Away and Back

The High Country is nothing short of breath taking and it doesn't matter how many times I've been it always nourishes me deeply. 

It feeds my soul with the layers and layers of sight, sound, and texture. To listen to the rain fall softly on the trees. To gaze into a night sky that is so dark that each star shines out brightly. To wake up to the smell of damp earth and wet leaves. To listen to my grandson wake up with his quiet and sometimes not so quiet cries. Each and every moment a special gift.

I collect wee bits of texture and color on my camera not wanting to lose the memory. The woods are so full of amazing small things.

I spend very little time photographing my family. I am too involved with celebrating our time together. My grandson was a month old on Monday. So much change in one short month. He listens and looks at you. He reaches for toys and smiles when you do and makes something like a giggle when you tickle his feet. Babies are small miracles and I feel so blessed to have been able to share this weekend with him and my family.

The man behind the curtain

Being a PaPa to a new baby is exhausting work. Peter doesn't really get enough spot light around here. He really is the man behind the scenes and has held my world together physically and emotionally over the last few months. He's cooked, he's cleaned, he's helped me get orders out to you all. He's pretty amazing. It's a big weekend coming up. Peter is turning a certain age on Saturday. It's not an age with a 0 or a 5 in the end. But shhhh...it does have a 5 in it. I look at that photo above and think just how amazing this man is sleeping on the sofa with our wee little grandson who is only just a few days old. Seems Peter can hold a lot of worlds together. He's good at it.

Then I look at this photo of another amazing man. The photo was pinched off of my daughter in law's facebook  with a caption of 'relaxing after a hard day's work.' My wee little grandson has changed so much in a month. Will PaPa recognize him? 

See what I mean? That's Brody with his Mummy, just one day old. She is amazing too. That's pretty much what he looked like when we last saw him. Oh, oh, how time flies in the life of a baby. He's changed so much in just one short month.

We're off this weekend to the mountains to celebrate Peter's birthday. Brody is bringing his Mummy and Daddy. There will be food, there will be cake, Peter will not be cooking. He will be snuggling up that baby boy. Well, we all will won't we? Nana won't be able to resist.

So this blog isn't just about babies. Tempting as that might be 'cause I love me a baby. I've been a bead making machine this week. Hundreds, thousands of beads. OK maybe just hundreds. It was wonderful to be out there in the studio just working through the ideas.

The Etsy shop won't be closed, I just won't be shipping until Tuesday morning. Thank you all for such a fantastic turn out for the last Etsy shop update on Monday. You rock!

Happy Birthday, Peter!

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 :-)