Traveling Once Again -

Back in 2009 my hubby and I took a trip out to the West Coast of sunny California, to visit with my sisters Camille and Norma.  It's been a long while since I've seen them so we've planned another trip for this May.   I will be gone from my blog as I'll have no way to connect to the Internet. 

On our last trip my hubs brought his laptop but now he has a new laptop and he says it is too heavy to carry around the way he did with his old laptop.  TRANSLATION: "No I don't want to lug around my laptop so you can spend your evenings blogging."  :D

The photo above was taken back in 2009, it is a picture of my sister, Camille's citrus grove with the Ojai Valley mountains in the background.

2009 Photo above - Camille's citrus grove from a distance.

2009 Photo below - My hubby and my sister Camille.

Our journey now begins - I'll miss you - till I return I'm

Wishing you all well and much happiness.  :)

The Cutest Baby Wear Anywhere !

If you're looking for some adorable gifts for the wee-little ones that you know, head over to Sonya's  Tee-iabo Designs

http://www.tee-iabodesigns.com/lil-hummers-pg--2.html .  There you'll find some of her incredible custom designed onesie sets. 

 

I could not get over the intricate detailing that she has put into the artwork of these adorable tiny creations.  When baby outgrows them, the onesie can be framed and enjoyed for the art that it truly is.

 

 

 So if you're looking for the perfect, unique baby gift for either a baby shower or for that precious little newborn I doubt that you could find anything more adorable than Sonya's incredible little onesies. 

Life has an Expiration Date !

Enjoy life... it has an

expiration

date!

 It's all too easy to take ourselves  and life much too seriously.  We are on this beautiful blue planet for only a short time, during that time let us enjoy each moment.  Let us pass kindness and joy onto others, a smile can be contagious ... let us give it to everyone we met.  :)

 

Found this lost in back pages of my list of blog posts, it was marked as  "Draft" so guess I never got around to posting it.  Such a shame for it has merit and is a wonderful message to pass on to others and to keep in our thoughts.  May you always be joyful and find kindness wherever you go.

 

To Moms, Mamas, Mommies, Mums, And Any Other Names That Mother's Go By

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY TO ALL YOU WONDERFUL MOMS OUT THERE

Hope your day is fabulous.

For all her hugs and kisses that made our scrapes and bruises feel so much better...
For all the stories she's read to us at bedtime ...
The dozens of cookies that she's baked or bought for us ...
For listening to us complain about our Bad Days ...
For encouraging us ...
For guiding us ...
For a million other things ...
But always and forever for being there when we needed her most.
We Love You Mom !

CAPTCHAs Love Em or Hate Em

One thing that annoys the bejeebers out of me are CAPTCHA codes.  I understand their need in certain instances (though right off hand I can't think of one) but I absolutely despise the Sneaky CAPTCHA. 

You know the ones I'm talking about. You go to a blog, see an interesting post and decide to make a comment.  Upon reaching the comment page there's no sign of that obnoxious CAPTCHA code, so you go ahead and spill out that wonderful comment, hit publish or submit and . . .  CRYING OUT LOUD, that frigging  code pops up out of nowhere.

Why try being discreet about it ?  If someone is going to have that irritating thing then have it out in plain sight for all to see, don't lure us in and then club us with it after the fact.

Bloggers often get involved in blog challenges that require visiting  numerous  blogs and, out of courtesy, leaving a comment.  If there are 30 or more blogs to visit can you imagine how time consuming it would be if each had a CAPTCHA code that had to be deciphered and entered ?

In the past I've made suggestions to bloggers about changing their comments setting to Self Moderate and getting rid of the CAPTCHA. 
If you're moderating your comments you have the authority to delete anything you deem as spam or inappropriate.
Also I couldn't help but notice that a lot of CAPTCHA blogs receive few to zero comments.  So why DO bloggers have them and why, when it is suggested that they remove it, do they insist upon keeping them ?  Do they really love CAPTCHAs?  Do they actually seek out sites with these codes because they like to see if they can guess what those smears are? Or could it be that they really don't want to be bothered with comments?  Is it really all that much work to view one's emails, read the comments that others leave and hit one of 3 options: Publish - Delete - Mark as Spam ?

