~CHASING RAINBOWS, TOO~

Out of order, fun filled June.

2010-08-09T20:33:00.000-05:00

Hi, again, I just realized I never told about my wonderful trip to the Smoky Mountains in June. I don't like to announce trips ahead of time or during, too much, as it just announces that "we're not at home", LOL, which in this day and age is not a good thing to do.

Anyway, for the past year we have been planning a special trip for this summer. You see, we have a dilemma. My folks and sister live about a half hour from us, but Mr. C's Dad and Step-Mom live in New Mexico, and our kids are both military families. Right now, one of them lives in South Carolina and the other lives in Virginia. Both are roughly 12 hours away. Mr. C still has to work, we aren't retired yet, so vacation time is limited (although generous, as he's been with his company a long time). Although we love our Big Sky Fifth Wheel, we made the decision to not make any trips West in it as that is too time intensive, drive time wise. Especially after Mr. C's Mom dying so unexpectedly brought home to us just how short time can be and how suddenly there is no "tomorrow" we try very hard to be sure to see his Dad and Step-Mom at least once a year. So, here's the dilemma, we want to see Dad and Janet, and we want to see B, our daughter and the grandkids and N, our son, and the grandkids, but they are opposite directions and all fairly far away. Usually we drive ourselves ragged trying to get in as much time as possible with them and find ourselves exhausted and not really enjoying any of it because we're so worn out. I have to be honest, here, too. . . we've been empty nesters for about 10 years "off and on" now and are used to peace and quiet and our own schedule. So, how do we meet all those needs/wants???

After trying to do separate trips the past couple years and having lots of drive time we decided we would double up a little. So, we met Dad and "Mom" in Laughlin and spent a couple extra days in Las Vegas for our "self time" (saw Terry Fator) and I already blogged about that trip. Then we planned a special trip for the kids time.

We told them a year in advance, worked around Mr. C's schedule and the grandkids school schedules and planned to meet in the Smoky Mountains. So, we took our "Condo on Wheels" (roughing it has never felt so good, LOLOL) and rented cabins at the same campground for the kids, one for N's family,

one for B's family.

A couple months before we went it turned out it would be possible for my Mom and sister to go along for most of the time. So, we drove out with G and Mom following us and rented a cabin for them, also.

We all met there, there were 12 of us from 81 years of age down to 4 years of age, quite a span to keep all happy. The only ones who were not able to join us were my Dad (he helped financially, but wasn't able physically to make the trip) and M (N's wife as she couldn't get leave). Dad, my sister and myself, celebrating Father's Day early, since that is the weekend we were in the Smokies.

We had a wonderful week. We spent time at Dollywood:

We went mining at Sheffield Mine and really hauled home the loot, LMAO: but we had fun, LOL

We stopped at Clingman's Dome (highest spot driving through the Smoky Mountains. We had a funny story there and I'm so glad they used their little noggins. One set of our grandkids are very very tall, (so is their Daddy) but the other set is equally tiny (so is their Mama). When we got to Clingman's Dome the 2 little girls E and L had to go potty. So did Papa, so he took them to the potties and sent them into the girls while he went next door to the boys. These are cinder block house style potties and I don't know why it never dawned on any of us that they wouldn't be regular potties. But the girls came back out immediately and stood there patiently waiting for Papa (they were within all of our sight at all times, they weren't waiting there alone). So I went to see why they were done so quickly. I got there and their eyes were as big as saucers and they said, "Nana, we can't go in there." I asked, "Why not?" They replied, "We were scared, it's too far down." Puzzled, I took them back into the restroom and immediately realized, these were huge latrines on the top of a mountain, they really truly were too far down (the images that conjures just horrify me, try to imagine a rescue attempt, if you will!!!). The seats weren't horribly big, just regular size, but that's pretty big when you have a tiny little behind, and unfortunately, girls HAVE to sit, LOL. So I helped them and we took care of business, but it was so cute.

