Orange

I often grapple with the notion of acquiring a beadmaking style. I'm pretty eclectic with my beadmaking. There are certain things I go back to again and again, like florals, which I find very challenging and would like to do better, or "reactive" glass beads, which appeal to the mad scientist in me. Other than that I tend towards making more long beads than round ones, styled in what ever my inspiration of the moment happens to be. I like it when my inspiration comes from new places. Most every morning I stop at my favorite coffee shop to feed my caffeine addiction and chat with my coffee shop friends. It just so happens that the barista does stained glass, so when business is slow often chat about glass. She always tells me I should make earings. I agree, I should, because I love earings, but I think they are hard because it is difficult to make them match as well as I'd like. Last week we had the earring discussion again, but this time I asked "What color?" and she said "Orange. I don't have any orange earrings" Orange is not a color I'm particularly drawn to, in fact, many of first beads were orange because it was color I didn't mind wasting; I figured I'd save the "good" colors for when I was more experienced. So last week I worked in orange, and actually had fun with it. I ended up being pretty happy with my orange earrings, and my coffee shop friend was both surprised and delighted when I presented her with a earrings this morning as I paid for my coffee. It's alway fun to suprise someone with an unexpected gift!

Check in....

Geez, I guess I've been a bit remiss in the blogarama world lately. I've been nursing a headache all week. I don't know if I'm getting sick like Sarah was a week ago, or if I'm suddenly allergic to something, or just stressed or what; either way, it hasn't made for a terribly productive week. But I guess that's enough whining for now.

My big news for the week is that after his trip last weekend to check out the school, Matt has decided he wants to go to college at Ft. Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. Matt is interested in video editing and photography, and the program there seems stronger than what's offered at Westminster College here in Salt Lake, his other school choice. The proximity to mountain biking and skiing may have have helped aid in his decision. He was was jazzed to see the dorm rooms all have bicycle hooks... definitely his kind of place.

Now I just have to get used to the idea of my baby moving away in the fall. I know experiencing new people and places is a valuble part of college life and will be good for Matt, but I know I'm going to miss him. Poor Sarah is sad he's going away to school, but she'll get used to the idea. I am truly blessed that my kids love each other and are really good friends. A mom can't ask for much more.



So what do you think of this little red car? It's the rental that the insurance company paid for for 10 days while we looked for a replacement for Matt's wrecked car. It funny they gave us red, since all our cars are red. I like little cars, so I had fun driving it instead of the "bus" (for hauling teens) I normally drive. My favorite part about using this car for the week was the comment Sarah made when she first:

"It looks like a car that five clowns should come out of!"

She and her friends laughed whenever we drove it somewhere. To be honest. I've always loved clowns so I thought it fun!

My Loose Screws

The camera I use for my digital pictures is a Pentax Optio S5, the tiny camera that will actually fit in an Altoids can. It is actually my second digi-cam, my first was a Toshiba that took excellent pictures, but after a day at school with my daughter, ceased to work. For my second camera I decided to go small. One advantage of digital is being to take as many pictures as you want, with out having to worry about film and processing costs, so why not get a camera that can easily be taken everywhere so you can take pictures when ever you want. It's not exactly a fine professional camera, but considering it's size I think it does a great job. I've had that camera for three years now, and most of the time it has been floating around in my purse, unprotected, or in my pocket, or beach bag or knapsack. I recently noticed that a bunch of the screws that held the case together had fallen out. Things were seeming a little loosey-goosey, so I figured I'd better look into getting some new screws before my beloved little camera totally fell apart. I called Pentax's service department, where I pretty quickly got connected with a live service person. I fully expected to be told that it would cost me $50 or some other ridiculous amount to repair my 3 year old $200 camera, but I was prepared to bite the bullet and purchase them. I was completely surprised when the woman sent. "We'll just send you a set of screws, what is your address?" "You mean for free?" I asked. "They're such an inexpensive item, and shipping is $8.00 minimum, so it's not worth charging for them" she replied. I was shocked. It's not often a big company gives you anything for free. My screws came today, and sure enough the invoice was for $0.00, with no shipping charges. It sure is refreshing to get such great customer service!

