My Bio ... not B.O. .... Bio

So I decided that my last bio stunk. It was more of B.O. than a Bio.

So here's the new one. Constructive feedback is appreciated.

"Gritgoods" is a play on my real name, Margaret Goodson, but my tag line "get some Grit in your Goods" has multiple meanings! Literally the Grit is the gunmetal amidst the Goods - semi-precious stones and sterling. In addition to the unlikely pairing of gunmetal and silver, my designs also include pairings of natural materials with stones. As to the figurative translations ... there are many and I leave it up to the buyer to find their own meaning.

Gritgoods was born from the desire to create jewelry that brings flare to the traditional and good taste to the ordinary. You will find my designs to be versatile, for everyday wear and fancy nights out, affordable and practical. By hand forming most of my sterling silver ear wires, and using lever backs and kidney shaped ear wires, my earrings don't fall out! Lobster clasp closures, large gauge jump rings, and hand-formed double looped links also ensure a feeling of security while wearing my jewelry. I keep my jewelry affordable because I'm also a special education teacher and can appreciate those who want to support handmade, but may not have the deep pockets for 'fine art'. I have taken a metalsmithing class but prefer not to go that route because of the expenses to myself and my fans.

I have a long-time appreciation for handmade Goods that started with getting handmade Christmas ornaments every year from my family. My Grandma painted canvases and gourdes, made ornaments, small baskets and even did some wood working. My Mom paints silk, my sister is a photographer and web designer, and my aunts make jewelry, hand painted tiles, baskets, and pen and ink drawings. I draw inspiration from my artistic family and also from the area in which I live - western North Carolina is full of talent and beauty. I originally came here in 1998 to receive my BA in Art (concentration in ceramics! go figure) and have lived here since.

Gritgoods makes every effort to have a low impact on the environment and buy locally. My business cards, tissue paper, and gift boxes are all made of 100% recycled material. I have a local supplier for stones, buy many supplies from my neighboring state, Tennessee, and also support many Etsy supplies sellers. I buy less than 5% of my supplies overseas. I keep sterling bits for recycling and support local movements like the Asheville Grown Business Alliance and Just Economics. Gritgoods is also a member of the Asheville Etsy Street Team.

Do you chew or swallow?

Everyone knows I love food, going out for food and cooking in. If you know me well you know I LOVE sea food. My most recent sea food binge has been with the slippery, pink, salty, squishy, juicy, delicious, RAW oyster. Only 10 calories each!



If you land on the side of humans who love to eat oysters (as opposed to the side of people who find them disgusting), then you are aware of the many ways to eat an oyster. Restaurants offer oysters prepared differently and individual people like their raw oysters prepared in specific way. Horseradish only, cocktail sauce only, a little lemon with tabasco sauce, or like me - just salt. I find them perfect just as they are with a little bit of salt to enhance the flavor. Second question is, do you chew or swallow? I saw on T.V. (the greatest of all knowledge resources) that the TRUE way to eat an oyster is to let it just slide down your throat. And I ask, where's the fun in that??? If you like oysters you like the taste, and one can hardly get a good taste if you just let it fall down your throat without chewing. I chew. I chew the hell out of them. It's the one food that I really love to savor (which may be hard to tell considering how fast I eat them).

So Fred and just went to our first all-you-can-eat-oysters night at Oysters on the West End in downtown Greenville. YUM! I disappointed myself by only being able to eat 3 dozen, and must retract any aforementioned desire to participate in oyster eating contests. I'm still up for all-you-can-eat, but the time constraints would just stress me out. Oyster eating is relaxing and I don't want to associate stress (or barfing half way through a 10-dozen challenge) with oyster eating.

So honk if you love raw oysters! And don't go through life without at least ONE all-you-can-eat-oyster night.

Winter

Nothing gets me through a long winter better than great company, cold winter walks, and hot pizza! This has been a snowy winter, as winter's go in the valley of WNC. What's great though is that I only have to travel 5 miles from home to find snow that is inches deeper than the snow on my own back porch! It's great! Snow is cold, damp, and gross when it turns brown from street dirt and car exhaust. But just minutes away there are quiet forests of white wonderful goodness. It takes me less time to drive to these magical places than it does to dress for the journey. Long johns, hiking boots, two pairs of socks, multi-layered tops, and of course a very, very old London Fog jacket.