It was a lovely day and a very nice couple took a group picture of us: So, here we are in all our glory, all 4 generations:

Just to let you know, the tallest male is M, our son-in-law, married to B, our daughter in the hat (due to her epilepsy she has to wear hats and dark glasses as Sun and flashing lights are triggers for her). My Mom is in the center with N, our son, between Me and Mom (Mr. C and I are on the left) and my Sister is in blue on the right. The kids are A and K (tallest boy--9 and girl--7). The little guy in the orange shirt is J, he's just 4.

The two in purple are E in the center in front of Mom--almost 7, only two months difference between E in the center and K in the red and white stripes, LOL, and little L, who was 4 in this picture, but has had a birthday since and is now 5.

We went to the Dixie Stampede and were royally dined and entertained. Another not so funny story, about Dixie Stampede is that since I didn't know how to describe it to the kids I just told them we were going to a special show and they would love it. A (as only 9 year old boys and teen age girls can do) decided he wasn't going to like it and didn't want to go and made sure we all knew it and were just as miserable as he was (I was ready to smack him!!!! but I didn't!!!!, LOL). Here is the group picture they took at Dixie Stampede:

Of course he ended up having a wonderful time and was laughing and excited and got to do a special thing as part of the show. Yes, we talked about it afterwards and he says he understands, but???? He's a 9 year old boy, what can I say?

We drove through Cades Cove hoping to see some Bears. No such luck, although we did see some wild turkeys, deer, and 2 red wolves.

Our campground had a nice pool and a small pool and advertised that new for this year they had a lazy river, LOL. We had to try it out of course: It was about the size of a regular pool with an island in the middle so there was a ring of water about wide enough for one inner tube at a time, LOL, but it was still fun and silly:

We only had a campfire one night, it was so horribly hot:

Our resident fire bugs and boy scouts couldn't get or keep our fire going, LOLOL.

Since the kids birthdays are June 15, 17, 26, July 19, and August 22 we chose to celebrate ALL their birthdays while we were out there. Since we don't get to do many birthday's or shopping with them, we chose to give them money and gift certificates and took them shopping so they could pick out their own gifts. That was lots of fun. But we still had a party of sorts and it included glow in the dark sticks you could make into jewelry:

Then, unfortunately, it was time for Mom, Sister, N and the girls to leave, although B and her family had an extra two days with us. We went to a go cart place with a kiddie amusement park. No, I did NOT ride the go-carts, LOL. J and I watched the big kids (including Mr. C) ride the go carts

and then we went to the kiddie rides for J.

Finally we went back to the Cades Cove area where there was an area people could play in the river. Those rivers out there are trout rivers and are COLD, COLD, COLD, but it was still fun and a beautiful day. Some kind (or bored) soul had made river rock dams so there were little shallow "wading" pool areas for J and I to play in but the big kids went out in the COLD water, LOL. I remember when I was young, it felt great, but now I don't like the water unless it's at least 84*, LOL.

The simplest thing and the least expensive was probably the most fun in the kids opinions, LOL.

So, we had a wonderful week together in the Smokies and now maybe I can stand not seeing my grandbabies (who are growing up all too quickly) for another year. I'm so glad my Sister and Mom were able to join us, as they haven't seen them since L was about 18 months and who knows when or if they'll see them again.

So that is the saga of our busy, exhausting, expensive week in the Smoky Mountains with our family. Would we do it again? Sure, if we win the lottery, sure can't afford to do it every year, LOL. I'll leave you with the birthday (July 4) and thank you gift we got for my Dad who is a history buff:

Meeting my Challenge.

2010-08-09T15:26:00.002-05:00

Hi, yes, I know, it's been awhile since I've been on here. I told you in the beginning that I never was able to keep a diary going, either, but here I am again. Without going into any details this past year has been a hard one for me (mentally, physically, and emotionally) and I often cope with stress by withdrawing from everything and everybody (kind of go into hibernation mode). I thought I had finally gotten past it in January with my blogging and clay etc. but apparently not, as I'm still struggling. However, enough of that and on to my challenge.

