Do tell...

Last week, the opening week of school, Elizabeth from Beads for Busy Gals tagged my blog with this:

Thank you, Elizabeth, for reading my ramblings and enjoying my dogs!  I am flattered and thankful to receive the Versatile Blogger seal of approval. Of course honor comes with responsibility.  It took me a few days, but I'm going to fulfill my mission.  

Here are the rules:

1. Thank and link back to the person who gave you the award.

2. Share 7 things about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 15 other bloggers you recently discovered and think are fabulous.
4. Contact the bloggers you chose and let them know about the award.

Since this award has been traveling the www for a bit of time, I've inverted the numbers - I'm giving you 15 things about me and 7 bloggers.


15. I would rather find a dog hair in my food than a people hair.

14. I have 48 bottles of nail polish in my medicine closet. I never polish my fingernails, only my toe nails. Beaders can understand this. I purge my polishes regularly so that no bottle is probably more than two years old. Right now I'm wearing a color called Sonic Boom.

13. I have formally studied French, Dutch, Italian, and German, but Spanish which I taught myself, is the only language in which I can really communicate.

12. When I was 18 and living on a farm in the Netherlands, I midwifed a calf's birth complete with obstetrical chains.

11. I have had a 26 year friendship-by-correspondence with someone I met my freshman year in college. I transferred after the first year, but we continue our friendship to this day by mail. He does not use e-mail and we rarely speak on the phone. Sometimes I talk to or e-mail his girl friend of 20+ years, but I only speak to him about once every five years. Most of our rather frequent correspondence is via postcard (he does most of the correspondence). We haven't seen each other in over ten years.

10. I was painfully shy until I was out of high school. In kindergarten I remember a girl who would not speak and just stood in class with big saucer eyes when Mrs. Halberg made her go to the front of the room for show and tell. I was relieved that there was one person more shy than I was.


9. I became a teacher because after working for almost two years, I realized that I missed the first day of school, winter and spring vacation, and two months off each year. I love to teach and have since my first day in the classroom, but my career choice was actually based on maximizing my free time.

8. I find it difficult to make friends as an adult. My closest friends are people I have known for years and years.

7. I have a cactus that it 20 years old. It has moved with me four times and originally came from a plant owned by my Aunt Carol.

6. I wish all my family - parents, cousins, brother, niece, aunts, and uncles all lived in the same city with me so that we could really get to know each other better now that I'm an adult. In my dream that city has neither the cold and snow of Cleveland, nor the heat and humidity of Q'town.

5. I constantly crave foods that are completely unknown in Q'town. I long for the pomme frites from the Lava Lounge in Tremont. A close second would be a falafel from a Kosher place in the Marais neighborhood in Paris. Every once in a while I need the macadamian nut crusted ahi tuna with lemon buerre blanc sauce from Ken Stewart's Grill and a Killer Brownie from Akron's West Point Market.

4. I have met two other Lois Moons and both are the first women named Lois I have ever seen who are younger than I am.

3. I get the hiccups a lot and so does my dog Coltrane.

2. One of my first memories took place when I was younger than four (we lived on Foote Road). I was under my pink and white checked comforter and thought I could flatten myself out so much that my mom and dad would not see me. I wanted to jump out and surprise them with my reappearance. I guess I already had a firm grasp on Jean Piaget's cognitive stages.

1. I wish I could go to lunch with my long gone great-grandmother Mildred and my grandfather Harold, but not at the same time.

In no particular order (well, they are in order of most recent posting when I grabbed them from my blog reader):
1. Arty Becca - When I read this blog I am inspired to pull out polymer clay and play.  These beads and pendants are FUN!

2. Geninne's Art Blog - Oh how I love the watercolor and ink drawings.  Birds, flora, fauna.  It's a hat trick. And her son and dog each have their own blog.  Gotta check out A Day in the Life of Turbo.

3. Chinook Jewelry Blog - I would select Mellisa just for the beautiful mehndi style line drawing in her banner, but I loved her recent entry Food for thought in which she discussed why she blogs and how her blog has evovled.  Her ceramic pendants are gorgeous.

4. Beads, beads, beads - Katrin writes a bilingual (Estonian/English) blog and makes sparkly jewelry that is lush and chunky.  She really knows how to work monotone bead combos.

5. Alice Istanbul Designs - she says she lives in the Deep South, but Q'town in four hours farther south [wink].  What a fantastic metalsmith.  I'm in love with the signature poppy design and I'm a sucker for art nouveau.

6. Blue Hour Designs - another one of my favorite metalsmiths.  I love the stones Alysia finds.  Simple, modern, beautiful.  She happens to be having a giveaway right now.

7. Yellow Flower - I look forward to reading Amber's blog to see what she is making in the Big Easy.  Every visit is a virtual peek into her studio.  Check out her Flicker for loads of fun goodies.