Big Spring

So what do you think of this bead? For me it is a fat bulky bead, I seem to tend towards slender beads. I kept adding to it, and it kept growing, and by the time I finished encasing it was a fatty. (Like it's momma LOL!) I named it "Big Spring". It will be interesting to see if anyone in the ebay world likes it. Even though it's not my "normal" style, (as if such thing exists!) I have a vision of how I'd use this bead. I picture a long multistrand necklace made with an assortment of seed beads and other small beads. The bead would have silver bead caps, or Bali spacers on both ends and hang vertically. I would have loopy dangles of the same small beads coming out of the bottom. It's too bad I don't get around to string things more often. I'm allways collecting beads and stringing materials, but it is rare for me to get around to using them. It seems that when I have free time, I tent to turn on my torch. Maybe someday I'll have more leisure time and actually work on all there stringing ideas tossing around in my head. Who knows, if the auction gods don't favor this bead, maybe I'll actually string it up.

Sexy beads in the spring time.

So do you think this bead is sexy? When I posted this picture in the LE gallery I was told that it had a sexy shape. I've never thought of my beads as sexy... maybe I should do more beads in that shape... they can be my porn bead series!



So remember my pretty spring tulips? This is what they looked like when I came home from work today. Spring in Utah. 70 degrees one week, snow the next.

Eleven!

Perhaps you caught my post the other day about the weird occurrence of the number 11 in my ebay actions. Johanna of Canyon Echoes Lampwork was the person with 110 feedback score. She won the auction, and my posting feedback for her lightning fast payment bumped her feedback up to 111. So what was up with my eleven day? I guess I don't really know, but it turns out that there are other people out there pondering the importance of numbers. Johanna (Thanks!!!) sent me this cool link, that explains all about the significance to the number 11.

Number Eleven possesses the qualities of intuition, patience, honesty, sensitivity, and spirituality, and is idealistic. Others turn to people who are 'Eleven' for teaching and inspiration, and are usually uplifted by the experience.

I'd say 11 seems like a nice number, I'm glad to have had an 11 day!!

Spring Garden

Did I ever mention that I like flowers? This bunch of tulips in my garden looked particularly stunning to me this weekend. My tulips are looking a little thin to me this year, I think I'm going to have to remember to plant more this fall. I haven't gone on a fall tulip planting binge in a bunch of years. I think that year I bought something like 300 bulbs taught me a valuble lesson in moderation - I never thought I'd get all those bulbs planted. Gardening is such a love hate thing. I love the results, but am not always thrilled to do all the work. I did more spring weeding this weekend, mostly clearing unwanted things from my backyard perennial garden. I wish there was some sort of gardeners force field that would keep things were you want them; like periwinkle up on the hill but not in garden, a small patch of that pretty lavender flower rather than one that wants to overtake the entire garden. As I weeded out the rouge periwinkle and other invasives I felt like I was finding buried treasure, a young daylily buried here, some columbine buried there. Hopefully they will reward my labor with some pretty blooms this summer.




This is one of those beads I can't quite decide what to think of. It has a mossy, earthy look that I really like, but it it has a "fall" feel that seems out of place this time of year. I'll probably have to revist these colors in the fall.

Trash Talk

I had a nice a workday on Monday. We had a visiting scientist who does research in the same area as one of our lab's projects. So rather than doing "real" work on Monday I got to spend time meeting with my boss and this scientist, got taken to lunch, attended a seminar and was trained to do new analysis techniques. My boss was even nice enough to invite me to dinner with his wife and our guest. Prior to going out to dinner my boss invited us up to his house to take in the view (he has a nice house with am amazing view) and enjoy a glass of wine. It must have been trash day in my bosses neighborhood; everyone's trash cans were out at the curb. As we drove up to his house Lorna, the visiting scientist, who happens to be from England, asked what we called our big wheeled cans. "Trash cans, garbage cans" I responded. "What do you call them in England?" Her answer was "Wheelie bins"! You know, I love that name. It is much more fun than trash can or garbage can. So from now on my refuse is going out in the "Wheelie bin" and I intend to convince my friends and neighbors to do the same! So if you have a big wheeled dumpster at you house, you need to start calling it a "wheelie bin"!

Eleven...

Today I've had an interesting ebay numbers day. I have 6 auctions up, as of last night one had a bid already. The bidder on that auction has feed back of 110 (at the moment I write this at least). I decided to peak at my auctions from work this morning, and was delightedly shocked to see that two more beads have bids, by different bidders, both of whom have a feedback of 11. One of those bids came at 11 minutes after 9, and today is 11th day of April. There seem to be a lot of 11's in my world today. What do you suppose that means, other that that I perhaps I should post this post at 11:11 on the 11th?