Fred and I stopped into Blue Mountain Pizza to store some energy for the high winds and blistering snow pellets against our faces. Not long ago it was Stacy and I that took the same hike in the snow and filled up with Chai tea and goodies from the Well Bred Bakery. And toward the beginning of winter I went on a few hour long walks through the woods with Jessica (sun setting). Winter walks are 100 times better when they start with yummy food from local businesses, include good conversation, and end with stripping off wet jeans, throwing on pjs and sipping red wine. Here are a few pictures from my winter walks, worth the cold, wonderful memories, good company, beatufiul pictures. Must love the mountains.

New and LONG

Here are my latest designs! I've been making them long and slender, perfect for wearing your hair up to some shnazzy parties.

Those who know me know I don't dress up often, but if I did, this is what I'd wear! I'm also growing my hair out and I can't wait to complement the length of my hair with the length of these earrings.

I'm posting them here first so friends and family have first dibs. Act quick because I'll likely put them in the store next week. As of now there's no other pair like them, but it is possible I'll make a second or third pair depending on materials available.

I'll trade you one loud bird for two assassin insects

Well, that's not to say that I don't miss Giovanni from time to time. He was very cute and loving, in a needy bird way.

Now I am quite happy (having given up on a stubborn fish tank too) with two insects as pets. Granted one ate the other and I had to find a substitute, but now the three of us are hap hap happy in our Weaverville Apt. Suki, the mantis just laid her first egg sack, but due to the unfortunate lack of males in her pad the tiny ones will not hatch. She is now on a downhill path to certain death in about 4 months. The wheel bug also laid an egg sack that will not hatch (thank goodness). I would not want 150 wheel bug babies in my house.





Suki needs to clean her room because one can barely make it from side to side without walking into wings, legs and fur from her various insect meals. (yes I said fur). What else do you call the stuff on hairy sphinx moths? The poor cage-raised crickets keep tripping on las night's dinner. I imagine it's something like wandering around in a cage full of human bones. You know there's something there that has been dining on animals just like yourself, and it's only a matter of time before .... well, I won't say.






I'm just thankful to have some company around here on a daily basis. The wheel bug does not appreciate my teasing finger shadows on his glass cage walls. He keeps trying to catch them. It is quite a sight to see the front legs and long probiscus of a wheel bug flare up in front of you. But that's about the only "playing" I get to do with that one.

Suki is interesting to watch because whenever I look into her cage she swing her head around to look at me, which seems to say "how dare you!" She's either very private, or quite the snob.




Anyway, that's my version of pets in a pet free apartment complex. They can't be furry, so I got the ones that are poisonous and eat other insects.

Bern's Steak House

Ok, so the reason Fred and I flew to sunny, crazy Florida was to eat at Bern's Steak House. Fred described his memories of the restaurant to me and it sounded like THE place to eat steak. Seemed like a good idea so celebrate our birthdays in a big way because it's a big birthday for Fred :)

A family owned restaurant that includes it's own organic garden, cattle ranch, huge wine collection sounds wonderful doesn't it? To be a waiter there, one must apprentice for 5 years. As a diner one can spend 4 hours eating delicious steak, touring the kitchen and the wine cellar (the 100,000 bottle collection was impressive), and enjoying a private desert room upstairs. This made it all sound worth a trip to Florida.

Covered valet parking, replicas of sculptures made by famous artists, and a two story foyer were three pieces of the amazingly interesting decor. Other awesome adornments included a blood red carpet, school building ceilings, fold up tables and cheap antique chairs. Those things you will never find at a pricey restaurant in Asheville I felt confused. I'm thinking, is this for real? We are about to spend a couple hundred dollars in a restaurant with folding tables in a Stephen King's Shining-like atmosphere? It didn't even qualify as kitsch.

Not to mention that every other person dining there seemed to be there just to say they had been there. I was one of them! yikes. I had a great view of two teenagers that were either on their way to prom or very over dressed. And who brings their KIDS to a restaurant like this? Floridians.

Well, our server was very good. We tasted two wines before settling on a champagne to drink with our appetizers. We had a red with the steak that was fabulous. The appetizers were good, but not nearly as memorable as the tuna with wasabe appetizer we had at Snapper's the next night. The steak was steak. I'm not qualified to judge that. The sides that came with the steak ... not so good. And substituting other sides for the ones you don't want requires paying extra. I'm sorry though ... onion rings and onion soup???? Are you trying to kill me?

The real treat was the desert room. It felt private, had it's own music system, and also included very good service. I had cheesecake, chocolate ice cream with cocoa nibs, and fresh blackberries. Fred ordered us a flight of Taylor's port. We shared the 10 yr, 20 yr, 30 yr, and 40 yr. Nice. That was yummy. As it gets older it gets very smooth and yummy. Plus, it is cool to drink something that's older than I am.