Last night I visited a Canadian blog and I swear their CAPTCHA's are designed by demons.  I stared at one smudge for almost 10 minutes and could not figure out what the letters were.  I even called my hubby in to see if he could figure it out and he too stared at it for a couple of minutes and declared, "I have no idea !"  So I took a guess and the demon code happily informed me that I had gotten it wrong and to try again . . . so I tried again and got the second one wrong too.  By now I had wasted a good 20 or 30 minutes of my time over a friggin' CAPTCHA code.  Finally the third attempt met with success, I don't know if I truly guessed it correctly or if the demon had simply taken pity upon me.

Today I visited a few blogs, read their posts,  typed up my comment and when that cursed CAPTCHA code popped up.   I blew it, clicked on the little X at the top right hand corner of my screen and exited their blog without even attempting to decipher the code. 
Naturally that meant my comment would not be published but at that point I really didn't care.  A couple had been blogs that I had previously left suggestions regarding the removal of their computer generated security code, I mentioned that by removing the CAPTCHA they could, perhaps, receive more comments.
Obviously they chose not to take my suggestion so I chose not to leave a comment.  Was I being mean?  Was I being unfair or unreasonable? 

Photo above was actually taken from my monitor I could not make out what the second word was so I took a wild guess with "Jzntern" and amazingly guessed correctly !  Also, amazingly there were no other comments left on this blogger's blog except for mine.  Could she not want comments?

 

 

FINITO - Terminado - Done - Complete - FINISHED !

Finally, the Piccadilly Bracelet is complete (except for adding a clasp).  To me it is fun and colorful and so unlike anything I've ever done before.

Photo Above - The left side of the bracelet features colors of light and dark coral, chartreuse and turquoise.  Embellishments contain semi-precious beads of green aventurine, wood agate, moss agate, dark blue sodalite, larimar, dark blue dumortierite and olive jade .  A cute little triangle bead in vibrate lime green adorns this first section and to highlight this little bead I encircled it with a halo of turquoise glass seed beads topped with much smaller, silver plated, seed beads.

Photo Above - Progressing from left to right: tube beads of lapis and apple green quartz combine with round tablet beads in pastel yellow and green, thus forming a bridge between the first section and a striped, seed beaded tube. 

Connecting the beaded tube to the bracelet's middle section is a glistening olivine crystal, flanked top and bottom with tiny garnet beads. 

Like the first section, I used a peyote stitch to form the base that is then embellished with tiny glass flower beads and a fringy stripe of garnet beads.

Photo Above - Heading toward the left side of the middle section, the smaller size 11 Delica seed beads give way to a section of larger size 11, Toho beads in turquoise blue.  A sweet iridescent, jet glass, heart sits proudly in the middle of these beads and is decorated with two tiny garnet beads. 

 

Another fringy stripe of garnet beads follows, bringing us to an open frame that features an unusually shaped white glass bead ( I only had one of these beads and wanted to make sure it received special attention).  Two little garnet beads are used to fill in the extra space and help center the white bead in its frame.  Once again I've added a fringy stripe of garnet beads.  These tiny garnet beads are only 2 mm round so I used the smallest size 15 seed beads I had as topper-stop beads. You can see them above in both a chartreuse color and in a pinkish color, called strawberry.

Photo Above  - Finally the last section. A peyote spiral striped tube in coral, white and chartreuse sits between two large crystal beads.  The crystal on the left is a dark ruby red while the crystal on the right is a fresh grass green.  Like the previous crystal, tiny garnet beads are used to hide the Fireline that connects the crystals to the bracelet.  When I fabricated the peyote tube I made the mistake of adding a fringe to the tube's top and bottom.  This made attaching the crystals difficult and if I had it to do over I would have attached the crystals first and then added the fringe.

