Thursday, July 26, 2012

Turning Point in My Summer

I've felt like my peonies have been shaking their angry tight fists at the skies for weeks.
I know I have.
Mid- July and they still hadn't bloomed.
 Rain and grey every day and none of those scorching temps that the States are having.
( oh yes, we in Alaska call those other places "Outside" or "the States"
or "the lower 48'

But wait... could it be?

and I've gotten about a half cup of strawberries from our plants now

So luscious

I may have to harvest these broccoli florets today before the moose gets them.

Things have been growing so slowly with temps that seem to be hovering between 49 and 59 F
( that's 9.5 and 15C)
So far this summer.

The flower baskets have done rather well.
It's a turning point because honey is coming home on Saturday after being gone 5 weeks and then I'm leaving for Maine for a couple of weeks on Wednesday.
I'm already kind of ramping down on making stuff and listing in my shop until I get back.

The sun has come out this week PLUS I have a visitor out here in the boonies.
And I'm shaking this whatever thing that took away my voice for 5 days and had me in scary coughing fits too.
What a change in my spirits now.
Julio's in his early 70's and shows you how it's done staying young at heart.

Here I am trying to show you how my new earrings from Pinmolly look.
I know you can't see them but somehow I like how this photo made me look younger.
must be the hazy reflection....
or the bewildered stare?

trying again...oh well...sorry about that. 
But I love them!
OK, here they are all properly photographed by Tracy

This week I started wearing glasses all the time. 
It's an adjustment and seems to magnify the long distance visual disturbances I was having but seem to be an improvement for up close work and reading.

I hauled out some old colored leather that I had bought way back when.
Sometimes you need to revisit old supplies.
and I had to try designing with my own studnik too.

I got these recycled glass bottle top rings on Etsy.
I thought they would be fun to work with.
You can see a few beads that I won on Petra's giveaway too.
I'm hoarding the extra special ones for the time being...you know how it is!
I won these lovelies with my silly douche bag joke.
I'll have to thank my ex husband for that. I think it's one of the few jokes that I ever remember.

One of my lampworked copper pieces folded over and fastened here.


I thought I'd show you what my copper matchsticks look like before I enamel them.
I was going to show them being torched but the photo came out kind of vague so I didn't.

My enamel piles

and frit piles.


So now I'm going to be on a bit of a break until mid-August.
Most likely I'll be checking in with you all from time to time and perhaps showing you a bit of Maine.
And a welcome to any of you new visitors. I hope you like what you see.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Announcement

There's a giveaway going on over at Kristi Bowman's blog.
It's not these earrings but I just wanted to show you how she paired my criffles with her snakeskin bails.
Pretty cool I'd say!

Some new stuff going up over at my Etsy shop.
I was on a bit of a lull in my head. I wish I could blame it on the heat  but it's kind of the opposite up here in the subarctic 64th parallel.
waking up to more grey and rain and 49 F degrees.
Oh, let's see it's up to 59 today, woot!
In any casee I'll be off on a trip back east to Maine in a few weeks to enjoy some perfect summer weather by the bay hopefully.

moose toothily crusty nail bit



I was so excited by my new sampler pack of enamels.
I still have the same enamels that I started with back 15 years ago.
I wasn't going through them all that fast just rolling my beads in them.
But now this copper enameling operation is using it up much faster.
There were all these new colors that I hadn't seen before!
Turns out they were transparent rather than the opaque I had always been using. 
So the effect was a bit different, some may work. I rather like the way these came out.

Monday, July 9, 2012

My Vitreous Humour

If you read my last post about my worries about the visual disturbances I was experiencing and how I was worried that it might have something to do with all of the torching I'd been doing recently, I have since had the occasion to go to an eye doctor to find out what's going on with my eyes.
Good news and bad news.
Good news is it's not from torching
Bad news is that it's nothing that can be fixed.
Ironically enough I am relieved that there's nothing that can be done and I don't have to curtail my artistic efforts. How's that for some reasoning?

It's my vitreous humour
My eye jelly is liquifying
Syneresis
I'm experiencing a vitreous tug which is causing the spots or shadows in my distance vision.
It will soon totally separate and there may be more exciting visuals to contend with.
But now I can try to ignore it rather than obsess about street signs pixelating in the distance.
Oh, and I  have an astigmatism!
and I should be using #4 strength reading glasses and not #2 as I have been.
And I'll be sporting progressive lenses all the time
not just reading glasses any more.
It's because I'M GETTING OLD!

And on top of that I saw this little guy

Turn into this
...celebrating my son's 29th birthday this last weekend.
Happy birthday Cass-man!
( Cassidy)

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

New Components

Taking a side trip to explore some new components.


These are crusty lampwork glass bead caps or they could be considered beads in themselves.
They certainly are NOT going to be uniform in any way other than color and being domed.
Cuz you know that's the way I roll...randomnosity
Criffles' little cousins. 
I need to come up with a name for these caps.
randomnosities?

I'm already feeling like high grading them for myself which only means I need to make more.



A studnik sandwich anyone?

I'm taking a bit of a break from the matchsticks as I have been experiencing some vision problems.
Probably has nothing to do with the torch but I thought I'd take a break just the same.
I have an eye doctor appointment on Thursday.
I'll be listing some of these babies soon.


more steampunkture



da undaside

loving each other

Lampwonk shiny feeler gap gauge

So I was doing a little destash and helping out a fellow designer that said she might be running a little low on supplies. We just can't have that. And knowing that she's on a neutrals color spree currently that made it a little easier to pare down the choices.
What I didn't expect is that it would turn into a trade and I got this pile of goodies back!

And she sent me these! 
She went straight to work with the supplies.
You can already see how she made a moose's tooth into a pin!
or you can check out her blog Darlicious Rejuvenations here