To top off the night I got a mint coffee drink with some kind of alcohol in it. And that coffee drink put me over edge. 2 a.m. was not pretty.

So, my advice is: don't travel to Florida to find good food. Especially when you live in a city FULL of good food.

It's been a while ...

So, at least I know there's one person out there that notices when I don't post for a while :)

The random danger bug became the focal point of my Summer. When I wasn't dusting shelves at the Gallery of the Mountains or visiting my friend in Woodfin, I diligently searched for meals for my new pet wheel bug. He is quite well, and for those who do not look at my flickr page often, I have a plethora of photos of the wheel bug enjoying his meals.

I caught him as an adolescent and he has since molted once. I came home to find him 85 % outside of his old skin, and bright orange. I spoke with him about the inappropriateness of his little naked pink butt after I shot some nudes of him.

The other highlight of my Summer was taking a trip to Tampa. It was too short, and involved too much travel time, but seeing as how I took it with my favorite man, it was all worth it.

The highlights were 1. sitting in a cabana near the pool, drinking pina coladas, and watching the olympics on the private T.V. 2. Taking first class flights from ATL to Charlotte. We drank Jack and Cokes in the 15 minutes it took for the plane to fill up, ate milano cookies instead of "gourmet pretzels", and the flight attendant was very entertaining. Over the radio he said his name was Shaggy and that the other assistants were Velma and Daphne. He also said that in the event of an emergency we should put our own oxygen masks on before assisting a child, another customer, or a customer acting like a child. Lastly he made us laugh when he pointed out that "there may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there only 7 exits on the plane." That experience (and sitting next to my honey on the plane (the whole reason we upgraded to first class)) really made up for the time it took to get to and from ATL. 3. Driving around in a lipstick red mustang with a cup holder that lights up in different colors. 4. The food. We ate at two fantastic restaurants. Bern's Steak House is the reason we went to Tampa, and we also ate at Snapper's ( I think), which had awesome crab legs, and a tuna appetizer.

More about Bern's in another blog ... this is already getting lengthy :)

Random Danger Bug

So, if you haven't realized it by now, I am a random blogger. Now that I am nearly recovered from my devastating loss of Jackson and enjoying my Summer vacation, I take pictures a LOT!

So check it out; a vicious killer nymph. Ok, not a killer ... but it could hurt if it stuck it's long fang into your skin. Read what I found out about this "wheel bug nymph" in the comments area of my picture on flickr. If I'd known this bug could hurt me, I would have stayed further away.

Introducing Giovanni Jackson Benjamin Goodson-Graham

My cockatiel. He is sweet, cute and fun to watch. He doesn't say much, but we hope to teach him a few of the most important words in the English language (whatever words you are thinking of right now says a lot about who you are).





He showed up at our school last week trying to make his way into classrooms by pecking on windows and looking cute. Finally he realized that the best way to get into the building would be to land on a students shoulder and ride his way in. After finding an old cage and capturing our friend I volunteered to take him home. After all, I've been wanting a pet, but I'm not allowed to have big furry ones. I haven't checked the lease agreement to see if feathered ones are allowed. I will plead ignorance if I find I'm not supposed to have him.



He ate a lot of food his first days here, including a peanut butter cracker and a piece of english muffin with blueberry jam. He loves that I'm a jewelry maker, because all of the little shiny objects I use to make said jewelry are of absolute intrigue to Jackson(we've decided to go by his first middle name). He also enjoys being rubbed on his head and neck and any human shoulder is good enough to sleep or groom upon. Really. Anytime. Bathing, pooping, blogging, exercising ... he's on my shoulder. More pics of my new addition to come...

I have a new camera

Good macro capabilities. But I still can't tell if I took a picture of this thing's butt or it's head.

Great day in my life as an artist!

A picture I took at Maymont Park in Richmond, VA is published at Shmap. AND two pictures that I took during the DITLO project have been selected by the official DITLO judges!! Oh yeah, oh yeah, doing the fantastical day dance!