 

The last section is again, flat peyote stitch, it features simple white stripes with a silver beaded center embellished by an adorable, pink glass, heart bead. 

 

This end of the bracelet terminates with a fringe of small 2 mm beads, since only three of the tiny 2 mm garnet beads were left I had to improvised by adding three tiny red jasper beads and three tiny hematite beads to complete the fringy stripe.  Sure it isn't like the other garnet bead stripes but with this bracelet just about anything goes. A fringe of turquoise drop beads graces

this end of the bracelet.  

 

Welcome to the World, Piccadilly ! 

 

I haven't decided if I'll place Piccadilly with some of my pieces in the Manatee, Florida art center (called; ArtCenter Manatee) or if it will go into a gallery in the Village of the Arts, where I have also displayed and sold many pieces of my handcrafted jewelry.

 



 



PROGRESS ON PICCADILLY

Piccadilly is coming along, though progress is slow.
Before I go much further I wish to give credit to Beading Daily  for it is there that I found Beth Kraft's tutorial on her Collage Bracelet.  Granted I took great liberties with her instructions, basically borrowing the primary concept but putting my own unique spin to it. 
There is a material's list included in her written directions, some of the findings and beads I didn't have nor was I about to purchase them.  Since the idea was to use up my dribs and drabs of beads why go out and purchase more ?  Also the instructions called for a Tube Clasp with side bar, an item not among my supplies, but I did have a pair of Slide End Tubes which, after having used them, I must say are divine.  If you're not familiar with these ends HERE'S a short video on how they function.

Photo below - close up of the slide tube end.



After playing around with different ways to attach the peyote strip to the peyote tube,  I finally found that JoJo's idea worked and looked the best.  JoJo of Tahoma Beadworks & Photography suggested using a large bead between the two elements and connecting them together by running the thread through the large bead and down through the seed beads of both the tube and the strip.  Hers' was a straight forward solution that ended up working beautifully.  Thank you JoJo.

Photo below :  A large Crystal oval bead is used to bridge the two sections together.  Tiny garnet beads and #15 glass seed beads help fill in the spaces and give a nice clean transition from the peyote work to the crystal bead.

 

 

I found that the main problem with connecting the two elements was that the peyote strip was wider than the tube, even though both were 10 beads in width and both used size #11 Delica seed beads.  Other methods that I tried turned out looking lopsided. By using the larger bead as a bridge I found I didn't have to finagle with the difference in size.

 

Right now the bracelet measures about 5 and a quarter inches. That would fit a really tiny wrist, so I need to make it a reasonable length, attach the other slide end tube, add a clasp and then finish embellishing.  Well guess it's back to work on the beading.  :)

 

 

PICCADILLY PICK

There's nothing really different about me, as far as being a beader goes.  Like many other beaders I love beads and have accumulated an impressive stash of them.  I also have accumulated quite a collection of odd beads, orphan beads and a vast array of What-The-Heck-Am- I-Going-To-Do-With-These beads.  This situation is probably true of all crafters and the medium of their choice; bits and pieces of scrapbooking supplies, fabrics,  odd skeins of yarn along with many partial skeins, and the list goes on and on. 

Trying to use some of my odd-bit beads I began constructing the bracelet pictured below.

Kind of kooky, especially for me but I'm liking it and have already given it a name, "Piccadilly".  Usually I reserve a name until a piece is finished and then only christen very special pieces.  I must admit that as this bracelet progresses it gets more and more "special".

 

At the moment I'm faced with a dilemma and that's;  how should I go about connecting the peyote beaded strip (over on the left in photos below) to the beaded tube? 

 

A bridge of some sort is needed but I haven't decided what I want to do yet.  You can see that I used a couple of flat-round tablet beads and a few tube beads to bridge the other side of the beaded tube.  If anyone has ideas or suggestions please feel free to share them in your comments.  Also I'd love to hear about your collection of odd supplies that you just can't part with but haven't figured out what you're going to do with.

