bead soup blog party reveal day!

i am so so so thrilled to be participating in lori anderson's bead soup party for the very first time! this is my second challenge ev-er, but i'm not a newbie to beading. i got my first beads in sixth grade from my dear mama. she was garage saleing in coos bay, oregon and came across a box of beads and brought them home to me. why me and not my sister? i was into crafts and she wasn't. all my life i've tried to get my sisterinto beading, and it never took till eight years ago when she was put on bed rest for the last trimester of her first pregnancy. i was in alaska and she was in seattle and i went down to keep her company and brought along some of my beads. we're both readers but there's only so much reading you can do before it starts to pale. so she tried the beads... and loved it! yay! my favorite person in the whole wide world joined me in my love and now we own our own business selling our jewelry in fairbanks, alaska. you can visit her here. she is also in the party.

so now that you have a little history on my beading, let me introduce my soup partner, cassie donlen. she is a dear woman who is fabulously talented. she is a lampworker and metalsmith who has been published and who's site is here. her main store is here and her little store on etsy is here. she sent me these beads. aren't they completely a-maz-ing?!? she made the lampwork, the toggle, and the focal. the rest of the soup are all vintage czech. the cones are pewter.

without further ado here is what i made---

i just love how they turned out!

this was so much fun! lori worked so hard and made this a wonderful experience. i hope i'll get to do it again.

to visit the rest of the blogs visit lori anderson's blog here. have fun perusing everyone's blogs!

andrew thornton's reader challenge

aargh! i posted last night in order to get the early risers and then checked andrew's site this morning and the post wasn't there so i thought i got the date wrong so i deleted it. but i was wrong! oopsy.

but here i am, now. i had such fun with this challenge. it's my first, and i'm so glad i did it. i challenged myself to use all of the artisan-made components and something of everything else, which i managed to do. i added the leaf chain, the c-koop toggle, and the greengirls pewter bird.





i so loved the color and andrew's mystery sun component. it's very summery.

go forth and visit everybody else's blog!

Andrew Thornton
Jessica Nelson
Leslie Todd
Holly Westfall
Alice Peterson
Christine Altmiller
Cilla Watkins
Sally Russick
Beth Emery
Patty Gasparino
Jeannie Dukic
Rebecca tAnderson

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.

lame

becca says these trees look disturbingly sentient, like the trees from lord of the rings. not that ents are disturbing.

anyway.

yesterday was kinda lame. in painting, all i could think about was how it's been like, four years since i painted and how i don't know how to paint anymore. the day started lame with mom driving off after dropping me off on campus. i opened the trunk to get all my stuff for painting, started to take in the first load. and she drove off.

with the trunk gate wide open.

um. mom? mama!

lame.

and then my tummy was so hungry it hurt. i ate breakfast! i swear. on tuesday and thursday i have painting from 11:30 to 2 and metalsmithing from 2 to 4:30. somehow i forgot i have to eat lunch. so i asked my painting instructor (mike) if i could eat in class, which kes (my painting professor when i was in school before) totally did not have a problem with. mike has a problem with it. oh, man. lame.

in metalsmithing jack talked about files, sandpaper and polishing. i finished my first piece! and man is it lame. i'll have to get a picture of it up here. maybe i'll turn it into a pin and hang it on the wall so i can have proof of getting better. because i *will* get better. in polishing i got the white diamond compound all over my fingernails. lame. jack said this will just be how our fingers look from now on. lame-o.

but today will be better. i hope. i woke up at four and decided to stay up. worked on drawing for the next assignment in metalsmithing. after i'm done posting, i'll read the rest of my homework for art history. and at 9:30, becca and i will go get our tent, tables, and other stuff from farmer's market since we can't set up today. we thought about trying to, but then becca remembered abigail has a well-child checkup this morning. and i can't be sure i'll be out of ceramics in time to relieved becca to go pick up deborah at 3:30. so no more wednesday markets. lame!

new technology!

i got my loan check last week and got down to some serious shopping for the upcoming semester. will be visiting prospector's for cold weather gear; hello carharts! and long johns. and heavy socks. i get sooooooo freaking cold with my thyroid out of whack that i'm worried about tromping all over campus once winter hits. i mean, i get cold enough just sitting at home.

anyway. i also bought a digital camera; a canon powershot A480. loooooove it.

and an ipod.

which i can't use. because my freaking laptop refuses to link to the internet so i can download itunes. because i have a pc. not an apple. *why* does apple have the coolest gear that won't play nice with the rest of the world?!?

it's a sexy little ipod, too. a purple nano. i swear to god i'm *not* taking the thing back to the store to get a lame little silver pc compatible mp3 player.

next semester i'm getting photoshop. can't hardly wait!

fall

it's sideways. i know. i'm desperate, you see.

i managed to delete my entire file of pictures that i've been sharing. bum. mer. so i've been scrounging around for stuff to upload. i think this is why i've been so lax lately about posting. no picture, no post, right? grrrrrr....

so it's definitely fall up here in the great north. birds flying in formation. turncoats. rain. leaves turning. people asking us at farmers market when's the last day we'll be open. wearing long johns to market! long johns, i tell you. it's ridiculous. where did my lovely summer go?

i've been crocheting up a storm. i've got like five projects in the works and so many plans! i'm afraid i won't be able to do much with it after classes start. my favorite project is a granny square skirt--i need sixty squares. i've got 25 done so far. i'm not yet sick of the whole thing, which is a good thing.

off with you, then

they've gone and left us.

well, only for three days.

becca, jake, and the girls have driven to denali for a camp out. i'm so jealous... but they'll be freezing their arses off while i'm in my nice cozy warm bed.

the one time i camped at denali, it rained all night. the ground was so cold i kept having to turn over to let that side of my body warm up in the air. i was not prepared for the cold. so. they go prepared with the knowledge that it's freaking cold down there.

they also have to drive through the fire; it's not actually near the road, but it *is* near nenena, which they have to drive through to get to the park. i'm gonna pray really hard that they get to see animals while they're there. the girls have seen moose, reindeer, musk ox, but no bears or caribou. keeping my fingers crossed.

i already miss them.

new necklace

i just made this a few days ago. i'm really pleased with how it came out.