I think I know what a zombie would feel like...

I am sick. And not just the sniffles and coughing sick. I'm guessing that yesterday I had something that did NOT agree with me, and I'm pretty sure it was the grilled chicken sandwich I had for lunch yesterday. Since about 1 am I have been battling an upset stomach that has progressed into other things. I still don't feel even 40% right now. My day has consisted of the bathroom and my bed and this evening I finally have made it out to the couch in the living room. I still feel totally out of it and I have been moving around like and old person.

So, enough of my complaining. But I will say one thing. I have NO idea how single mom's do it. This morning I was in NO condition to take Little G to day care. Luckily Dave stayed home to take care of me but I was just thinking that if it had just been me Little G would've been staying home and trying to take care of him in the condition I have been in today wouldn't have been possible. I guess you find a way because you have to but still.

So much for a lazy Saturday

Today the weather was supposed to be bad and this morning it looked as it that was going to be true. It's 3 in the afternoon and other than then wind having picked up it's a bright sunny day outside.

This morning I had my second entrelac class. This one had 3 people in it and all 3 were pretty self sufficient so I feel like they were getting it and got a lot done. I really like this cape like shawl that I finished. Speaking of it, I finally got some somewhat decent pictures of it. I think the back picture shows the detail of the shawl the best. so I'm listing it first.
Dave had to go and get a new tire put on his work truck but I think when he gets back we might take Little G over to the park to play. Tomorrow is again supposed to be bad weather and he didn't get to to go the park last weekend either. So I figure while the weather is still holding out let him get out and have some fun. He was even helping me take photos.
And has I finish this up the shuttle just re-entered the atmosphere and rattled my windows. I've lived here for almost 10 years now and even when you know it's scheduled to be landing, the sonic booms STILL catch you by surprise.

Quick Post - Shawl and Pendants

Last night was busy. I finished up that shawl and am going to try and get good pictures of it in natural light when I get home from work today. The pictures I took last night are horrible. I plan on making another I just don't know if it will be in black or a medium, sort of country blue.

After finishing the shawl I decided to start working on wire wrapping some stones to make pendants. There's a rumor (and it's pretty much been decided just don't know the actual date) that we will be having a craft fair where I work. It's supposed to be sometime in May and I want to have a decent stock of pendants. So for now these are getting created but probably won't be listed. I'm not sure because May is still more than a month away and I have more than enough stones waiting to be wrapped.

This first one is one of the labradorites I received the other day. It's not the huge one I was talking about but it still is a very nice stone and has a beautiful green glow.


The next one is a really long piece of charoite. It also has these really great gold colored rutiles on one of the sides that I think gives it character.

Almost Friday

I have been busy as of late. Yesterday some more pendants came in that I'm using for my flower pendants. I worked up a couple last night and they turned out pretty nice. I found an easier way to do the base background by using clay. It works really well for the oval and circle pendants plus the dried flowers embed into it better. One of the issues I've found with using the paper type backgrounds and no way to really secure the flowers is that while the resin is drying the flowers will start to try and float, which you really don't want because then there's not a smooth finished surface.

I also received some more patterned wire in this shipment. I bought some more of the flower/spiral design and also picked up some that is about the same thickness but about have the width. It will make a very nice pair of thinner hoops I think. But, I'm not even working on those until this weekend. Also in the mail were two labradorite stones. One is huge and absolutely beautiful. It has the neast blue and gold flame. Usually with labradorite when you hold it one way it will flash one color and when you shift the position of it it will flash another color. This stone will flash both blue on one area and gold in another area at the same time. It is really quite stunning.

Tonight I'm finishing up a dark red shawl I've been working on . It is a bit more intricate than the one I posted before and instead of the usual triangular shape this one is a half circle. I was a bit worried that it would take me longer than it has when I first started it but it picked up towards the end so I'm really pleased with how it turned out. As always, pictures of everything are soon to follow.

Flower Power

After technical difficulties with my wireless mouse and keyboard this morning I am just now getting around to getting t his posted. It's been one of those days for the most part. Enough of that though, here are my awesome new pendants. I LOVE making these. They are very tedious getting the dried flowers in just the right place but it's fun too.

I only had one that totally didn't turn out at all with multiple issues. I wore this black one to work today.


I haven't added the bails to these other ones yet but I plan on sending the two light background flower ones to my mom and mother in law for Mother's Day.


