a shop, but at Brimfield - which is literally brimming with everything and with enough of the green stuff you can probably take home whatever you are looking for - maybe it is more of a shop than a hunt.

It was kind of sad.

We are going to try a couple new fleas this summer and see if it is the fleaing that has lost its magic for us or just this show -

as Kella said, "the problem with this show is that we like to find stuff and this stuff has already been found."

I thought I would be off treasure hunting today

(4.5 hours driving there yesterday morning and 4.5 hours driving back last night -ugh- hubs was a little disappointed; he says for me, but I think it had more to do with his evening plans for Iron Man III, which I may have to break down and go see I guess, not the 3D version though)

but instead I am off to the grocers and then to hub's shop to weld some lockets determined to wrest a little magic from this day somehow ... I hope there is a little magic in your day, too and a little of the 'rare' for us to appreciate. xo

happy mother's day week (yes, we all get a week now)

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers, Earth lovers, goddesses and all those who nurture and love others!

(I realize I am a day late with this - spent yesterday gardening,  Mexican food eating and dumpster diving with my daughter - our town is having our annual/semi-annual, not sure, I am not so up on this - big trash pick up - so lots of curb side goodies, well actually not so much, but we did score these 3 retro hammocks and my own trash is mostly picked by other divers - so it's outta here - YAY)

mother's day 2013 - fish tacos, cork Marilyn and 50's/60's hammocks
We are going to Brimfield, MA tomorrow for their gigantic annual flea and will be back on Wednesday - will post pics and finds! xo all

maybe what seems like it's in the way actually is the way part IV - growing where we are planted

I am not totally sure what yesterday's post had to do with 'maybe what seems like it's in the way, actually is the way' but I did learn a lot from getting myself into and out of that mess.

(fortunately I have not let this stop me from climbing in and out of newer and even messier messes - I recommend work boots and seventh generation hand soap)

Leaping into something we have no passion for is not something I would recommend - doing it for the money works great for some people; the people who believe it will.

(if you believe it is wrong to do something just for the money, then don't - you will attract a million reasons to hate what you are doing and most likely muck it all up and make no money anyway)

I absolutely believe it is OK to do things just for the money (providing of course we are not going against our values with this - no stealing, lying, cheating or working for companies that do these things, etc) - the why we are doing what we are doing is the important part.

The things that appear to be in the way, the things that look like they are stopping us are actually the very things we (our higher self, soul, God) have chosen to get us to the next thing. Maybe skipping steps doesn't work. Maybe without that thing that looks like failure, but we know is really feedback we couldn't get to the next part of our journey or maybe we have learned some lesson from it that we will use later. We have to trust ourselves.

I know that as a maker every single time I am confronted with a problem with my makings (supplier out of business, some product I use gets changed in some way, venue I sell on changes, etc) my makings always end up stronger in the end.

And if it doesn't look that way to me I know that it is not the end.

gorgeous lidded box by mudcakes
The first time I heard the expression "grow where you are planted" it made me very uneasy actually it irritated the hell out of me. It sounded like "just accept where you are, stay in your place, don't try too hard, don't ask for too much".

(it can take a little age to see that this is not what it means at all, and if we see it that way, it is definitely not our message - if we see it that way, it is a clear sign we need to get our ass moving)

Now I know (or think I do) enough about the law of attraction (which is a very real thing and has almost nothing to do with getting anybody a Mercedes) to know that what we resist persists and we can only attract something new that we will love by loving what we have now (this is the tricky part).

Gratitude, forgiveness, compassion - appear to move mountains because the mountain is an illusion.

The only thing that can ever really get in our way is us (and since we are the way, well you know where this is going ....).

Have a wonderful weekend all - hubs and I saw Shawn Colvin and Mary Chapin Carpenter last night and they were just amazing - on stage together the whole night - it was magical. 

maybe what seems like it's in the way actually is the way part IIl - growing where we are planted


grow where planted locket - jude mcconkey

Maybe that thing that we are so certain is in our way - that thing that we are most likely to call a problem is really the very thing our higher self

(soul/God whatever you are most comfortable with here)

has lined up to get us where we need to be -  maybe without this space called problem our journey would be longer or harder - maybe this actually is the path of least resistance.

