Flower Photos. uh oh... Winter.

Pretty flower colors are no longer available in my garden. Although the winter will supply endless op's for dried weed photos.

After a very very nice week of fair fall weather, we are getting some winter temps and snowfall. The kids are nuts about snow and don't seem to mind the cold. But i barely tolerate it. I sure do miss our hot tub, but it is sitting empty in the back corner of the yard thinking about becoming a fish pond.

Special Parts

I just returned from spending an unexpected week back home. My father was hospitalized, but is back at home now and doing very well. He took these photos from his hospital room window. I don't know what these things are, but they serve some important function for the hospital. They make me think of our body's own complex little organs and tubes that carry out all the work that keeps us ticking. In the one picture, i like how the neat little black stairs provide access to the control panel and inner workings of those big ducts. Thank you, staff at the St. B., for keeping my dad ticking and taking his photographs for a while longer.

BirthBones Grand Opening!

If you haven't already done so, please drop by my new etsy shop, www.BirthBones.etsy.com, for a look. Twelve months, so only twelve items in the shop. The listing for each month includes a horoscope for dogs born in that month. (I have never studied astrology, so take it with an extra grain of salt.) But they're fun.

I'm offering my charms with FREE SHIPPING. And with Christmas coming up, i hope that's a good enough incentive for pet lovers around the world to drop all sorts of orders in my In box. I'll be focusing on shop promotion for the next few weeks. And we'll see what happens!

"Charlotte", new beads

Aren't these fine beads? The customer, a jewelry designer, thought my Alien Aura pattern (with the clear lens) was close to what she wanted. She suggested making them without the clear lens in the middle, and these beauties were born. I really enjoy artistic collaboration.

Too many web id's

I think there is actually a point where you can have too many website ID's, and i think i just maxed out. I can sit here at the keyboard and go out of focus for a while trying to keep straight which account i'm in on what website in which window... But, I'm plugged in, right!? I don't have time to watch TV anymore, and that couldn't be entirely bad, could it? (I saw today that a study showed that the average American watches almost 5 hours of TV per day. And they made it sound like a bad thing. Hey, wait a minute, i think i saw it on TV...) One big difference is that my screen of choice has what i want on it, in fact i'm directing most of it.

The dedicated BirthBones shop is shaping up and i will be adding my own astrological interpretations of your dog's personality based on his/her month of birth. And then,... THEN i will announce the Grand Opening.

I have been working on a neat bead commission and will show the set next post. In the meanwhile, here is my much-talked-about cat, Archie. His 2 month old neck wound is almost healed, but not enough to leave bare to the elements just yet. He's quite used to, but sick of, wearing these bandages. Fortunately, he looks quite dashing in a turtleneck.

Saturday is Tidy Day

Hey, boys and girls! It's time to play our favorite game: "What's On Your Kitchen Window Sill?"

You may know this game as "Who's the Bigger Weirdo?" Or maybe "And That's Why No One Stays For Dinner!"

Here's my kitchen window sill: a dried frog, a dried toad, a dried mouse, a duck skull, big beetle, a mud dauber wasp nest, three recently acquired (legitimately) kid's baby teeth, some kid art made from found wire and rocks, as well as some requisite fossil specimens. (Full disclosure: i did remove most of the dust and live spiders prior to photographing, and thereby canceled my hopes of winning.)

I finally put these new beads in my etsy shop. Things have been busy for a while and i'm not getting the torch time that i like. But the things i've been busy with (babysitting, family obligations) are all good, so i'm not complaining, just excusing. :-)

I'm sure you will remember my cat, Archie, and the story about his gaping neck wound. It was 2 months ago that he dragged himself home with the skin of his neck missing. We never did learn what happened to him. He only has one section of skin left to regenerate. It's about 1 cm x 5 cm. I have to confess that until recently i've been taking him to our vet to change the bandages. I have since toughened up a bit and can do it myself with no queaziness at all. There will be much rejoicing when he has finally patched it all in with skin. His fur has filled in on the new skin that he has grown, although it's darker than the surrounding fur. And the stripes down the back of his neck have grown like they have been pulled to one side. But he has been a really happy cat, once he got through the bad first couple of days. Really amazing. I think that if i had a big patch of exposed muscle tissue, it would really bother me. But that's just me.

oh man, i couldn't post again without any photos, so here's a timely photo of red leaves. And my dog, Jack, for good measure.

I was wrestling with technology this morning. I am not computer savvy. I know my email, how to do web searches, some photo stuff, but that's about it. I'd like to learn it all, but one makes choices, you know? So after trying to figure out registering domain names and choosing website hosts and then making a webpage with ecommerce linkage, well, i just took the easier way out. So now i am in the middle of making a second etsy shop for my BirthBones lampwork pet charms. While most of my lampworking is targetted to jewelry makers/designers, my BirthBones are for dog lovers. That is quite a seperate customer and i need to be able to advertise and promote the charms differently. My BirthBones will soon be available by going to www.BirthBones.etsy.com. (I'll make a big Grand Opening posting.) The only negative to this is that the customer must register for an etsy account. Easy enough to do, but one gets leery of giving out one's personal info. Plus they would already have to have a PayPal account. I'm not sure how many people do PayPal. I prefer to use PayPal over giving out my credit card info any time, but probably different strokes, etc.

fell back

I enjoy the time change. It is much more pleasant to get up in the morning when the sun is also rising. I hate not posting with pics, but i'm just running off to bed to read Kathy Reich. Tune in tomorrow for the pictorial version. Just a quick note on things:

We had a nice halloween. I was a witch. I'm always a witch. The kids were Death. They're always Death. I don't know why i'm not more creative with Halloween costumes. But i sure do enjoy other people's costumes when they come up with clever ideas.

the weather is great! We've had enough frost that the marigolds and zinnia's have bitten it, but i harvested a big bunch of cilantro today and the mums still look good. The gourd vines have dried up and i see that i have fewer gourds than i thought. Aw. But there's a lovely big kettle/cannonball one.

With the nice weather, i've been able to spend time in my unheated workshop and i'll have some beads ready to list in a couple of days. I've got two sets of silver foil beads, and a princess bone beads order tentatively coming in. I may wait to run the kiln for annealing just one time. (I don't have a programmable kiln so i have to babysit it and it's easy to forget about it and before you know it it's 1200F and your beads are all melted. No, it's never actually gotten that bad, but it could! :-)