our passions remain

Gifts from the sea, and a few pretty beads, make magical wind chimes.

I've become so impassioned with my beading and wind chimes, that I've now opened my own Etsy Store!  Who'd have believed it! Check out my Singing Dolphin Wind Chimes when you have a chance!

​I’m not sure when it began again for me.  I think it was March.  I knew the grand kids were coming out to visit for 10 days, and that might have been what spurred the purchase.  It could have been my ideas of what we could do for some ‘fun’ inside should the rainy days that we’d experienced for weeks and weeks continue.  It could have been my conviction, finally, to get rid of some of the seashells that we’ve been collecting from every trip we’ve taken to be near water in the last 10 years.   I’d always managed to drag bags of them home, but had yet to decide on what to do with the collection.  There was always an idea in the back of my head of things I ‘could’ do when the time and opportunity arose, but they remained just ideas, until the last two months.   Regardless of what triggered the purchases, I found myself in the local Walmart looking for some beads that could be used to pretty up some sort of creation, my thought being to make wind chimes out of the shells that were gathering dust.
 
The first time I sat down and actually worked on the craft was with a girlfriend who was visiting from the prairies.  We had a great evening creating our beginner versions of the shell chimes, that would hang as reminders of good times spent together.   The second time was with my grandsons, one working on a wind chime that he would take home with him, the other working on a necklace that spelled out his name and used his favourite colour. Then everyone headed for their respective homes and I was left with the beads...and the shells...and a passion to create once again.

I had to break away from my blues and purples, so I decided to use the shells I collected at Alert Bay and call this one 'The Four Directions'

​I am not sure exactly how soon after that that it hit me.  I was working on restringing a wind chime that had been my Mother’s, having made the decision to start using beads and baubles from some of the old jewelry that sat in boxes in my storage.  Stuff that had been my Grandmother’s, or my aunts, or my Mom’s.  Junk jewelry, that I hadn’t the heart to throw out, but had no desire to use or wear myself.   So the dismantling began.  Cutting threads, snipping wire, organizing colors, then putting the pieces back together in a new way that said ‘Lynda was here’. 

By about the third creation, it all came back to me.  I love this!  I had loved beading and creating as a child, but had completely forgotten for over forty years.  As I sat at the kitchen breakfast nook, threading the little glass beads onto the fish line, one delicate bead at a time, the memory of doing this as a child came flooding back, and the joy filled my spirit. 

​We learned about it in elementary school, and I don’t even truly remember who it was that taught us.  Something tells me it was Stella Smoke or maybe it was Tony Myran, who were two Indigenous mentors brought in to the school to work with students who were being mainstreamed into our typical education system, and I realize today, they were likely the first students in that situation.  After generations of Indigenous children being sent to Residential Schools, those that we started Grade 1 with were among the very first to have escaped that system.  But inclusion came with challenges, as all inclusion does at the beginning.  The mentors were brought into try and ease some of those challenges by being examples to the Indigenous students, and educators to the rest of us.  The beading, I remember, was one of my favorite learning, and once I’d learned the basics of it, I would spend hours and hours at home creating headbands, name tags, small pieces of work that filled me with so much pride.  I never achieved the intricate, detailed pieces that the ladies from the neighboring reserves were so gifted at creating, but I still loved the little bit that I did do.
As I sat at my kitchen counter I finally remembered that.  As with the resurgence of any passion, I’ve been diving into this with both feet as I scan Walmart for more beads, garage sales for discarded jewelry treasures, and the seaside for shells and driftwood that might work for the next piece.  Then, upon returning home, comes the pleasure of the sorting and organizing and grouping.  It’s crazy, but more importantly, it’s fun. The thing that we all need more of in our lives. 

The one that started it all, done with my girlfriend Dixie, using shells and re-purposed jewelry.

​I try to keep the pieces consisting of up cycled and recycled materials for the most part, but I also want them to be eye catching.  I’ve found that Amazon is a great source for an assortment of bead suppliers and options, and most of those options are actually quite reasonable.  To be able to add a little bit of brand new bling to each piece, something that is a signature that I can recognize.  Something old, something new, something....you know. 
 
Each creation gets a little more refined and techniques are adjusting and fine-tuning as the days go on.  You’ll have to take my word for that, because before I thought to take pictures of some of the first ones, I decided to gift them for special occasions.  Handmade gifts are always a hit, and what better way to say Qualicum Beach, Vancouver Island than by using the gifts of the sea that we receive right here. 
 
I’m loving being immersed once more in something that I loved so dearly, and had forgotten about.  The evenings are different, relaxed and more focused.  It’s a kind of meditation all on its own.  It’s a gift to be reminded of things that fed our childhood passion, because the truth is that those things usually still do.  We come into this world with creative gifts to share, but we get devoured by the busyness of living and providing and forget that those gifts ever existed.  Yet they are still in us to give, in one form or another. 

Take some time, find a quiet place and let your heart wander back through time to who you were before the world started making you into what it wanted you to be.  What were the things you loved to spend your time doing?  What filled your hours with joy and pleasure, and made time pass by unnoticed?  What part of that could you recreate today to bring more of that childlike joy into your grown up, responsible adult life?  It can be done you know.  We all have the right to live more passion filled, joy filled lives, but we neglect to give ourselves permission to embrace that.  The time has come to allow ourselves to pursue whatever it is that feeds our souls and our spirits, because although we think our time is endless, it isn’t.  Don’t waste it being anything other than your happy, authentic, true self.  It’s what the world is waiting for.