This is a planet of polarity

(which is more than a locket although the locket is pretty cool and you should get yourself one - blog readers use code BLOGBITES for 10% savings)

- a planet of contrast - often we learn what we do want by experiencing what we don't want - and sometimes that thing we don't want turns out to be exactly that thing we need.

Of course, it only looks like this in hindsight.

After I left banking, had a mini-breakdown, had a major break-through, did the mall cart thing for a few years and before I found Etsy - I had a commercial embroidery business. I did embroidery on shirts, caps, jackets, etc for local businesses from my home. The business didn't start out that way though.

It started when I bought a commercial 12 needle embroidery machine with a $30,000 price tag (including supplies, computer, table, etc - three years later I bought a 2nd one used for $5000 - these things depreciated big time - ugh - the $30,000 was from stock options I had from my banking days. I think it didn't even feel like real money to me and this is what allowed me to be so detached from it).

I had been selling other products on mall carts and so lined up a space in a mall to do personalized baseball caps, baby bibs, etc. The mall was about an hour from my house. I had no experience with embroidery and no passion for it, but thought it would be a big money-maker (and it was - for a lot of other people - the ones with the passion probably).

I had done things just for the money before and they had always worked for me (mostly) - I didn't realize though that life was requiring a little more from me now - I had been promoted so to speak, my vibration didn't line up with 'do it for the money' anymore.

I knew this in my heart but my head was still playing by the old rules.

The morning I drove to the mall to sign the lease I had major tension in my neck - I knew I had not done my homework on this machine (it was not as easy to operate as I thought it would be) - I knew I had no passion for a 2 hour daily commute and that managing employees an hour from home would be stressful.

In fact, the day I wired the money for the machine I had felt sick and tense. I thought at the time it was a buyer's remorse response and discounted it, but now I know that tension was a very clear signal to stop. I didn't.

(life had sent me the pebble and since I had ignored it - hit me with the rock)

I did stop myself from signing that mall lease though. I called the mall manager and told her I'd changed my mind. I had no idea what to do with the machine. I couldn't sell it - hubs was like "how much did this cost?!" - I had to make this work somehow. I did a mailing to some local businesses including a trophy shop that did embroidery. I kind of bluffed my way into getting their embroidery account and they sent me some small jobs that I did well.

(I embroidered every single piece of clothing and fabric I could get my hands on for practice. My daughter was going to school with college fraternity symbols, EMT stars and other people's monograms on her clothes- luckily she was still young to think this was sort of cool. Hubs was another story. Even though he has never been fussy about what he wears and only says "no sweater vests" and even though I only rarely used his shirts and even then always sewed near the hems since he's a tucker - he was not so into the random sewings.)

The trophy shop started sending me bigger jobs.

One day they sent me some jackets for a local fire department and I somehow managed to embroider the backs of 3 jackets totally crooked - the kind of crooked that can only be made straight if each fireman would agree to walk around with one shoulder 3 inches higher than the other - I considered this, but decided I needed to order new jackets. It turned out the jacket maker would not sell 3 pieces to me and I didn't want to let the trophy shop know about my screw up.

I decided to try a tailor. I took out all the stitches and took the jackets to a tailor who through some kind of tailor magic was able to mend enough holes that I could resew them without anyone knowing.

He asked me if I wanted to put my business card on his bulletin board.

(he somehow didn't see me as a total screw-up and for this I am forever grateful)

A couple weeks later a gymnastics/ballet/cheerleading shop saw my card and eventually I got all the local cheerleading teams through her (which would not have happened without my jacket nightmare). Those accounts (and Ebay) kept me going until she sold her business and the new owner bought their own embroidery machines - it was exactly at the time I was ready to move on so worked out perfectly for all of us.

That embroidery business was never a big money-maker. Eventually I paid for the machine and made some money and I did buy that second machine so I must have needed it at some point. Most of my memories about that business revolve around the repetitive motion damage to my hands and neck, which is a whole other story.

I had ignored life's pebble (you are stepping on someone else's ship Cat - this is not your ship) and of course, the rock had taught me the same lesson - the hard way, but maybe it was the way I needed to learn it and actually it was the way I needed to learn it because it was the way I learned it.

This story was so long (and yes, I realized this has been 5 minutes of your life you will not be getting back - don't hate me) that I lost track of the "grow where planted part" so will get to that in part IV.

xo all