So, a thing about being an artist with brain damage is that I tend to forget things exist if I can't see them. While I have a remarkably good inventory of my supplies in my head, as anyone who's ever watched me rummage through bead boxes and hand them the one with the [insert obscure gemstone here] in it can tell you, I'm not good at coming up with combinations of materials on my own - I have to pull things out and see them.

Which is one of the reasons why the Bowl of Doom has lived on my workbench for the past decade and then some: it sparks ideas. Beads tumble over each other and I see connections and combinations and coordinating colors or textures and it's a glorious source of creative inspiration.

(The other reason is that I'm often too lazy to be bothered putting away stray beads properly, and it's much easier to just hurl them into the Bowl of Doom. It originally started as a to-be-put-away bowl, and eventually I realized that was never going to happen and learned to embrace the Bowl of Doom for the useful thing that it is.)

When I moved the studio downstairs, I put the Bowl of Doom up on the top of the repurposed bookcase behind my chair, where I figured it would be relatively safe from cats and small children. Unfortunately, that also meant it was slightly out of sight, which meant... I forgot about it until tonight, when I was walking through the room and noticed it and realized I hadn't been using it. In less than a minute I'd fished out a dozen things I wanted to work, and I remembered all over again just how useful it really is.

So I've moved it onto the worktable that sits in front of me, where I can see it and rummage through out for inspiration when I run out of ideas on my own. It'll still need to go back up on the bookcase when there are smaller kids around, because it is the choking hazard to end all choking hazards, but I'll try to remember to bring it back down after the anklebiters leave... because it's glorious inspirational chaos.