Whew! That's a lot of pictures to put up in one day! Now I'm going to get back to some silver I'm working on. I want to get a kiln full of silver fired so that I can clean up my tools and open a package of BRONZclay! Yes, you heard me right!

I'm also going to update the beads for sale pages soon.

I love Summer! I hope all my friends and family are having as nice a Summer as I am.

-- Posted on June 19, 2008

June 19th. I have been trying to catch the kitten for 5 days now. I almost had her yesterday with a crate held up with a stick tied to a long string. The kitten finally went under the crate and started to eat the chow. But the crate was sort of small so I waited until both front paws were in the bowl and the kitten was munching excitedly. My heart was pounding! I yanked the string! ...and the plastic crate sort of slow-mo floated down and the kitten was Out Of There like lightning.
Darn crate was too light weight to fall fast enough to catch the little thing. I went home frustrated and Charlie decided that I was spending too much time in the ticky woods and he went out and bought a live trap at Rural King. I took it back to the woods and baited it with chow in the now familiar plastic Cool Whip bowl and left it just on the edge of the woods.
As soon as I got home from work I went to check the trap. I had caught an Opossum. And the kitten was No Where To Be Found. No kitten meows coming from anywhere. That trap snapping shut and the possum making all that trapped opossum racket probably scared the little kitten and he/she no longer felt safe there and he had R.U.N.N.O.F.T.
I let the opossum out and dragged my stupid self home. The live trap was a mistake.

I went back there this evening to tell Deb what I thought had happened and that the kitten was lost. She's the nice neighbor who owns the property and has been helping to catch the kitten. And our little kitten was there! At Deb's house! We still haven't caught him/her but she is much safer there in her yard and her tom cat is showing the kitten around. Norman will show the kitten where the cat chow is kept on the porch. Happy Ending! What a freaking ordeal. May I just repeat how I really hate people who dump.

-- Posted on June 15, 2008

I went back last evening to look for the kitten and check to see if the food I'd left had been eaten. Food was untouched. But the kitten was mewing close by so I tried for another hour and a half to catch him. This time I met my nice neighbor, Debra, and we tried to corner him, coral him, and tempt him with shaky box kitty food. No dice. So we both left food for him and I was too tuckered out and had to go home to shower and remove 9 ticks. Yuck!

After I got up and had some coffee this morning I put on long jeans with socks pulled over the pants legs, long sleeve cotton shirt and sprayed myself real well with bug repellant.
Went to check on the kitten and the food had been untouched. Called "kitty, kitty" and meowed for a long time but no kitten answer. I went and checked the other food dish that Debra left and it was untouched too. Not a good sign.

So I came home and thought that since I was all bug sprayed down I would just go over the yard and spray weed killer on some poison ivy that my friend Kathleen pointed out to me. Then before I knew it I was heavily involved in trimming grass and pulling out vines clearing along the fence so the grapevines can get more sun. I am pooped again and it is only 11:30. I have blisters on my fingers and need another shower.

I'm glad my vacation is almost over because I need to go back to work and get some rest!

-- Posted on June 14, 2008

Took Angel for a jog/walk but she didn't feel well, looked like a tummy ache. So I cut the walk short and on the way home we heard a kitten mewing in about the same spot I found EB 2 years ago. After I couldn't get the kitten to come out of the bushes, I took Angel home and came back with a pet carrier and the RAV4. I crawled through the brushy woods for about 3 hours trying to catch the kitten. There may have been two of them. I finally was exhausted and covered in ticks so I gave up. I hate people who dump! I would like to hurt them. Seriously. I feel bad for the kittens that are probably going to starve and then meet with a bad end. So damned sad.

I got home from the Bead & Button show last Sunday. The show was great! I took two classes; one was so-so but I still learned the stuff I was interested in knowing. The other class was great. Then Leslie and I shopped all the venders. I bought pretty much all the supplies I will need for quite a while. The drive home was very bad. There was a tornado just south of Chicago on my route. It was extremely frustrating driving and what should have been an 8 hour drive took 12 hours. Oh well.

-- Posted on May 29, 2008

Good news today! Look who's driving!

Then while we were all still whooping and hollering etc. the Fed EX guy pulled up and unloaded Charlie's new trike!



Travis took me for a short drive and then Angel and I took a short walk while Charlie assembled his new vehicle. We went for a spin around the park. This has been a busy day.

Finished project -- Posted on May 16, 2008

Oh boy, a long thought out project is finally finished. It is a bracelet that I made for a friend's son's bride. Her name is Sarehna. I think a lot of this just-starting-out couple and I wanted Sarehna to be surprised with something special. I noodled for quite a while about the button clasp which I made with PMC. Once that was done I had to make a LOT of white-on-white small round beads. I made twenty or so of the beads then embarked on the weaving/assembly of the bracelet. I was about 2/3 done with it when I realized that I needed yet MORE white-on-white lampwork beads, and back to the torch I went. Thankfully, neither EB or Biscuit found the 10 dangling cords at my project desk tempting to eat and destroy while I got the extra beads made. Sarehna loves the bracelet and she intends to wear it for the wedding! I was secretly hoping she would and I am really glad that it fit her wrist. I would have been pleased for her to wear it and enjoy it on the honeymoon, so imagine how thrilled I am that she likes it enough to wear for the ceremony! Anyway, here is a picture of the bracelet.

You know, I don't think that picture really shows how this pieces sparkles and WoWs. Try again:


This picture was taken outside with natural light. A little better. I must say, silver is hard to photograph, and white-on-white beads are hard to photograph. Together; a challenge.


This next project is something I made to wear to the upcoming Bead & Button Show in Milwaukee next month. It is one of my curved beads along with some matching short tubular beads. I snipped apart an old pukka shell necklace that I haven't worn for years and used the pukka shells and some small turquoise beads for the filler. It has one of my PMC clasps for the closure too.



I wonder what other old stuff I have that I should snip apart and use? Hmmm...

-- Posted on April 12, 2008

It was a beautiful day yesterday and Charlie had just bought a new handheld GPS. So we went GeoCaching. We went to Cedar Lake where there was a cache called "Ce Da Lake" LOL. We hiked a little over a mile both ways, took off shoes and socks to wade through two creeks and followed the path up and down the hills through the beautiful woods. Trilliums were coming up in patches all along the way and we had a great hike. We found the cache too! It must have been a real new one because we were only the second people to sign the log.

On the way back Charlie's shoes blew up.

-- Posted on March 21, 2008

Today is our 22nd Anniversary! Hooray!
Charlie is putting up a new Martin house pole and it is another (Two in a row) beautiful Spring day. A bit windy but still very nice.

-- Posted on February 28, 2008

I went to a party last weekend and made a new necklace to wear. It features a Patti Walton pendant that I bought about a year ago. The clasp came from the Bead & Button Show 2006. I'd been saving the clasp for *just the right project*.