Random musings.

Here are pics of Sara's school halloween parade and her costume on Haloween night (yes, I know I'm almost a month late).

It has been such a busy week (still)...don't think I'm going to make the craft show, since I have had NO time to work on any stock. I think I'm just going to wait till school is over and I can stock up for the spring craft shows.

Over the weekend I did mange to do something I've been wating to do for awhile, I cooked a lamb roast. I haven't ever tried or cooked lamb, but I've wanted to for quite some time. I found a nice recipie on foodnetwork.com..roast lamb with sour cherry sauce. I also made (ok, I cooked up a premade mix) of Basmati Rice Pilaf. The lamb came out really well, but it has a very distinct flavor. Honestly I much prefer beef, so this will most likely be our last lamb. The rice was good (it's made with dried fruit, veggies and mixed nuts), if just a tad spicy. But, at least I can cross it off my list of things I want to try someday.

No, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. These past few weeks have been insanely busy. My Grandfather passed away Oct 23...he's in a much better place now. We're all having to adjust to not having him here now, he'd been living with mom for about 5 years now. The funeral was beautiful, though it rained cats and dogs the day we buried him.

Standing in the freezing rain managed to exacerbate the colds we were all coming down with, because the last week of October Matt, Sara and I all had the martian death flu. I think we spent 3 straight days in bed.

For halloween Sara was a skelanimals cat. For those of you without children, skelanimals are basically cute, skeletonized animals popular with young teens. There kind of a goth-gateway product. They're cute, though (http://skelanimals.com/). I do have pics, which I will post when I can find the camera.

As a result of being sick, I'm several days behind on my studies, and scrambling to catch up. I literally spent 7 hours yesterday doing homework. Plus, mom tapes all her lectures for me on my digital recorder....which is nice, but I have 9 hours of classes to listen to still.

Matt turned 32 on the 2nd of this month...birthdays are always a wonderful excuse to go get carvel ice cream cakes! I was planning a super-secret gift for him, but all the pieces didn't come in on time, so it will be moved to a christmas gift.

Yesterday I went out early to run some errands. Mom took Ladybird out while I was gone while she was hanging laudry, and she decided to squeeze out of the fence and go running all over the neighborhood. When I got home, Matt threatened bodily harm to her if I didn't teach her to come when called. Seems he spent a good deal of time chasing her through our neighbor's yards ><. So we're working on that. I'd really really love to get her into an obediance class, I just do NOT have the time right now. I try to work with her 10-15 minutes a day, but on the big list of things to do obediance training the dog always seems to come near the end.

Mom and I want to do a craft show at the end of the month...so I'm trying to get a collection of new pieces together. I have a goodly amount of my old stuff together, but I really want to get more clay pieces made. That and I have to make some sort of display devices for them all, too. If only I didn't need to sleep, this would all be so much easier.

Toasty Flowers...


Ever since I got my clay, I've been sketching ideas for jewelry pieces I want to do..last week I settled on a design and have been planning out the piece. Tuesday I started making the intricate flower beads that would've been part of the necklace. Because they were 3d and delicate, I built a wire hanger to hold them up off the ground until they were fired in the kiln. After 3 days, I had them the way I wanted them, and started the kiln. Unfortunately, when I went to put the beads in the kiln I had to keep the door open to position the wire hanger...this caused the heating coil in the kiln to turn up very high, trying to heat the inside while the door was open (something I didn't realize till it was too late). I closed the door, and in a matter of minutes, the alarm on my kiln goes off (the alarm is set to go off whenever the kiln temp gets over 100 degrees higher than what the firing program says it should be). In a matter of 5 minutes my beautiful flowers are reduced to shrivled, blackened lumps.







My Mcguyvered bead hanger (post Kiln)







My little black lumps.

So, today we have learned to put the bead hanger in BEFORE we turn on the kiln.

We had the 1st snow of the year yesterday..ug! Ganted, it was about 1/4 of an incha nd was gone by noon, but still it's the principle of the thing. School has been super busy, so I haven't had much time to play with my clay. I'm hoping to get all my studying done today and have tomorrow after church to work on some pieces. We're going out to get Sara's Haloween costume today...she wants to be a skeleton cat. I guess it's a big chance from the fairy princess she's been the last 4 years!

Poor little Ladybird got stepped on by mom's rottie, Annie last night while they were running around the yard..she was limping and crying all night. So, no more play-dates with Annie. I KNOW she doesn't mean to hurt Ladybird, but when you weigh 100 lbs and your playmate weighs 4 lbs, accidents WILL happen. Luckily Ladybird is all better this morning!