I have a different type of pendant coming in tomorrow and one more frame style to do as well, so I foresee many more of these in my future.

Supplies!!!

Today I was expecting some supplies to come in that I've been blogging about. When I went to check my mail I saw that BOTH had arrived. Yay! I've spent most of the afternoon and evening playing. The thing I'm working on requires setting of 24 hours so I'll see tomorrow how they really turned out. I'm a little leery and glad that I didn't choose some of the more expensive pendants to start out with in case these end up being eh. I know at least one turned out good so far but it will be interesting to see what it looks like when they are completely set. I know the suspense must be killing you to know what it is. ha ha. Yeah right. Still, I'll be posting pictures tomorrow night of my results.

Speaking of pictures, here is one of the shawl that I did this weekend. The yarn is an alpaca acrylic blend and it is soooooo soft.
I also bought some turquoise stones today for wire wrapping. I was hesitant in buying them because I have spent quite a bit buying stones this weekend and was a bit mad at myself for missing out finding these beauties. I told myself when I found them that if I made a sale I'd buy them. Sure enough when I got home from work I saw an e-mail from etsy notifying me of a sale so I figured it must have meant I was suppose to have them.

Quick Treasury Post

I logged on real quick tonight on etsy and thought I would check out the treasury and lo and behold it was right at 333. So I hung around for a minute for it to go down to 332 and snagged myself a treasury. This one is moon inspired. Click here and check it out.

I've been working on alot of knitting and crochet today as well as I made a smaller version of my hoop earrings that I am in love with. For me they are perfect. I'll be taking photos of everything and listing tomorrow.

New earrings

Tonight I decided to finally use some patterned wire that I had bought some months ago for an idea that just didn't work as planned. I got the idea to make hoop earrings out of it a couple of weeks ago but it just never happened until tonight. I have to say that I am quite pleased with how they turned out. A bit heavy for my own tastes because I'm not used to wearing earrings but they look awesome on and I'd deal with the weight for a date night or special occasion just because of how great they look in.

I just listed them on etsy as "Garden Party" and I hoped I priced them right. I am terrible at pricing and coming up with what should be the right amount to use.


Oh and Little G's school photos came in yesterday. They always take three poses and of course one is usually him making a goofy face. The one that I really would've liked to been good is of course the one where he looks a bit surprised by the camera. But the other two are very good and I must say my vest looked awesome.

Middle of the Week

I always look forward to the middle of the week. It seems if I can make it through Tuesday then the rest of the week is "all good" from there. I took a half day yesterday just because I needed one and it really helped, I felt much better today and did wonders for my attitude. I spent most of the afternoon knitting which is basically like therapy for me and worked most of the time on that scarf I posted about earlier. I took a picture in the kitchen but it turned out horrible so I'll try again later.

Speaking of scarves here are a couple of my favorites off etsy. I just love the way these look.

This one is a hand painted silk scarf by Meyer Lemon Designs. She does other things as well that are awesome but this scarf is my favorite.

This is a woven scarf from a shop called Swim. All of the ones listed are beautiful but I like how bright and cheery this one is.

What a day

Today was your proverbial Monday. My morning started off wrong to begin with as I woke up at 4:30 this morning from a bad dream. Then Little G was mad because I wouldn't let him take his Lightening McQueen car in to daycare with him so he was being clingy and not wanting me to go. I get to work and decide to pull some money from the ATM so I can go down to the cafe to get breakfast and the ATM tells me whatever transaction is canceled and to contact my bank. WTH!? So now I'm going up to my desk freaking out that my bank has some kind of NSF going on or something. Turns out the ATM was having some kind of network or error problem in general but still, more stuff going on in a 3 hour window than I need for a Monday morning.

The day didn't get any better. The product I'm the point of contact for at work keeps changing ( almost hourly it seems) when it comes to specs, rules and just about anything else you can think of involving it. On top of the fact that I'm barely functioning with about only 4 hours of sleep, it made for a very long and draining day.

Needless to say I've gotten nothing done craft wise. I did some knitting on an entrelac scarf I'm doing with this high dollar prism yarn in the color way Wisteria. It's awesome yarn that I like to get when I want to splurge and it works really nicely with the entrelac pattern. I'll post a picture when I get a bit more done so you can really see the different yarns and textures.

Busy but good

Today was one of those busy but not days. It's hard to explain. First, I didn't get up this morning until 8:00 which was absolutely amazing. I am finally starting to REALLY feel back to my normal self and sleeping in was just like icing on the cake. Of course sleeping in made me feel a bit rushed because my class at the knit store started at 10:00 when she opened and we still had to get up, get dressed, feed and clothe the little one and go grocery shopping. Luckily it only takes me about 15 minutes to get to the shop so I finished everything with just enough time to get there.

The class went great. I was expecting 3 people and there ended up being 5. Three of them were excellent and caught on very quickly. All I had to do was answer a couple questions from them here and there or straighten out some problems but for the most part they were totally self sufficient. The other two were still fairly new knitters but they were getting it so I felt it was one of my better classes.

Came home from my class and took some new pictures of most of my pendants. I'm trying to get a more uniform look for my photographs on etsy. The best pictures tend to come from this one background I use which is a rectangular tray that looks like bamboo. I still have a few to retake but for the most part I'm happy with how it's going so far. I also listed my moonstone pendant that I posted about yesterday. Originally it was to be named Dawn but I changed my mind at the last minute and felt Awakening was a better name for it.

Lastly, I finally finished my larimar piece that has been unfinished for almost a week. It will be named Falling because of the wire design sort of falling down the side. Here's a quick pic of it. I'm not sure when I'll get around to posting it on etsy. Maybe tomorrow.
Speaking of larimar stones I sold one of my other ones last Friday, and got a wonderful e-mail from the recipient of how much they love it. That, I think, is what makes it all worth it for me, just to know that it made someone that happy when they received it.

Treasuries, wrapping and classes....oh my!

I have had a busy evening. First I received a moonstone that I bought in the mail today. I'm a sucker for those flashy stones. This one is really nice too and a beautiful blue, greenish flash in it. I just HAD to wrap it immediately and gave it a garnet drop. It's growing on me and I'm liking it a lot more than I thought I would when I originally started it. I've never sold anything I've absolutely hated or wasn't happy with but there are some pieces that you do that you're just "Wow" about and there are some that you like but they're just not your favorites. Here's a quick picture of it. I'm listing it some time tomorrow with better pictures.


Secondly I got a treasury on etsy that I did with a bright rainbow theme going from one corner to the other. I'm really happy with how it turned out. So check it out and leave a comment. :)

And lastly tomorrow is my entrelec class at the knit shop which means I need to brush up on it tonight. I haven't looked at the pattern I'm using in a while and have to refresh myself on how many stitches I'm using.

If I have to hear...

the song You Found Me by The Fray one more time today I think I will literally rip my radio out of the dash of my car with my bare hands and chuck it out the window. Seriously!

When I first started hearing the song I thought it was pretty good. Nice melody, kinda catchy sound....now I'm cringing every time it comes on the radio. It's about a 25 minute ride to work and of course from work at the end of the day. Then of course any errands we need to run it seems to take 20 minutes with traffic to get there. So in the span of oh, 90 minutes I have spent in my car today I have heard this song 5 TIMES. The worst part was on the 5th time I went to change the channel and it was playing on the OTHER channel as well. At that point I figured fate had decided I needed to hear this song for a 5th time. Ugh! Anyone want to take bets on how many times I'll hear it tomorrow?

Forever Sick

I'm starting to wonder if I will EVER get better. I'm sure a trip to a doctor could get me straight in a matter of a couple of days but I hate being prescribed antibiotics when I feel I'm almost over something. Of course I've been thinking I'm almost over whatever I have for like 2 weeks now. I think part of the problem is I AM on the upswing and then the weather changes, a front moves through and the pollen count gets all screwy and it makes whatever I have worse. Yesterday I had a horrible earache. Luckily it subsided before having bed time but still, waiting for it to go away was not fun.

Since I haven't been feeling my normal self I still have this pendant in limbo.


I wrapped it on Sunday and it's been in this state ever since. Other than feeling crappy it's just that I'm not sure what design to give it. I've tried actually sitting down and drawing out designs before and that just doesn't work for me. Once I start bending the wire it just starts becoming what it does. Every time I've picked this particular piece up I just don't "feel" what I want to do with it. So for now it sits.

I also just ordered some more supplies today for a new project I'm totally excited about because it's something new for me but all the supplies won't be here for, like, 2 weeks. Bummer.

Snowmen in March

A couple of weeks ago I came across the blog of hollyzhobby and her shop over on etsy. She was running a giveaway on her blog for these cute snowman mugrugs. Way cute and Little G LOVES snowmen. I didn't win the set of four but got a consolation prize which was a set of two. Little G thinks they are the greatest things ever. Here he is proudly showing them off.