A Sad Goose Tale

Fate again was not kind to Mr. and Mrs. C. G.   Like the year before, momma goose was not to see baby goslings grow up to become fully grown geese.

After spending several weeks incubating her eggs, one-by-one each gosling hatched and each quickly died.  When the last tiny gosling passed away, Mrs. G. left her nest and spent the next half-hour walking around with her mate, the exercise must have felt wonderful to her.   Refreshed from her walk, she returned to her island nest and began to bury it and the remains of her babies, giving her lost goslings the respect she felt they deserved.  Once her task was done she rejoined her mate and together they waddled solemnly around our neighbor's yard.

At this point I would like to rant.  I like animals and am fond of pets, however I cannot understand why anyone would take on a pet only to neglect and ignore it. 

 Somewhere in our area there is a person or family that owns a dog, the dog has a collar and what appears to be a tag, it obviously has a home and yet it is always wandering up and down our street.  Our neighbor to the North of us (not the neighbor with the pond and the geese) often throws out bits  and pieces of food to this vagabond dog. 

It's clear that the dog is not well care for, he's dirty, probably has never been bathed, and his claws are in dire need of a trim.  I know about the claws first hand, one day he jumped on me begging for attention and accidently clawed the side of my left knee, leaving me with a three inch scar. 

Many times I wonder if the dog's owners ever miss him .  Do they worry that he could be hit by a car ?  Why have a pet if they're not concerned about it and are not committed  to taking care of or protecting  it?  Perhaps I just don't understand this mentality ?

Now on with the story:

Unfortunately, as momma and papa geese were bereaving, this stray dog trots into our neighbor's yard, he smells the remains of the goslings and proceeds to swim across the small pond and onto the island.  There he quickly sniffed out the burial spot and began to unearth the dead goslings and consume them.   In little time he had unburied the 4 tiny bodies and disposed of them via his tummy. 
When the last morsel was swallowed he swam back to the "mainland" and proceeded to play "catch the big geese".   A couple of minutes of the dog's harassment was all it took for Mr. and Mrs. C.G. to call it quits and fly away. 
Eventually our neighbors  came out and chased the stray out of their yard and then they closed and latched their gate.  It would surprise me if Mr. & Mrs. Goose return next Spring.  Two consecutive nesting failures and an attempted attack by a stray dog is enough to discourage even the most stalwart of geese.

All that remains is a patch of goose down and feathers.



GOOSE TAILS

Our snowbirds are back.  Each Spring for the last 3 years we've had a pair of Canadian Geese come to nest on our neighbor's tiny island. 

 

By now everyone in our neighborhood is familiar with them and I casually refer to them as Mr. and Mrs. G. (G for Goose- or Geese).    On occasion I call them C.G. - (Canadian Goose - or Geese) but that's for formal introductions only. 

 

Photo above  - Mrs. G. in her well feathered

nest.  Looks like she has some well chosen words for the

paparazzi !

 

The first year Mr. and Mrs. G. protected a clutch of about 6 eggs, only 4 of which hatched.  Unfortunately the last gosling to come out of its shell was somehow injured and our neighbors had to call Wildlife Management to come capture it and take it to a qualified veterinarian.  If you're interested you can read about that nesting  HERE and HERE. 

We never found out exactly what happened to the tiny gosling, if it did or did not survive.  Since it was not returned to its small family flock we can only assume that it could not be rehabilitated but we wish to believe that perhaps it is living comfortably in some type of sanctuary for handicapped wildlife, happily well-fed and lovingly cared for. 

Last year Mr. and Mrs. G. nested but none of their eggs were viable and after several grueling weeks spent incubating them Mrs. G. finally gave up and abandoned her nest.  She and her mate waddled about our neighbor's yard for a week or so and then, without much ado, departed.  

 I never quite understood just where Mr. and Mrs. G. go . . . I mean, if they come to South Florida for the summer then where to they reside in the winter ?  Do they fly further south to winter in Cancun, Cozumel or Puerto Vallarta ?  Do they waddle around some posh resort nibbling on tapas and sipping frozen corn-mush Margaritas ?  Can you picture Mrs. G. paddling around a pool in a shocking pink bikini?  Or Mr. G. sprawled out on a chaise lounge wearing his Foster Grant sunglasses ? 

