Blink, blink - home again!

The 2008 shows are done for me. Deep exhale. It's putting me in a reflective mood - as Mom and I were discussing over the weekend, this year has been a flurry of activity and good news for the most part. Sure, there have been some speed bumps. Several popped up in the last few weeks. But overall, I am so very pleased with everything we've accomplished this year. I set some crazy goals I had very little chance of making come to fruition, and I'll be darned if a few of them actually came true.

I think part of the success is that I'm getting so much better at forward planning and thinking. It's a trick to look beyond where I am this very moment sometimes. I have two sets of urgent items on my mind every day. First, I check in with myself on the immediate, short-term things that need to happen. What classes am I teaching this week? Where am I traveling next, and have I made all the necessary travel arrangements? Do I need to mail things out? And then there's the long-term planning - what do I need to be working on for 2009? Is the schedule filled? What new designs will be coming out next year? What are the teaching proposal deadlines for 2010 and do I need to be working on samples for them? What are the trends, colors, styles that customers are wanting to see and am I meeting those needs? Which projects should I submit for magazine publications?

A million questions like these run through my mind every day. It's a little less daunting and scary overall now that I've been through a few cycles of it. It's still surprising to me that I need to be thinking NOW about what kind of classes I want to be teaching in 2010, but if I don't, I'll be caught in a frenzy of last minute scrambling when the teaching proposals are due. And I don't like that one bit.

So now that I'm home for two whole months (minus a few vacation days in Tucson) it's time to do all this big planning and getting ready for next year. I can't wait to dive on in there! I'm very excited about the things we have on the list, including (but not limited to):

• Revamping our show display
• Adding WildFire, 2mm Swarovski crystals, and good quality & cool clasps to the website
• Submitting a bunch of projects for magazine publication
• Updating and selling discontinued kits as patterns only
• Bundling patterns in booklets and/or CDs
• More classes here at the Tapestry Beads studio
• And much, much more! (said in a deep, important TV announcer voice)