New! "spoon charms!

I have a small charm swap (only 11) due on April 1st, so I combined my mini brass spoons with some brass bees, brass wire, amber colored glass drops and swarovski crystals and came up with these:

This is the art card I made to attach each one to for presentation:

Renata's "Knitter" Doll" ....i'm home again....

Well I am home! I got back yesterday...it is so hard to leave my dad - seems like I never get to spend any quality time with him - and he has so much to be taken care of. While I was away I also got a job offer that I am considering - it starts in May and goes until September....but more about that later if the details can be worked out and it comes thru....
I will be spending today catching up on my email, so please bear with me if I haven't replied to you yet....internet availability was pretty sketchy while I was away....
When i got home I had a package waiting for me from my friend Renata. I met Renata in a "healing doll" round robin several years ago, when she was living in Brazil. This last year Renata moved to the USA with her boyfriend and daughter. Don't ask me why, but she RAKed me this gorgeous museum quality doll - that SHE MADE! Everywhere you look are fantastic details! The doll has crocheted and knitted clothes, a lovely painted face, and stitches on her hand. She is seated on a wooden box full of yarn. She is called "the knitter" because she is knitting . All over are wonderful embellishments - rolled and woven hair, a red dragonfly under her knee, and tiny hair ornaments.....
Here's the whole doll - click on the pics to enlarge.

This is a close up of the face....
....the hair her feet and legs - see the dragonfly stamped into the red under her knee? This is the front of her blouse - part crocheted and part knitted...
....and this shows the "stitches" on her hand and her knitting....
I showed her to my DH and he was blown away by her - he said he is getting her a plexiglass case so she can be displayed properly!

This is a necklace I finished. It is in the same style as the "lucky in love" earrings only it has a crow and lampworked eyeball beads. The chain elements are fine silver.

I'm off - again!

Well, today I will be going back to see my dad and move him BACK to his old house. ...so if I don't respond to emails or comments right away, it's because I don't have internet access.
He is unhappy at his new home. It is beautiful, great food, great care - but he is still lonely - and he says he would rather be lonely near family and friends than with a bunch of strangers who don't really care about him . It should be an easy move because everything is already sorted. His old house has been freshly painted and the carpets cleaned, so that shouldn't be so bad either. We are getting him a "first alert" pendant - he's already used to wearing one.
Oh well....what ya gonna do?...we just want him happy....and safe.

Simple earrings.....

Here's something new to look at so maybe you'll forget the ugly necklace.....
the first is a spoon earring...i've only made one - tonight i'll make the matching one. they are a gift for a friend of mine who has a thing about spoons and the "spoon theory"....they have yellow colored niobium earwires so they are non reactive with your ears, brass hammered wire, swarovski crystals and a mini brass spoon......The spoon is fairly light weight, but i guess it could be worn alone as a pin or a pendant...... ....and this is a pair of earrings I call "the secret". It is made with glass furnace beads, brass wire, fine silver beads, swarovski crystals, and carved bone monkey beads. I used brass wire instead of fine silver because i wanted to put niobium earwires on them and niobium doesn't come in silver, only yellow/red/purple/blue/green and teal! I should have been finishing up my tote, or the journals i am working on, or a peyote necklace I'm midway thru....but no, I choose simple distraction.......

It's HIDEOUS, it's REPULSIVE...but is it UGLY?

I have been working feverishly to complete my entry in the 2008 Ugly Necklace Contest sponsored by "Land of Odds" - it's due to them no later than the 15th. Click on the link to read all about it: http://www.landofodds.com/store/uglynecklace.htm They will be selecting 10 finalists, and then the finalists will be posted and anyone who wants to can vote on their favorite one. My necklace is a "Hawaii Souvenir and Photo Memorial Road-Kill Necklace Lei". It is meant to wear anytime of the year. (yeah right - it was really hard to even pick it up) It had to be accompanied by a poem.....the poem pretty well sums it up ( click to enlarge).
And here's a photo of the necklace.
Just so you know, the critters were dried, sterilized and microwaved before being encased in epoxy. I have close-ups...but they're so gross I put the pics in a slide show. BE FOREWARNED! it really is YUCKY!

.........but is it Ugly enough?