Always too fast

The weekends always seem to go too fast. Today was pretty uneventful though which was a good thing. We did our usual grocery shopping and had breakfast. I went and did my morning knitting while Dave and Little G went to visit grandpa. Next week I have an entrelec class I am teaching at the knit store which should be fun.

I spent some time wrapping another one of the stones I got in and trying to clean the other one up. One of the stones I received is an agate with a crystal center called druzy. It's really neat looking except that the crystals in one of the crevaces had a bunch of dirt or something still in it and it just looked really bad. So I spent a good part of last night and this afternoon trying to get that cleaned up.

Tomorrow we're going to one of the local parks so Little G can run around. They have a softball field there and maybe there will be a game or practice, Little G likes to watch them play.

New stones

I'm starting to get over whatever illness I've been fighting so now I'm in the mood to start working on some projects. Today I received 3 stones that I purchased in the mail. They are very nice and I am really anxious to wrap them.

I figured I'd wrap the smaller of the stones I got in first which is a nice, light, blue-green, kind of aqua piece of chrysophrase. I figured it would make a great pendant for spring. Typically I never wind the same type design on a stone twice but I might make an exception....when I started this piece I had no intention of actually "sculpting" something, so to speak. I hope I can reproduce the results because I am quite proud of my butterfly. It's 8:30 at night so I had to take the pictures in my kitchen which is really crap-tastic lighting but I just HAD to blog about this piece.
I haven't decided if I'll post this one on my shop yet. Tomorrow I'll take better pictures and just sort of decide from there.

Picture Day

Earlier I talked about making a vest for Little G for picture day. I actually got it finished and only had to re-do the neck once. He has a big head and there was no way it was going to fit the first time. Here's the first picture

And here's how he probably REALLY felt about wearing a vest for picture day...
*sighs* Yes, you are my son. Lets just hope that wasn't the expression he had for his pictures...

The Best Buy saga continues...

and not in a good way. So there was the whole scheduling issues for Friday. It took until yesterday for someone to finally get back to us. In the mean time we just ordered the stupid part online. Dave gets a call Monday about them being able to come out on Thursday. He tells them he'll think about it and get back to the guy since we already ordered the part. The part shows up today and Dave goes ahead and call the guy back this morning. At worst we'll just keep the part for if it goes out again in the future. Call back, the guy says sure Thursday is still open I'll put you down. An hour later another call center calls Dave back and tells him they see he's been scheduled for Thursday but that time won't work and it'll have to be scheduled for Friday.

These people obviously have some scheduling issues. Needless to say, my TV is now on and working no thanks to Best Buy and their Geek Squad. So, Best Buy is now on my list of "do not buy" stores.

Whatever I had last week illness wise has come back for revenge. Yesterday I was beyond drained and today I can't breath and have been coughing like crazy. I went home at lunch and worked on some things from home.

Yesterday I posted my really cute earrings on etsy. I really love these too, they're just fun and cute.

and these
Working with clay has really sparked my imagination. I have a ton of ideas on more earrings and different type items like stitch markers and bracelets. So maybe this weekend I'll do alot more playing.

What the....

I plan on leaving a long post later but I just had to post this real quick. You REALLY have to wonder about some people....

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/18839037/detail.html

Lazy Sunday

Today was a lazy day. Of course the day isn't over but all in all it's been a lazy day. The weather this morning was windy, cold and rainy. I braved a trip to Joann's to pick up a few things that I was needing and decided to pick up some card stock that was on sale to take pictures for my products. I found two different books of them and spent the afternoon taking some pictures with them. I like the way they are turning out so it was worth the couple of bucks.

I have 3 pairs of earrings that I made and will list tomorrow. I am not an earring person so this is kind of new territory for me. I don't wear them so it makes it kind of hard to design them but the pairs I have so far are turning out cute so I'm happy with them.

We discovered this weekend that Little G can count to 10 in Spanish. That was a shocker, especially since when he counts to 10 in English he always skips 4. Although, I think the skipping of 4 is a bit of a game to him since Dave and I always make a big deal about after 3 comes 4.

Speaking of Little G his vest is coming along, I'm thinking I'm going to end up finishing it tonight. The vest is sewn together and I've done the ribbing on one armhole so I just have to do the ribbing around the neck and the other arm. Easy enough.