They have returned now, for their third year, and once again Mrs. G. has made her nest on the island.  Always she chooses the same spot.  However I think this year she must be especially irritable as Mr. G. tends to keep his distance,  we often find him either browsing in our back yard or napping under the shade of the huge old oak trees at the back of our property. 

 

However he is quick to return to be close to his mate if anyone happens to stray outside, and he always joins Mrs. G. for a late afternoon swim around their pond. 

Will this year bring forth any fluffy, little goslings ? 

We will just have to wait and see as Mrs. G. isn't about to tell.  :)

Ugly Necklace Contest

At Land of Odds it's that time again.  Time to prepare for their Ugly Necklace Contest. 

Making pretty is . . . well, pretty easy.  Making Ugly, now that's a different story.  You'd be surprised at how truly difficult that challenge can be.

What goes into an Ugly Necklace ?  Anything you want (plus a lot of imagination).  There was even a designer that created a necklace with fluffed out tampons as its focal components.  Yeah, so anything goes.  lol

Head on over and take a look - you may find inspiration - if not, then at least you'll get a good laugh.

Hooked Up on Hooks

A blog reader contacted me wanting to know how I made the fancy  shaped links in the "Hook and Eye" necklace.  So I am trying to clarify that some links were Clasp Hooks to begin with. 
I used  my ever trusty Wubbers, bail making pliers to close the open part of the hook, creating a unique link.  One hook was left unchanged  for use as a clasp . . . which is its original purpose.

Ready made Shepherd's hook clasps (photo above and below) were used to construct many of the links in my Hook & Eye necklace.  One hook was left unchanged and used as a closure.

 

 

In my supplies I had a few figure 8 links but not nearly enough to fashion a chain from.

Wanting a fairly long chain meant that improvising would be required, so I constructed a number of  stylized infinity links to get the length needed.  I made some of these links large and some small to create a bit of variety and add interest to the chain. 

All links were then put together using 5 mm x 18 gauge, gold plated brass jump-rings .  Hope this made sense as I wasn't sure how to explain it without creating an overly long, and perhaps boring, blog tutorial.

Hooks and Eyes

 Besides the rag rug I've been preoccupied making other things, such as this matching chain and earrings set.

There is naturally a story behind these pieces and like most stories this could be a long one so I'll try to condense it as best I can.

Some time around 2010 my etsy shop went from being an unsuccessful jewelry shop, to being a mediocre jewelry making supplies shop. 

Back then the etsy forums was a busy place and the busiest of the forums was Promotions.  Forget speeding bullets,  Promo threads came and went faster than Superman himself, therefore many threads fell by the roadside unnoticed like so much road kill.

 

One day I spotted a Promo thread that was a genuine plea.  The poster had a small etsy jewelry supply shop that she wished to close and she was clearing out the last dribs and drabs of her inventory.  The few items she had left were grouped together in one lot and drastically discounted, the price had been slashed to the bone and items were below cost . . . she was desperate. Unfortunately no one had time to read her post as they were all too busy playing the Buy and Stay, Buy and Replace, Give and Take or whatever happened to be the hottest rock-em-sock-em promo threads going.  (I later learned that those threads were perpetuated by groups of shops and they worked together to keep their threads at the top of the forum.)

Anyway I could not help but feel sorry for the shop that posted its going out of business thread and so I contacted the shop's owner and informed her that I was interested in purchasing her lot of odds and ends.   Much of it I really did not need but I felt an empathy with her situation and knew firsthand how it felt to be invisible in the promo forum.

One item in this lot of supplies was a bag of gold-plate shepherd hook clasps. 

Over the years I've used a few of them but still had a number left.   Then I got this idea to create a necklace using the hooks and the eyes along with a number of my own handmade links.  There are various colors of gold in this chain, some darker, looking a bit like antique gold, and some a paler, lighter yellow gold but I think it all works well together.  I even saved 2 of the Shepherds hooks to make a pair of matching earrings.

