My first answer that I blurted out off the top of my head and onto the page was:
"I would RULE THE WORLD!!!!"
Oops! I thought about that for a couple of weeks and decided that I wouldn't really want that. I'm an artist. I'm a thinker. The world is too big and gnarly for me to thrive under that kind of pressure. I would have to transform myself into some kind of bodhisattva to attempt to understand it, much less know what kind of need I would want or be able to fulfill. I'm completely unqualified.
So, stepping down off my cloud where I entertain myself with illusions and delusions of grandeur, I came back to my time and place and thought about this some more.
I might add a little more convenience to my house. Like a flight of stairs and a door that goes from the garage to my studio above it. We could level the side yard and cut down some trees so that the sun gets in and then grow some vegetables. I would have someone come in and completely re-do the back yard because we've been avoiding doing that ourselves and it still looks bare and boring.
I know that I WOULD NOT need much more stuff because I can't remember some of the stuff I already have, nor where it is. More stuff I don't need.
BUT, if I did buy some things . . .
I would buy some gold, a big useful amount of it to experiment with and to make pretty things from it. Double that!
On Sunday I went on a rockhounding trek with my husband to the Russian River, which is pretty close to us, about a 30 minute drive. I was just looking because some of the members of the rock club have told me stories of finding some interesting rocks there. I wanted some plain, relatively smooth stones for an art project and we gathered these:
I just want to draw and paint on them.
As I was looking around the riverbed - the water level is low because we've been experienceing a drought - I found these speckled rocks that I think are going to look interesting inside.
And then I saw this ONE AMAZING ROCK (amazing is in the eye of the beholder) . . . It's brown and has pink speckles on it . . . I saw it and I was hoping that the speckles ran all the way through it and they do!
On Tuesday I was at the club and used one of the big saws to cut a couple of slices off of it and then a trim saw to cut it down to manageable pieces. The oval one on the bottom right is the one I have shaped and polished. The darker pieces in the photo above are wet for the purpose of seeing what they would look like when I take them through all the grit sizes all the way up to 14,000 grit.
Here's a close-up of the cab wet:
One of the more knowledgeable guys told me that this stone is called Rhodonite. It has no actual value except it's valuable to me because it's so pretty.
So . . . I NEED one of these:
It's a DIAMOND PACIFIC GENIE 6" POLISHER that I found new listed on ebay. They aren't so very expensive actually but still more than I have ever plunked down on a piece of equipment before. It has wheels of 80, 220, 280, 600, 1200 and 3000 mesh.
. . . well and then I would need to get another smaller polisher that could hold 3 more wheels, a 6000 grit, a 14,000 grit and a soft fabric or leather wheel for holding oxide paste to make the stones gleem. Wheeeee!
Here are the stones I'm working on now:
The 3 on the left are chrysocolla, top right is lapis and the bottom right is another variscite. I'm making up the shapes. Dang it's fun!
. . . and I would get the laser of my dreams, the Epilog Mini.
I probably sound like a bottomless pit right about now. :O)
It's just a blog post for goodness sake . . .
OH! My mind just revealed to me the thing that I would do if money were no object. It's THIS . . .
Whenever I get it into my head to visit a friend, no matter where they lived in the world, I could just hop on a plane to go and visit for a day or two, THAT'S EXACTLY what I would do with all that money!
I would visit Pallavi in India, Kim in the Virgin Islands, Andes in Canada, Angela on the west coast of France, Helga in the Netherlands, Maggie in Australia, Kirsten in Illinois, Gordon in Hawaii, Gail in Ohio, Melissa in Utah, Lynne in the U.K., Deryn in Texas, Kathleen in Colorado . . . well, you get the idea. It would be whim city and I would get really good at packing light.
I would learn a lot.
Of course there's more . . . I'm going to milk this to the end . . . I have one more thing I think would be fun to do that would probably cost some serious change.
I would find the most beautiful patterns of vintage sterling silver cutlery and buy as much as I could get my hands on. I would make jewelry or other interesting fabricated things with the pieces. I could give them to my friends as gifts when I went for a visit.
That's it I guess. I can't think of another thing.
Are you wondering about what this “Blog-o-Sphere” thing is?
Andes Cruz, a metalsmith I met online and whose work I love, formed a group of friends who blog and she called it the "Blog-o-Sphere Think Tank". We all write a blog post once a month about the same topic, and we all post at the same time, on the 20th. I've been writing with them since October 2013 and the group keeps me blogging even when I am busy doing my thing. I hope you’ll visit all the blogs on the list and see what they have to say and if YOU have anything to say, please leave me a comment. I would enjoy hearing about it.
Who wants the most stuff? It's not a contest. It's interesting!
Andes Cruz: http://andescruz.wordpress.com/2014/11/20/anythinganywhere
Pallavi Gandhi: http://studioat605.wordpress.com/
Kirsten Skiles http://kaskiles.com/studio-updates/
Beth Cyr - http://BethCyr.com/blog
Shelagh Blatz www.designsbyshelagh.com/blog