OH mEYE! doll

Here are some pics of a "doll" i made for my friend Joanne. Unfortunately after i stuffed her, i wanted the seams to be flattened out so that the doll edges would be even and round. I had to adjust the height of the heat press to acommodate the thickness of the stuffing - she was nice and round then. When I opened the heat press the doll was totally flat - about 3/8 of an inch, and some of the stuffing inside had melted and was hard! ...I sent her to Joanne anyway.
The eyeball is some of my reworked glass.

....skull and crows

Today I had to go to our local dump and empty our trash. We'd had fresh alaskan king crab about a week ago, so the carcasses had gotten pretty ripe. We don't have pick up service in our neighborhood, so you take your trash to the "refuse depository" which is actually a huge chute that they drive a garbage truck under and then you throw your trash down the giant chute and it falls right into the bed of the truck. When i got there a sign was up that said "no dumping" and there were red cones around the chute. Other people were there dumping their garbage, so I looked for the garbage man who oversees the dump, but he wasn't in his office....The chute was almost overflowing, and I could hear someone working on it from down below - so I guess it was broken and they were trying to fix it....but geesh, I couldn't head back home with those disgusting cans of rotting yuck.......so I grabbed my stinky trash barrels and dumped them anyway - and then I hightailed it to my truck and sped away........
Sorry sorry sorry - that was more info than you needed to know. Just so your visit here isn't a total waste, here are a few pics of a necklace I slapped together while I waited for yet another coat of resin to dry on my "ugly necklace". The peyote stitched tubes I had already made but never used, so I just strung them on memory wire with mini dice, porcelain crows and a raku porcelain skull with a few amethysts. The clasp is a glass dichroic cabochon that has been beaded. My DH wants to know why everything I make lately seems so goth and/or morbid.
I have no clue what he is referring to.

A DAY TO MYSELF....

Today I had a "playdate" with myself. No DH. No Dog. No Girlfriends. .....I felt guilty going off alone without having something I "must" accomplish - but my DH insisted that I should do it.
So I did. I thought I would have a photo safari and for once i could take my time and wander wherever i wanted to .
I went to my favorite beach - Kealia. It was an amazingly gorgeous day and the beach was no exception. That deep cobalt blue ocean that only happens on Kauai. I parked the car on one end and since today was "exercise" day, I left my stuff in the car and went on a run, armed only with a plastic bag to put found treasures in and my camera. My camera? My camera? Where's my camera? Oh great - i HAD FORGOTTEN MY CAMERA. I had hoped to cross the road over to a wonderful cemetery with lots of stone angels, but that was pointless now. Unbelievably idiotic..... So I'm sorry to say there won't be any pictures of this adventure....
I hiked along the beach anyway about a mile and then I stopped to look thru driftwood. I came across a pile of wood that someone had "dumped". It was long pieces and veneer pieces and blocks of beautifully grained hardwood - obviously leftover cuts from someone's house installation. I put as many as i could into my bag and then loaded up my arms with the long pieces and then trudged all the way back to my truck ...was I nuts? Then I picked up my beach chair, towel and tote and headed to my favorite swimming spot next to the rocks.
The beaches on Kauai have no smell - probably because there is NO seaweed. So you won't find that familiar beachy scent here. I immediately went in to the water to cool off...i love to float on my back and just let myself drift (today was perfect - no waves at all!)......
Anyway, just out past the rocks, maybe 100 ft from me - is a pod of DOLPHINS....like maybe 50 of them! ...and they are jumping in tandem, like rows of Busby Berkeley chorus girls kicking their legs, only it's their whole bodies, glistening silver and blue, sailing thru the air..... unbelievable! marvelous!
I got out of the water and got my binoculars so I could watch them closer. It was such a thrill to witness them having so much fun.
I spent about 4 hrs at the beach total - munching on my picnic lunch and sipping my icy lemon water. lots of watching, reading, writing, collecting, observing. I came home a bit burnt I'm sorry to say - but it was a very relaxing and soul soothing experience.
No where to go, no one to see, nothing to get done. A perfect day!

My Contribution to "Pink Artist"...finally!

For some reason I thought my fabric square for the "Pink Artist" event, to benefit Breast Cancer, wasn't due until the March 8th, but i was wrong! It was due March 1st - so I had to hustle. I wanted to cover the photo with vinyl and stitch - but for the likes of me I couldn't get my sewing machine to sew thru all the layers on something so tiny. So instead I did a tape transfer transparency - only I ended up not removing the paper.
This is my 2" x 2" creation - a celebration of my mother:
And this is the accompanying card that explains my intentions.