Tonight, 7 PM EST, New Stuff

 Monday, the 16th, 7 pm EST, I'll be adding heaps of new things to the Etsy shop. New beads, new glazes, birds and more. Four new sea inspired bronze designs and old pendants made new again with new glazes. This is just a small sample. Come join me at 7 pm EST.

Happiness is ......

a bowl of beads

a pile of pendants

and a handful of bronze.

Sorry I just couldn't keep keep the alliteration. But Peter has added that we could go further with a pleasing pile of polished pendants. I think that's just a little too silly even for me.

It's Friday the 13th and I really, really did not want to open the kiln this morning on such a bad luck day. The  glaze tests earlier this week were abysmal. Absolutely nothing was right in there and so when it came to glazing I wasn't real excited. I just sort of slapped some on and hoped for the best. All in all I'm pretty pleased with most of it. And I am quite pleased with myself for getting so much done this week. It's been a while since I felt even remotely productive. 

Happy Weekend!

I'm off to sort bead sets, photograph, and get things ready to list on Monday.

Long Strange Trip

Sometimes the lights all shining on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me what a long strange trip its been.

Oh, oh, how I know that dates me in such a really specific way. But the Grateful Dead were a part of my young adult years, so long ago. It never occurred to me until now how much that iconic song resonates with me right now. It's been a long 6 months and I can't even remember when I touched a piece of ceramic clay let alone fire it. But last Friday it seemed right. I brought back some old designs. I don't even know why I stopped making the Victorian pendants modeled from a lock from in my old home in Melbourne. It seemed the right place to start. It's one of the first designs I started with.

And then there is the lotus pattern I made based on an Indonesian batik stamp that I brought back from Australia. Again, I have no idea why I dropped this design from what I was making. I love that pattern. Maybe I just needed to reconnect to that particular design.



Then there are a few things that are a little bit new blended with the old. I've got a couple of new bead designs and a few new glazes that  are in the kiln right now. Just waiting for it to cool down enough for me to get in there and see what these experiments amount to. I never know when I commit things to the kiln. But it is always a voyage of discovery and usually a jumping off point to new things.

Thank you so much for all of your support especially over the last months. It means so much to me and I so regret that I haven't gotten back to each of you. But thank you all so much. It has truly made a difference in my life.

7 pounds 11 ounces

19 3/4 inches, 8:55 am 

That's my new grand baby at about 45 minutes old. He is beautiful in every way right down to his perfect little toes. Of course I am just the tiniest bit biased I'm afraid. But really he is just the sweetest baby and I feel so blessed to be with his Mommy and Daddy when he came into the world.

I'll be back sometime mid July. Lot's of ideas floating around in my mind now that I'm feeling a bit better. Meanwhile I am going to soak up all of the baby love that I can.

Celebration

One of the really great things about being an adult and an adult with no children at home who need you as a role model is that you can choose to have cake as your main course for dinner.  Which is what I did last nite. Specifically, it was a Chocolate Explosion Cake served with Ben and Jerry's Heath Bar Crunch ice cream. Truly decadent. It was a little party to celebrate my last day of chemo. Four cycles, four candles. End of the hardest part of my journey. A celebration that in three weeks I'll be back to 'normal.'

I haven't been around over the last few weeks. I've missed you all. The last cycle of chemo didn't go as well as I'd hoped. There was the incident with a spider bite and the infection that followed. Then there was the infection in the infusion vein. Lots of antibiotics, lots of time down for healing. I don't know what to expect this time around. But I do know that it will all pass. Put into the context of my life time it is only a small moment. A significant moment but only a short one.

I'll be back to the studio soon. I'll be back here soon. I'll be back to my life soon. Your generous out pouring and healing thoughts over the last months have made a difference in my life. I am grateful.

Now the only thing I really need is for someone to come by and clean that window behind that cake :-)

Sneak Peek

I've been feeling nostalgic lately. Two times in our lives we lived by the sea. Well, technically we lived on the Gulf of St Vincent and then Port Phillip Bay. So not really the sea but, hey, it was salt water. I loved walking on the beach. Even further back are memories of my children plucking sand dollars from the sand with their toes in Costa Rica with their new friends who spoke no English and they no Spanish. But the shared experience transcended language. And, even further back in my nostalgia is the memory of seeing starfish clinging to the rocks at Pescadero Beach on a visit to my California family. It was my first ever experience of the ocean. It still takes my breath away when I see in my memory the wide expanse of the Pacific ocean spreading out to the horizon.

This little sojourn down memory lane found me sketching and then refining into the design for the bronze pieces up there. They are in cooling down in the kiln right now. I'll have to wait for a few days to see how they come out. This is just a wee sneak peek at what I'm hoping will turn out just fine. I pretty much never know at this stage. But I'm always hopeful.

Most likely by the time you read this I'll be off for a long weekend celebrating the new baby that will be here at the end of June. Celebrating Mother's Day and I'll be seeing the Green Butterfly Princess, which is not just a bonus but maybe the very best part of all. Of note about the butterfly princess is that she chose green. Not pink, not purple, but green. So there are definitely more than two crayons in the box. Yeah!

There is a special request pie being delivered to my son. Yep, Mother's Day weekend and I am making a special request desert but, then, for me one of the rewards of mothering is to have these traditions and specialness.

There will be 6 mothers, 2 aunts (who do there own special mothering), 3 grandmothers, and 1 great grandmother. I am so very excited to be there for this weekend.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you who mother. You know who you  are.

Beads, Buttons, and Toggles

Shop update coming Wednesday night, 7 pm EST. Along with some of the usual bronze pieces and some that are usual but haven't been there for a while, there will be a handful of these shank back buttons. I am personally in love with the bunny most of all. And maybe the lady bug too. Maybe all of them because I love buttons. They make me think of my Oma and her sewing room and the countless hours I spent making clothes out of 'terimal' for my plush bears.

Remember those bronze toggles? Finally, all finished and ready to go. These are a nice substantial weight and have forged bronze toggle bars. Not too big, not too small. I'm keeping a couple of these for myself. In fact maybe that is why it has taken so long to get these ready. I'm a secret hoarder of components. At least components are small and there is no danger of creating a horrifying episode of Hoarders where they find me trapped under a pile of bronze. No, that would be the episode where they find me trapped in a room full of towers of books. I would be completely kitted out with granola bars and bottled water so there would be no real danger.

And a handful of new beads including one of the boo boo beads. It's got a nice large hole in it so you can get chain or heavier cord through it. The other one like it is going into a secret project for my daughter's birthday which isn't until August. I am ever hopeful that I will not be finishing things last minute. It's May, I have 3 1/2 months. Shall we take bets on how soon this project will get done?

Just as a little update. I'm doing well. Dreadfully tired a lot of the time and food tastes funny but otherwise well. Moving slowly but I think this might be my time to enjoy a slower pace and learning to listen to what my body needs. Thank you all for your support. You are amazing and such an incredibly integral part of my healing. I really do not have words for how much gratitude I feel.