Broken Rhythm

My day job has just changed my game plan!  By day, I design and make costumes for competitive ballroom dancers.  At night, I usually bead.  Last weekend, I attended a local dance event, "Minnesota Madness," and so many people stopped by my vendor booth to request new projects that I could not keep track of them all in my head. My new life will be "all dancewear, all the time" until January 9th, the day after the next local ballroom competition.

I am NOT COMPLAINING.  My day job is a good one.  I've had my own business since 1987, and it's been wonderful.  I work out of a really beautiful studio in my home, and have been able to juggle being a mom, costume designer, and most recently, a beadweaver, with ease for the most part. 

Last year was not a good year for Made for Movement, (the dancewear business) with gross income down about 45% from the year before.  I figured it was the economy, but this year, for some unknown reason, business has picked back up and I am well beyond my 2009 and 2008 sales thus far.


Thankfully, as you can see, there is jewelry, and "beading of a sort" involved in the dancewear, although most of it is done with glue instead of thread and wire.

And some of my gowns really are beaded, like this one with the fringed gauntlet and the beaded tassles on the skirt.


With all the new projects on the schedule, I am officially swamped.  I rarely enter my studio in the evening, but here I am tonight, cleaning up after a 4:30 fitting and preparing for tomorrow.

I have gotten myself into a really nice rhythm of blogging nearly weekly, and I think there will now be a syncopation in that rhythm for a while.  I'll miss it, and I'll miss beading.  But one must "make hay while the sun shines" and my dancewear sun is blazing.  I hope you, faithful readers, will keep me in mind, and look for a return in 2011. 

In the mean time I'll be at the design desk, the cutting table, and the sewing machine.  And the next time I load up my gowns in January, to attend the Snow Ball,  I'll know I'm coming home afterward to my blog and my beading.