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.

Nerd alert!

The good thing that happened the day Matt had his accident: when I returned to work that afternoon I noticed the little hillside by my building was covered in these wonderful purple flowers.

I recognized them immediately as a flower I should know from college. I majored in botany, and took taxonomy in the spring of my freshman year, so I studied lots of spring flowers. This one was Speedwell (common name) or veronica sp. (scientific name). Could I possibly have remembered that correctly after all these years? A quick google search when I got back the lab confirmed that I did indeed remember correctly. An accomplishment I think, as I took that taxonomy class way back in spring of ’79! Yeah, I know, another nerd alert moment for sure. (I am what I am!) I wonder how many truly useful and important things I have forgotten to allow room on my brain to remember my plant taxonomy for 28 years!


Spring weather being what it is, here’s a shot of that same hillside taken a week later!

Thank you!

I wanted to thank everyone for their concern and comments about Matt's car accident. I think I proved that saying "everyone loves a train wreck" (OK, car wreck!). My blog page had over 200 hits on Thursday! Normally a "good" day would only be about 20 hits. Hopefully it reminded everyone to drive carefully and defensively.

Another thing you often "hear" is that most accidents happen right near home. Sure enough, Matt was less than a mile from when he had his accident. Sandy's sad story, written on my comments page, reiterated how tragedy can happen just blocks from home. I have always been a seat belt nazi, regardless of whether I was driving 1 mile, or 10 miles, from home. People who don't use seat belts, or worse yet, don't buckle up their kids, really irritate me. Because it was never an option, my kids know to always buckle up, but I'm always shocked that when I pile five of my kids friends in my car I nearly always have to remind someone to buckle up. I never would have guessed that I would have to ask "Is everybody buckled?" to a bunch of teenagers just as I asked when they were tots. You'd think they'd all know better!

Thank goodness for airbags!

The bad part of my day... that phone call every mom of driving teenager fears. "I've been in an accident"... This is what's left of our '99 Chevy Prism after t-boning a Toyota Sequoia. My son was driving straight up the street when the other car pulled out of a side street to make a left hand turn. He slammed on the brakes but couldn't avoid the accident. All I can say is thank goodness for airbags!!! My son was pretty shaken up, is a bit bruised from the airbag(his chest hurts!), but is OK. The Sequoia was driven by a 17 year old girl with two passengers. The kids were all out of school for lunch hour.

When I arrived on the scene I made sure Matt was OK, talked to the sheriff and when the paramedics were finally done with them I walked over and spoke to the girls. I wanted to make sure they were OK. The three girls were pretty upset, the driver in tears but otherwise seemed fine. I felt really bad for them. I asked if their parents had come because they seemed quite alone. The driver pointed out a man walking around taking pictures and said it was her dad. It struck me as weird that the dad never came and said anything to my son or to me. He never even made eye contact with us. I keep thinking that if my son had caused the accident, I would have spoken to the other party, made sure nobody was hurt, apologized, discussed insurance or something. Does that seem odd to anyone besides me?

So Matt's poor car is toast, I suppose the good thing is that it wasn't his fault, although I have to admit that I'm just so thankful he is OK I'm not even worried about the car or the blame. I've never been in accident were airbags deployed. He said it was pretty scary. His knit hat got knocked right off his head, and if you look at the windshield you can see cracks on the passenger side where the airbag broke the window. He said the scariest thing was getting out of the car, feeling dazed, and realizing that nobody was getting out of the other car. He was afraid they were really hurt, and was quite relieved when he found out they were fine. I'm glad they had side curtain airbags.

So hug your kids, as you never know when something bad can happen!

Flip flops day four!

It is hard to believe that today is the 20th of March and I have been wearing flip flops for the last four days. On Saturday I took Daisy jogging down to the gully for her first swim of the year. I wore a tank top and shorts and was actually hot! In March! My crocuses have already bloomed and wilted and I have a single daffodil flower in my front yard. I don't recall ever having such spring-like weather this early in the year. Of course it won't last, the temperature is supposed to drop tonight and snow is predicted for the mountains. But while the spring was in the air I was inspired to make some springy beads.

So how does one define success on ebay?
Is total number of sales, total dollars of sales, high bid per auction? Ebay is an interesting venue. Prior to taking up lampworking I never would have guessed it would be an outlet for selling beads, and as a long time non-seller, it looked pretty intimidating to me. Thousands of lampwork bead listings, some sell, some don’t. Some sell for hundreds, or even thousands; others for dollars or pennys or not all.