DITLO-Asheville, 36 hours of fun

A Day In The Life of Asheville. Last weekend a 36 hour event took place that allowed us to stay out late and take photographs of Asheville! Fred, Catherine and I went out Friday night to take some shots, and Fred and I went out again on Saturday. Between the two of us we took over 500 pictures. If you haven't joined flickr, now is the time. There will probably be another DITLO project in the Fall and it is a lot of fun. Check out all of the photos in the DITLO project by clicking on the title of this blog. Mine are here, Catherine's are here, and Fred's are here. Anything with a tag "ditloa2008submit" is part of the project. The winning pictures will go up at the Pact Library, but I'm not sure when. Enjoy looking at the photos and become a flickr member!
Friday we started in the parking garage, went down to wall street, then met up with Catherine and photographed the "Women in Black." Various shots were taken on the streets of downtown Asheville, and after dinner at the Laughing Seed, dancing at the drum circle and a trip further down to the Cox Ave. Pizza Co., Fred and I took a break at the Thirsty Monk. Saturday was just as fun, so look at the photos to seen where we've been.

New Designs

You will always find the newest designs on my blog. These are not on Etsy yet. Let me know if you're interested in buying a pair before I put them on Etsy.

My Spring Break Keeps Getting Better

I went down to Georgia to visit my good friends Lil and Sarah. Fun was had by all. The High Museum is huge and had some great shows up. We saw black and white photos of motorcyclist, and rallies from the 60's and 70's, sat and pondered minimalism, got busted for taking photographs of the artwork, enjoyed learning about Georgia O'keeffe and other fine female artists in the Stieglitz circle of friends, and saw a bunch of boring ancient art that they spent a ton of money on, just to move it from the Louvre (some of it was cool. Napolean and Joshephine had a fine collection of expensive, decorative items, and the exhibit also displayed some interesting Egyptian art).

The exhibits were fantastic, and the architecture in the building was even MORE fantastic (only so because I can legally take pictures of the architecture, but not the art). The elevator featured a peep hole in the ceiling. The permanent collection wound around a 4-story high atrium, where Lil and I crashed for 5 minutes to catch our breath. We did not get to the four levels of the permanent collection, so if anyone wants to make a trip with me, I'm all for going back. You drive. It took me 2 hours to get out of the city on Friday.

So check out additional pictures at "Me on Flickr" and write comments. I love comments :)

Beautiful Gardens

The botanical gardens in Richmond are beautimus! They have a huge place for kids to play, a live band, a Japanese garden, a huge greenhouse, and 2 places to eat. I highly recommend seeing it if you go to Richmond.

They had tons of orchids and cacti. See more pictures on "Me at flickr".

Spring is here!

It's still cold, but the crazy thunderstorms tell me that Spring is here!

AND! Fred got a job in Greenville!!! They offered him a position just 2 hours after his interview! This means he will move within the next month! Spring brings good things!

Not to mention weird skies. Here's another blow-your-mind photo of the sky outside of my apartment. BTW - I did NOT alter the colors in this photo!

Dragonflies to Come

The results of the snow days are up on etsy. I post a new pair everyday. That's 2 minutes of something to do for 16 days in a row.

Celebrate the upcoming season in style :)

I love snow days

Still flip flopping back and forth between "I want to teach" and "I don't want to teach."

So, it's nice to get a break. I've been working on jewelry stuffs all day. I made 16 pairs of earrings, 7 new designs. I am addicted.

The snow was gorgeous and inspirational. Even though it snowed today I also felt inspired to think that Spring is still just around the corner. I caught another beautiful sunset through my front window.

Future

My student teaching is going better than I expected. I am really enjoying teaching math and science. I think I could teach special ed math and science on the high school level if I got a hold of some of the text books. It's funny to think that I like reading text books. I prefer the text books with pictures. :)

I have a lot of choices to make about my future. Is there any time when one doesn't have a lot of choices to make about the future? I'll be glad to do something I feel good about doing, something that challenges me, but doesn't burn me out.

So many options.

In the meantime I'm getting excited about the prospects of having a jewelry business. Organizing a year of different earrings, photos and sales is a daunting task. I approach it like I used to approach cleaning my room as a teenager (haha). It feels good to be more serious about my business and make progress towards it being successful. The best realization a person can make is to know "It's up to ME!"

Like my latest? Keep checking back at gritgoods.etsy.com

Quick Crafting before Reality sets in again

I have made 16 pairs of earrings in 2 days. I'm trying to crank out some work before school and work get up to speed. Reality can be such a bummer.

So check out gritgoods.etsy.com again and look at the 5 things I've already posted or check out gritgoods on flickr to see all the up and coming adornments. I'll put them on Etsy a few at a time, so don't expect to see them all there just yet. If you see a pair you like, let me know and I'll save them for you :)