Uh oh! Guess What Day It IS?!

Guess. What. Day. It. Is.

Hump Daaaaay!

There is a nest of tiny birds somewhere right outside my office window and they have quite a story to tell this morning. I am glad they waited until the sun was up before they decided to sing the song of their people so loudly.

Today we are doing laundry and trying to get the house somewhat ready for a large birthday party this coming weekend. The carpets need cleaned anyway since they haven't been cleaned since before the floods last fall and I'm sure the dogs have tracked in obscene amounts of mud over the winter. I also really need to throw out a bunch of stuff that's been sitting around forever so now is as good a time as any.

I made one bead yesterday but it took five tries for me to get the core finished without my bead release breaking for no apparent reason, and I'm so glad I didn't give up on it because it is technically the best bead I've ever made. It even slid off the mandrel like melted butter. It's currently on a 24 hour auction on the facebook page Lampwork Beads for Sale but here picture collage of all sides of it. It did take three tries to get the cubic zirconia to stick but well worth the effort, I'd say

Also, congratulations to my little sister who ran off and eloped over the weekend. We were all starting to wonder if she and he were ever going to get married, so there was that surprise. 

Anyway, that's what I've got for today. Thanks for coming by.

Bead-y eyed

Spectre is now eating from a bowl and both cats are weaned completely off of milk. They still eat softened kitten food, but we're working on making it a little less soft every time.

Spectre fell or jumped from high up on Friday and hurt his leg. I thought he'd dislocated his hip, but x-rays showed that wasn't the case. Vet thinks he may have damaged his growth plate and he may limp or have a short leg forever. Surgery wasn't really an option because he's so little that it's too dangerous. He's young enough though that any problem he has will be second nature. For now we're giving him pain medicine twice a day.

I made it out to work on glass today and have a set of rainbow beads in the kiln at this very moment. I plan to etch them, but we'll see what they look like when they're done. If the nice weather holds up, I'll be making some faux beach glass beads this afternoon.

I have a blood donation appointment in about an hour. Last time, they couldn't get the bleeding to stop and I ended up with two people clamping down on my arm with ice packs. I was cold and out of sorts for a week or so after. Awful. Hope it goes better this time.

Here are some polymer clay bobbin beads I made and listed on Etsy. The rage is glass and bobbin beads, but I don't have the time or desire to make them right now. Maybe another time.



I plan to make a bunch of beads for Beads of Courage because word on the glass forums is that they're running drastically low. Beads of Courage are sent to hospitals all over the US and a few other countries (Japan and New Zealand that I know of for sure, maybe a few others), and every time a child in one of those hospitals has something done (chemo, blood draw, etc), they get to pick out a bead. Parents get beads too. It's a neat program, but sad that there's such a need.

Husband is outside cleaning the garage. The wrong torch is supposed to be delivered back to the glass retailer on Wednesday and the right torch should be on it's way out to me shortly thereafter.

Yup. That's all I have to write about for now. Thanks for reading :)

Leap, frog!

I have a wonderful idea for making starfish bead pendant things. I need to go make the frit for it though, and that's kind of a hassle unless I'm feeling the need to be destructive. I think I might put a bunch of rods in the kiln and heat them up and drop them in a bucket of ice water and be done with it. I hate the "heat, plunge, heat, plunge" method. Takes forever.

My torch and marver are supposed to be here tomorrow! Also expected tomorrow is a package of glass from Frantz! Husband located a flamework supply shop in Golden that carries everything. So $15 I don't have to spend on shipping every time is $15 more that I can spend on glass. Woot!

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Ghost followed me into the shower last night and decided, a little too late, that she didn't like it in there. She needed a bath anyway though, so she got one.

Ghost kitty is eating solid food and has finally figured out how to drink water from a bowl! Yeah!


Spectre, on the other hand, isn't having any part of being weaned. I have to force him to eat solid food, and then he bites me and spits it back out. I can stick it clear in the back of his mouth and he'll eat it, but then he goes limp and plays dead until I stop. *sigh* I need someone to wave a magic wand and get him weaned.

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Thanks for stopping by and reading!

Burn, baby, burn.

I spent most of the weekend working on some Pandora-style beads as a special order through Etsy. It was cold and windy, so it took forever. They did come out perfectly though, and I was really proud of them. You can read details about them on my deviantart account.



Ghost is mostly on solid foods now. Still hasn't really gotten the concept of drinking water out of a bowl, but I'll take solid foods. Spectre isn't having any of it and still insists on either drinking from the bottle or starving to death. I'm going to have to force feed him soon if I ever want him weaned. *sigh* On another side though, they're actually turning into playful kittens now. They chase each other and wrestle and chew on everything and run around like they're crazy. So cute.

Very exciting news! My darling lovely husband bough me a fancy glass torch for my Mother's Day / birthday present. It's a Nortel Mega Minor and it can do all sorts of fancy stuff, including boro and making marbles up to 2". I'm so excited! He got the marvering pad that mounts on top of it too! Silver glass here I come!




So that's the summary of my weekend. Maybe something exciting will happen this week that I can write about. Thanks for stopping by :)

Deception

It's bright and sunny out. Only a few clouds. Cold as hell. Like 28 degrees. Bleh.

I hate my oven. I also hate the evil glass cook top crap stove it's in.

I would like to do glass work so it needs to warm up outside and NOT have the wind blowing.


That is all.

Nothing clever rhymes with "Thursday"

Wow. Three days has come and gone before I even knew what was happening. My stepmom's birthday was yesterday, so I called and talked to her on the phone. She says she got some acupuncture and quit smoking more than a month ago and hasn't even had the craving since. She's swimming laps at the gym three days a week. She gained some weight (this is good because she looks like a skeleton, seriously) and has been venturing out to go bowling and do some stuff by herself since my dad works all the time and doesn't do much when he's home.

I went out and got two new sets of paintbrushes last night. In all actuality, I need more than a hundred at any time because I use them for everything; clay work, painting, resin. Everything. And they're always all used and sitting in a bowl of water to be cleaned. I'm really NOT good at cleaning them until I don't have any left and I'm desperate. I also got a set of oil pastels and a tube of glass rods (which I only got because I needed more blue to make more of a frit mixture). I usually don't go to the craft store with a shopping list. I normally need one or two things and leave with six or eight. Guilty as charged. But I stuck to the list and got everything I went for (except oil cloth because it's ugly and expensive) and only one extra thing! The extra thing I got was because I had sudden inspiration of exactly how to use it. Yeah, me!

The wind was blowing so hard yesterday that the National Center for Wind Technology (or something like that) closed because it was too windy. Crazy. Semi trucks were blown off the road in Boulder. Huge pieces of aluminum were blowing across the road when we were driving, signs are down all over the place. Awful.

The kittens are doing great! Spectre even tried to bite the end of my thumb off last night. He's showing a slight interest in solid food, and that's awesome. He's just not sure about the texture and the chewing part. Soon though!

I got 14,273 steps yesterday! Not so good any other day this week. I keep hoping motivation will suddenly strike but it just isn't happening yet.

Youngest Daughter has been feeling icky the last week or so, fevers and teething and won't eat much and sleeps all the time. Today she got up and didn't have a fever and ate more than she has in weeks and played on the floor and squealed and drooled and is doing awesome.

I'm in limbo again about where I want to build my official glass studio. I kind of want to put it inside where I can be sure of decent temperatures regardless of how it is outside (too cold in the winter and my glass will shock, too hot in the summer and I feel like my head will implode, the kiln does NOT help), but in a way I want my own separate space where no one is going to bug me. But a studio is gonna cost lots to build and paint and insulate. If I put it in the basement, we only have to finish that one spot and get the icky spiders out (I'm crazy arachnophobic) and ventilation would be the last necessary part. Except for that whole part about HOA approval to plumb in my propane. HOA is teh suxxor. That whole plumbing in thing was the first major reason I wanted a separate studio. So I don't know. I'd just like to be able to do glass work SOON and for more than a couple months out of the whole year.

My grandmother got a phone call yesterday from her sister's daughter. Sister fell and broke her hip the other day. Had surgery on Tuesday. Don't know much else. Grandmother is worried because people frequently die of pneumonia after they break a hip. Truthfully, the sister isn't gonna be around too much longer anyway as dementia is eating her brain :(

So that's my update. Thanks for reading.