As a hobbyist who has just recently begun to dabble in the ebay world it is really unclear to me how I would define success. I have to admit I'm at the stage where I'm thrilled to have a watcher or two, I'm thrilled when my number of views actually goes up, thrilled to get a bid and really thrilled when I get more than one, although that is rare. Today my auction selling success sits at 70%, I have no idea if that is good for a newbie or not, but I'm certainly not complaining.

Last week I had two ebay treats. My first trifecta - 3 beads for sale and they all sold. That was exciting for me. I listed more beads that night and had a bid with in an hour or so, and a bid on another bead by morning. Usually they languish and get a bid on the last day if I'm lucky, so getting early bids was really nice.

Tonight I had another exciting monment. I actually got sniped! Imagine my suprise when I checked my auction and in the last minute it went from one bidder to three! Woohoo! What a fun game ebay can be!!!

Another thing I am really happy about. Repeat buyers! I think of all the ebay things I find pleasing it is having repeat buyers that makes me the happiest! It is certainly a wonderful feeling to have someone come back for more! I don't know if anyone who has bought my beads reads here, but if you do, thank you very much!

I got home a little late last night since I stopped to pick up pizza on the way home from work. It was a little after 6 and my son was home but my daughter wasn’t there. I asked Matt if he knew where Sarah was and he said “no”, that he had just gotten home form work and that she wasn’t there and he had no idea where she was. Since 6 PM is check-in time I was a little miffed. After about a half and hour I said to Matt “Give your sister a call and find out where she is” He did, then grumbled about how once again she didn’t answer her phone, and about how he would have been in trouble had he not checked in. I assured him that yes, she was in trouble, and a half an hour later tried calling her again. Still no answer. I call one her friends to see if she had any idea who Sarah was hanging out with after school. She didn’t. So I decided too cool my heels and take the dog for walk. But first I thought I'd check and see if the girl across the street happened to notice who Sarah was with after school. Zoe hadn’t ridden the bus, so she didn’t know, but volunteered to text message Sarah for me. I said “sure, just tell her she better get home “ and then Daisy and I proceeded on our walk. I was about halfway down the street and Zoe came running after me. “I found her, I found her.” “Where is she?” I ask. “She’s home in her room!”. So here I am, fretting about my daughters whereabouts, while all the while she was at home, asleep in her room. Talk about feeling like an overanxious neurotic mother. One who’s not smart enough to find her kids in her own home. Duh. I felt kind of bad so I went to the store and bought Sarah’s favorite frozen pie and baked it for her, as it was Pi Day after all. Mom demerits for me this week!

Happy Pi Day!

One of the students in my lab walked up and wished me “Happy Pie Day” this morning, to which I responded “Huh? Pie Day?” and he said “Three fourteen, Pie Day!”. Then, of course, the light bulb came on. 3.14 (or more acurately 3.14159), Pi, the math Pi. As a bit of a self-ascribed nerd I am a bit embarrassed that I did not know about Pi Day, but a quick Google search affirmed that yes, people do celebrate Pi Day. There are Pi Day web sites with Pi Day songs and activities you can even send a Pi Day e-card!

I think that in an attempt to parlay my new found knowledge into something good for me I will use Pi day as an excuse not to cook tonight. I think I’ll pick up pizza, yup, pizza Pi on the way home from work today!

So Happy Pi Day everyone... take it easy and pick up a pizza for dinner!

Before and After

One of my New Years resolutions was to keep my workspace clean; you know, to clean up after each and every torch session. I think I managed to keep my resolution for about a week, then my typical chaos kicked in. This morning I told myself that today was the day I was going to clean my workbench, and low and behold, while I was procrastinating doing said chore, I read Lori Greenberg's blog where she showed before and after pictures of, guess what, her newly cleaned workspace! I took that as a sign that I should get off my lazy butt and really clean mine too. Really cleaning as opposed to saying I'm going to do it then going up stairs and have a dipped mandrel entice me to light the torch instead. That's what usually happens when I tell my self I'm going to clean. Not being one to ignore a good "sign" when the stars and moon align to show me one, I really cleaned today. That of course, was after I used my last four dipped mandrels. So here it is. Workbench, before and after: