Capitol: Bismarck
North Dakota is one of the few states I have never visited. Seems I have read some articles about it in National Geographic or Smithsonian magazine. The impression they always paint of North Dakota is that it is a stark, beautiful landscape. Since I am trying to avoid actual landscape on most of my pins, I decided to just go for stark and beautiful. Hence, the choice of only grey beads and a beautiful piece of bead embroidery.
Capitol: Santa Fe
I have been pondering what to bead for New Mexico for awhile. I have spent a few weekends in Santa Fe and loved it. We visited a few pueblos, and a really neat little old church. I have also attended a few bead shows there. On another trip we visited Carlsbad Caverns, and naturally drove through Roswell. All these things gave me great ideas for this pin. It was probably going to involve a pueblo-type building, possibly with some alien eyes in the window, or a space ship in the sky.
Then Ruby came along.
Ruby is our new puppy. It took me several years to talk my husband into letting me get a second dog. I wanted a 2-4 year old terrier mix. The day after he agreed to another dog, he suggested we go to the Boulder Humane Society (BHS) and look. There he was, the perfect little terrier mix. Next to him was Ruby, a 4 month old puppy. Bill fell in love. The terrier went to another family.
We adopted Ruby the next morning. She is a purebred cattle-dog-Chinese-shar-pei-whoe-knows-what-else. Every so often BHS goes to a reservation in New Mexico and picks up a bunch of litters of puppies. So, now New Mexico has a whole new meaning to me.
My daughter, Emily, drew me a cute little picture of Ruby. Once I beaded Ruby (note the cute pink collar), I was stuck. I decided to research Native American beadwork in NM. Instead I discovered pottery from the Acoma Pueblo. I decided to bead the background in a pattern from a piece of the beautiful pottery I found.
I am really happy with this piece. I think it is my new favorite.
OK, I am finally back on my Pin Project.... YAY! For the past month I have been thinking about the fact that I only have 20 states done, 30 to go. Momentary elation today when I realized I actually had 21 done, only 29 to go.
Ideas for the first 21 states came to me pretty easily. It is getting harder now. All month I had been thinking my next state would be Texas, which was intimidating, because it is the biggest state in this project. Rather than face Texas, I decided to go the opposite route... Rhode Island!! Smallest state in the nation.
Rhode Island posed problems of its own. In this project, RI is 1/4" for 1/8"! It is so small there really isn't much that can be done. I wanted to do something sparkly, because I discovered that Rhode Island is one of the worlds biggest costume jewelry centers. However, the size prohibited a nice, gaudy piece. Instead, I had to settle for the colors of RI's flag, white, blue and gold. I also had to pull out my size 22 seed beads. To give you an idea of how small these are, there are 32-36 beads per inch! There are only 38 beads in this whole piece. 38 beads! Nope, didn't take long!
22 down, 38 to go!