Well Tuesday I finally broke out the clay (yay!!). I (attempted) to make some pumpkin earrings for my mom. They didn't come out TOO badly (though I forgot to take pics before I gave them to her). Making them, however I discovered I really hate Kato Polyclay (the brand of clay I bought). Clay has a workability----->durabilty scale. The softer a clay, the easier it is to work with, but the less durable the finished product will be. Firmer clays will make much more durable items, but they are stiff, and can be difficult to soften and condition without something like a pasta machine to use. Kato is at the far end of the durability spectrum, and since I have no specialzed clay kneading machines, it took nearly an hour to get a few square inches of clay soft enough to mold into earrings. So, I will be returning the clay. Luckily, my second choice was Premo brand clay, which they sell at AC Moore. I went down and picked up a few bars to try out at home before buying a large amount over the internet (again lol).

I LOVE it! It's great...here is a folk-sy cat pin I made mom. (all these pic will be slightly yellowed because I used our lamplight to shoot in, as we have no real sunlight in NY in Oct.

A close-up of the pansy decoration (mom LOVES pansys)

Here is a turtle pin I made for myself inspired by the art of Cristi Friesen who I think is a PHENOMINAL artist! (http://www.cforiginals.net/)

I am much less pleased with how this came out. The wash came out very, very sloppy and pretty much makes the whole thing look dirty (it's hard to tell in the pics, but trust me, it's not pretty). Next time I'm going to water down the acrylic paint a bit..it was a bit lumpy and tended to clump and streak on the piece (I think I didn't wait for the clay to completely cool, so that may have been a factor as well..I was just so impatient lol).

I DO need to find somewhere to set up a mini-studio..just somewhere I can lay out all my tools and not have to keep picking them up and taking them out..this is what our living-room coffee table has looked like for the last 2 days:

I'm really excited about this new medium, hopefully I can get started on a few of the big jewelry pieces I have in my head soon.

Well, my new clay arrived last thursday, and it sits there, mocking me. I haven't been able to play with it yet, because I have rather unexpectadly gone back to school. A BS in Biology doesn't really open any doors to finding a job in the biological sciences..rather it's a stepping stone for getting a masters or PhD in your chosen field, which WILL get you a job. I have been hunting for a job for two months, with very little luck. Then I kind of fell into a course in medical billing/coding. When I get certified I can find a job that is at least not minimum wage, and jobs in the health care field always have great benefits...this way I can much more easily help pay for Matt's graduate school. Unfortunately I came into the course a bit late, so I have a couple weeks of catching up to do this weekend, hence my inability to play with my clay.

However, I'm pretty well caught up, so once Sara and Matt leave for the day, I am busting open that clay! My only concern now is can I remember how to program my kiln still? Lol, clay bakes at about 210 degrees, as opposed to glass at about 900. I told mom I'd do her a cat pin and a pair of pumpkin earrings, so at least I have a goal to practice on today..wish me luck :-). I'll post pics if they don't come out too laughable.

The Leaves they are a changin'.
And the weather is getting cold...bah! We managed to move up to NY just in time for winter, my LEAST favorite season.



On a completely differant note, I have been thinking about my jewelry lately. Since we've moved up here, I have been making some pieces, and as I was taking pictures the other day to update my ETSY store, I realized I was profoundly unhappy with the direction my jewelry has been going. They are not BAD pieces, mind you...just not what I picture in my head when I think about my "style" of jewelry crafting. After some thinking I realize what the problem is. Back in PA I had my own glass studio. If I needed a bead in a certain size/shape to complete a piece, I could just go make it.



Granted, even after a year, I was still a VERY beginnner glassworker. Glass takes a very long time to learn and become proficient with. But still, now I have very generic beads, and in turn I am putting out very generic jewelry. Obviously, right now I have neither the time nor space to recreate my studio from PA.


I happened to be browsing some of my favorite bead websites when I saw this catalog cover piece:





THIS looks like what I want to be able to put out! Something COMPELETELY unique, stylized and vibrant. I found out this is mostly made with polymer clay...so I've ordered some lol. I know that I'm back to square one, learning a new medium...but I need to be able to express my own style in my jewelry if I am ever going to be happy with it. Plus, clay is much more space and time friendly than glass. Now comes the hardest part, waiting for the delivery from the beadsite! (always the worst part!)