Finding More Fun

Gretchen Rubin, in her excellent book, The Happiness Project Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun, encourages us to Be Serious about Play. Don’t know how to tap into your inner child? Rubin was having the same problem, until a friend asked her this question: “What did you like to do when you were a child? What you enjoyed as a ten-year-old is probably something you’d enjoy now.”

I recall with relish playing marbles with my little brother. Although I enjoyed the actual game of marbles and capturing all of James’ alleys (he was 5 years younger, and we never played for keeps!), what I really liked was rolling those cat’s eyes in my hands and examining the swirling colored glass that was injected inside.

So I set off to replicate that experience this weekend. The marbles were jasper, the swirls of color were on the outside, and I captured them with seed beads. A great week-end of work, but work that was fun!



The necklace is Carole Ohl's Earthly Hues design from the current issue of Beadwork magazine.

When’s the last time you knuckled down to a day at play?