Maybe I'm dorky but I think they're kind of cute. :D

From Rags to Rugs

Photo above - Old rag rug

 

I've been keeping busy.  Unfortunately it hasn't been with blogging. 

Many years ago I purchased a rag throw rug to place on the floor in front of my kitchen sink.  It wasn't much to look at but it was durable and well made and it has lasted through what must be at least a thousand washings. 

Though it was getting tired and worn I could find nothing as nice to replace it with.  I looked in the home improvement stores and in the home goods sections of a number of department stores but nothing could match the homey, little, old  rag rug. 

Photo above - Close-up of one of the many well worn areas.

 

At a big home improvement store we did find a few woven, rag rugs but the fabric strips were in psychedelic colors of  caution tape orange, neon chartreuse, hot pink and tomato red.  Not exactly the color scheme of my kitchen and not the look I was going for, so I opted not to buy and to just keep looking.

Normally my hubby doesn't get involved in matters that concern the interior of the home, unless it pertains to repairs, like a dripping faucet.  His domain is the garage and that is his haven to do and decorate as he wishes.  However, for some odd reason, he ran across a display of rag, throw rugs and decided to purchase one for me.  Said rug was approximately a foot too long and 18 inches too wide, it contained several "odd" strips of fabric in neon orange and tooth rattling chartreuse . . . not to mention the occasional violet-purple, goldenrod, vivid turquoise blue, and  Mexican salsa red !  Those colors probably would not have been so glaring had there not been so much black thrown in with it - the stark contrast made the neon strips stand out even more dramatically.

It's the thought that counts so I tried to accept his purchase graciously. 
I placed the rug on the floor in front of the kitchen sink and tried to ignore it.  It was like trying to ignore a hangnail, or an eyelash that's fallen into your eye . . . it couldn't be done.  Then I decided to wash it (perhaps hot water and detergent would soften the colors or at least shrink it some.  When I removed it from the washer the rug was no longer rectangular.  I'm not sure what the shape was but let's just say that all the stripes were no longer straight but careened up and down the rug like drunken sailors.  Trying to straighten it out, I realized that the rug was very poorly made (but then for $5.95 what else could I expect?) and that the whole thing needed to be remade (oh joy ! - said sarcastically).

In my mind I thought it would be a simple and quick project to take the rag rug apart and reweave it.  WHAT THE BLAZES WAS I THINKING ? 
I began the project 4 weeks before Christmas, thinking I'd have it done well before the holidays,  I finished it 3 months later (and yes, I worked on it every single day).   

Photo above - the rug canvas that I found at Michael's and some of the vibrant fabric strips that were taken from the new rag rug.

Photo above - work in progress, the remaking of the new rag rug. Here the rug is about 95% complete, too bad I didn't think to take a "before" photo showing the rug with all its black background and its jarring stripes of psychedelic colors. 

 

The canvas netting  I used was designed for latch hook rugs and so the squares would not accommodate some of the wider strips of fabric, therefore many strips had to be cut down to make them narrower.  All the strips had to be ironed and folded and ironed again before they could be tediously woven through the netting.  Then there were the edges of the rug canvas that had to be reinforced and finished off neatly so the whole rug would not come apart in its next laundering. It would have been easier, if not faster, to have made a brand new rug from scratch.

 

In honesty I know I would not attempt this again as the canvas netting was very stiff and rough,  it abraded my knuckles to the point that I had to resort to wearing a pair of thick cotton gloves . . . have you ever tried to weave something wearing gloves ?  Awkward !

 

Though I left a few strips of the black and the dark navy blue fabric the newly rewoven rug looks a lot brighter than before its remake.

 



Photos above - So there it is.  Maybe not the best or the most beautiful rag rug, but it is done and it is on the floor doing its job.

 

Have you ever had one of those projects that you got involved with and then wished you had never started ?