3 day weekends and birthdays

I took yesterday off to spend the day with Dave whose birthday is tomorrow. It was nice and relaxing. We dropped the little one off at daycare and went out for breakfast and took a nice drive and just talked. It was nice because we used to do this all the time but with Little G around, most of the time he has something to interject or say and you don't really get to talk about anything to serious. Then, we went out to lunch before the rains came.

Knowing that my craft show is coming up in October I'm trying to keep a decent stock of pendants so I've set a goal of 4 pendants a weekend. This weekend I'm doing good as I have made 3 labradorite ones. I listed two on etsy but the third I need to get some better photos of. Here they are.
The second one is my favorite and if there has ever been a pendant that I have had a half a mind to keep for myself it is this one. I just love how the design turned out on it.

Here lately I have been on a labradorite kick. I have 3 more stones that I ordered this past week, 2 are more of the gold/green color the other is a green/blue one. I also have 4 larimar stones coming any day. One of them I am anxiously awaiting to get and wrap. If it looks half as good as it did online it will make an absolutely gorgeous piece. Next to search for will be some quartz stones.

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.

Old friends

Today while we were driving around town running errands Dave got a call from an old co-worker of his. He had recently moved to Tallahassee and he was in town close by so he wanted to drop in to say hi. Of course that means the evening straightening for people coming over. My dining room is basically my "studio" and the dinning room table and hutch stay cluttered with my jewelry and clay. So I spent about an hour reorganizing and cleaning all that up. I found some old "friends" that I had forgotten about.

The first thing I found was this. My first successful (if you can call it that) attempt and wire wrapping. And I thought this thing looked amazing when I first did it, compared to my work now, not so much. LOL. But still, it brought back some old memories

The second thing I found were two stones that I had bought at an estate sale. The purple one is a very nice iolite cab that reminded me that I need to find some setting for it. I've wire wrapped stones this small before but this one I think needs more of a traditional setting.
The other reminded me why I have decided to save all the money I make off etsy to buy a kiln to use for metal clay. It is a beautiful jelly opal that has some very nice blue green fire in it. It will make an absolutely stunning ring but it's size is not a normal size you would find a setting for so it will have to be hand made.The past week or so has been good to me on etsy. I figure I have about 1/3 of what I need to buy one of the small recommended kilns. Maybe if I'm lucky I'll have enough in 3 or 4 months.

The day after always sucks

Today felt like it was in slow motion. I'm chalking most of that up to the fact that yesterday all of us we're home with some kind of cold type thing going around. My son was up coughing half the night, I was just drained and my husband is on the upward end of it and was going to be working a night shift so he just stayed home for moral support. We are all doing somewhat better today so no PTO for me. Of course I had piles of stuff and e-mails to decipher waiting for me at work.

Today also was my first day of doing the South Beach diet. I've done something similar in the past so the whole idea behind it is nothing new to me and for the first day I've done really good and stuck to the guideline of what you're supposed to have. The evening is killing me though. The only comfort is knowing that after a couple of days the cravings for the sweet or starchy type things does go away. It's just getting through the first couple of days.

I received 2 stones in the mail yesterday that I bought online to make pendants out of. So far every time I've made a pendant from labradorite it sells pretty fast on my etsy site so one of those came in yesterday along with this really awesome purple and green banded fluorite. I'm anxious to wrap both of them but sense I haven't been feeling 100% it's just not happening.