Happy Easter!

Happy Chocolate Lagomorph Effigy day! I wish I could say I made that up, but it was really Andrea Jane on LE that coined that greeting. It really appeals to the biology nerd in me!

My weekend could have been better. I "put out" my back Saturday morning. I wish I had some great story about climbing a high peak, or skiing off a cliff, or jogging 20 miles messing up my back, but in reality I was in my studio and bent over to toss something in the trash and "tweak", I got that bad feeling in back. Instead of resting it I spent the day gardening...digging all the *$%^$#&* grass out of my gardens and from the perimeters of all my front yard flower beds. I have a lot of flower beds. Our clay soil is pretty much like concrete, especially first thing in the spring, so you can't just pull weeds; you have to dig (jackhammer!) them out. It was difficult, as I couldn't stand up straight, so I'd turn a few spade fulls of weedy dirt, then sit down and break up the clumps of dirt to pull out the freaking grass. So now my back is killing me, but at least my front yard is cleaned up and ready for me to plant annuals when the frost date passes.

Today I decided I better be nice to my screwed up back, so after my family went out and had a nice Easter breakfast with my next door neighbors and the neighbors across the street I decided to drive the 78 miles up to the hot springs for a nice soak. There is something wonderfully therapeutic about soaking in hot mineral baths. In a total nerd alert moment, I decided to catch up on some scientific reading for work while I soaked. This actually caused a high school student, who was actually interested in the journal article I was reading, to strike up a conversation with me. It turns out she is keenly interested in science, so we had a really nice chat. She had actually taken learned to use prepare samples for and use an electron microscope as part of a (sadly, now defunct) high school program. It was actually really refreshing to meet a kid who was so interested in learning. Our science conversation sure got us a lot of funny looks from patrons at the springs! It added a nice twist to day.

So now I'm laying in bed, resting my back, surfing the web and watching tonight's ebay offerings not sell (my weird beads!), except the for the one in todays picture, which actually thrilled me by getting a couple of bids. Hopefully my back will calm down before I have to go to work tomorrow.

Weird Beads?

Are these beads too weird? If you know anything about my bead making "style" you know that I: a. love to experiment, b. like to make beads in many shapes and styles, and c. am always hoping to discover something new and different and exciting. The problem with trying to do things that are "different" is sometimes it's hard to know if what you've created is "different good" or just "different weird". For some reason, I really like elongated focal beads. When I get in the mood to make jewelery, I like to turn them into focal pendants. So I rather like these. Although it's hard to capture in photos, they are encased and have nice depth. I'm especially fond of the pink one. Rubino on silver pink encased in a pale pinkish-violet made an interesting magenta color. But as much as I like them, judging by the lack of bids and watchers on ebay, I'm guessing I may have crossed over the line to "Different Weird". I guess I'll have to wait and see. Even if they don't sell, it's always fascinating to see what people like, and what people don't. Sometimes the ebay experiment is almost as fun as the bead making experiments.

Old friends and weird cosmic experiences..

I know I've mentioned this before but I am always amazed and intrigued by the phenomena that I call "weird cosmic experiences"; which I define as those odd times when the stars and the moon seem to align in a meaningful away. Sometimes I want to call them "weird cosmic coincidences" but I deep down they don't seem like coincidences, but things that for some unknown reason are just meant to be.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about my old favorite tie-dyed t-shirt. In that entry I mentioned that I had forgotten the name of the woman who had the tie-dye parties and taught me to tie-dye. On Saturday I need to fill a prescription, and since it was such a nice a day (and Matt had my car anyway) I decided to walk Daisy down to the walk up prescription window at Smiths. As I approached the window I saw a familiar face, and the pharmacy tech said "We played softball together!" Sure enough, it was Alisa (yeah for name tags), a woman from my intramural softball team 10+ years ago, who also happened to be woman threw the tie-dye party! It's funny how I had just recently been thinking of her and poof, bumped into her after not seeing her for ten years. As it turns out, after having two kids she decided it was time for a career change (she had been a lab tech like me) and was now in pharmacy school, and working at the pharmacy by my house. We had a really nice chat, I had always liked her and it was nice to catch up on what she'd been doing. I'm looking forward to bumping into her at the store again.

I find it sad that people come and go so easily from our lives. I guess it's only natural that people's lives head off in different directions, and it is so hard to keep track of all the people who have touched our lives. It's really nice when they pop back into your life, even for just a brief chat.