owls

i absolutely adore owls. there's something sort of mystical about them; solitary, nocturnal creatures with eerie calls, white feathers, creepy exorcist head turns. *love* them. my one time seeing them in the wild was about six or seven years ago. i was coming home from dropping my mom at work. it was mid-winter, completely black, and i was driving under the over-pass. i stopped at a red light and looked over at the fence between the road and the strip mall parking lot and there she was. perched on the fence. all white. completely huge. at first i thought she wasn't real but then she spread her wings and swooped away. oh. my. god. utterly magnificent! she was a snowy owl, on the outskirts of town. what was she doing so close to civilization? i think she had a message for me: look deeper for the answer to the question. i'm still reaping the benefits of that message. maybe even more so now than then.

so i keep an owl on my table for sale at all times. this particular necklace sold within three hours of being out on the table. i *loved* how it turned out. wish i could've gotten a photo of the whole thing, but alas. i kinda had to badger the lady into letting me take *one* photo of it.

lucite!

here is my first order from bellas on etsy. she dips the edges of the lucite flowers in dye(!), transforming these already lovely treasures into whimsical faerie-like magic. i've already sold some of the earrings i've made with these guys. they are just soooo amazing.

i love beads!

and on that note, i am planning on going to tucson this year for the shows. so exciting! i'm pretty sure i'll be able to save enough money, if i keep $400 from every paycheck between now and the end of january. we'll see how it goes. if i don't save enough, i'll just go next year, with a giant wad of cash i've saved over the entire year. but i *really* want to go this year...

classes start soon. i'll just be taking metalsmithing, i think. i'd *really* like to take pottery, too, but i'm afraid i'll be too overwhelmed with a full-time job, metalsmithing, and two sisters.

i've started checking out fall and winter bazaars. hopefully we'll do four or five. that doesn't sound too intimidating. looks like holiday marketplace is out of the question, but we might do the ft. wainwright one. i spoke with a couple ladies who are organizing this years event and i told them about our bad experience and they said the year we tried it, all the guys were deployed and the wives were with family outside... they said this year will be *much* better, 'cause all the guys are here. soooooo... i'm willing to give it a try. we'll have to see what becca thinks.

blog maakeover!

i'm getting a makeover! the same sweet lady who did becca's personal blog and our jewelry blog. yay!
so i'll going over to storiesbyindigoheart.blogspot.com. she'll switch over all my archives and do a new header and background and signature.... all kinds of good good stuff.
looking forward to it!

i love this bracelet. made it last week and sold it yesterday. isn't the clasp adorable? kinda wavey. it's amazonite and red agate.

worst. farmers. market. day. ever.

so here is a photo of our worst farmers market day ever. it started out great. then the wind storm. then the thunder and lightning and torrential rain. really, the photo doesn't do it justice. then dennis, the husband of tammy, who is becca and my first farmers market friend, fell background like a board and smacked his head on the concrete. horrible sound. i was the first to get to him. he was kind of moaning and his eyes were rolling around... at first i thought he just slipped or tripped or something. but no. he had had what the doctors are now calling a *massive* heart attack. a customer came running up, saying she was a nurse practitioner, so i yielded the floor and took over tammy, who was pretty much falling apart. see, the thing is, tammy and dennis are absolutely *adorable* together. they are just totally besotted with each other, in a really cute way. he stopped breathing many times. they did cpr. it took the ambulance *twenty* freaking minutes to get their, so he went that long without enough oxygen to his brain. he was blue by the time they got there. so they put him into a coma that night and the doctors were like, 'he's not going to make it'. then the next day he started making some purposeful movements with his legs. then the next day he woke up and knew simple things and his family's names. and then he was *laughing* and telling jokes and totally himself (!). now he's campaigning to go home even though he's still in icu... tammy thinks it's because he's afraid...

all i can think is that he wasn't supposed to survive. certainly not as himself. and he had been chopping wood all by himself up on murphy dome road all day. if it had happened then... if it had to happen, it happened perfectly. just when the right people were there. still pissed off about the ambulance.

and now tammy is never going to be able to come back to farmers market. she actually came by yesterday to say thank you to everyone and she had a panic attack in the drive way.

i'm gonna miss her and her beautiful crafts and seeing her and dennis hold hands.

the new blog

hi!
this is my new blog. i'm gonna switch all my archives from my old blog to here. and jill from sneakymomma. yay!

metalsmithing

here's the little box i made for metalsmithing this semester. i *really* don't like making boxes. i want to make *jewelry*, not boxes. but it's required, so i guess i'll just have to suffer through it. on the way home from the previous class, my sister and i were listening to the radio and a j.j. heller song came on that i absolutely love. the first line is 'i have unanswered prayers, i have trouble i wish wasn't there' and it just struck me. wow. that is soooo me. so i stamped it on the lid of my ugly rectangular box and suddenly it wasn't so ugly anymore. yay for amazing inspiration from the universe. my wierd blogging platform is centering all my stuff today and i can't get it to stop. annoyingly justified.

      

lorelei, here is the little bowl i thought you might like. it's teal with dark grey ashy drips throughout. the bowl has a matte/satin sheen to it and the birds are a shiny black over the matte teal glaze. it sits on three ball feet. i hope you like it as much as i do!