Mr. C had a long weekend this past weekend and we decided to take another short camping trip. We ended up at Whittington Woods Campground in the Rend Lake area in Southern IL. It's beautiful here, although very hot. The campground is nice, although I'd like a bigger "yard" for the picnic table etc.

The particular site we're at also doesn't have a fire ring, but it's really too hot for a fire anyway, we'll save that for our trip in September. We've seen deer, wild turkeys, a small snapping turtle (right at our trailer) and of all things, there are poultry here, and we've been visited by turkeys and chickens, LOL.

Here's Mr. C checking out the poultry, LOL.

The pool is lovely, very nice and clean and just the right temperature. It's an interesting pool, as it has steps in and is 2-3 ft all the way to the rope, then about a foot past the rope there is a steep slope to the rest of the pool which is 5 ft. It turns out to be the perfect depth for me to exercise my legs, hips and knees without it hurting too badly (but that's one of those stories I'm not dwelling on, remember???).

Little Snuffles has gotten a bit bigger than I had hoped and isn't nearly as "cute" as she once was, but she's still the love of my life and such an intelligent, spoiled rotten pup you've never seen. She still can't bear to be left out of anything: Here she is swimming in our pool at home: Yes, she has a life jacket, the pool's 4 ft deep and she's only about a foot tall, LOL.

She obviously likes riding on the float better than actually working at the swimming part!!!

Snuffy enjoys watching the world go by out our "living room" windows when we're camping.

So, as we were packing up, getting ready to go, I was choosing what clay to take (other than brand new packs, which I have built in). Remember, I have a mini polymer clay studio in my fifth wheel trailer. Did I show you the pictures of the new clay shelves Mr. C built in for me? Just in case I didn't, here is a picture of them. There was this little area right between the cabinet and wall that was wasted space, so he built me these little shelves and we found baskets that fit just perfectly and I can keep an inventory of clay in them for use during our campting trips. What fun, clay at my fingertips.

Anyway, back to my challenge. It was just a personal challenge. As any clay workers know, we have lots of "scrap" clay to deal with. I'm such an anal person, I can't bear to throw clay out or just have ugly mud, so all my "scrap" clay is turned into new colors and is considered remnants, not scrap. I have about 100 lbs of remants, but they are hard to use, as I don't "see them" and there are too many small amounts of slightly different colors. So I decided I needed to consolidate them to make larger amounts of fewer colors. While deciding how to go about that though, I also found several containers of partial canes or parts of canes I started once upon a time and didn't finish. So, I decided to bring them all (the odds and ends, not the 100 plus lbs) with me on this short trip and use as many as I possibly could. I'm not done yet, but decided to take a break to write this.

So, this weekend, I have made the following canes from mostly clay remants. I would guess each one uses roughly 75% remnant clay with the other 25% being new (to brighten a color or make different shading or the transluscent, obviously has to be fresh clay, LOL).

This first one, I actually made at home, didn't like it as it didn't reduce well, so scrapped it into 4 lbs of green remnants, LOL and so, I re did it.

I wanted a painted lady butterfly on a fern and the second one is just perfect. It was huge though and I thought I'd never get it reduced.

It reduced beautifully and will have double uses, as it is just a cane and will also be part of my poker chip for the Clay Carnival in Las Vegas in November. I can't wait, Clay Carnival is soooo much fun, if you possibly can, come join us.

Then I made a couple of flowers, one I made up and the others are the standard roses I learned when I first started doing Polymer Clay Canes. The roses with leaves also have extra leaf canes to match them.

While I'm making all these beautiful canes, Mr. C is busily updating my eBay store with all the canes I've made recently. Here he hard at work, be sure to check out the store to see how well he's done.

If I have enough extra time today, I'll be making some "remnant kaleidoscope" canes just to use up some smaller odds and ends. I have such fun with these remnant canes, as I never know what I'll have until it's completed.

So, I'll close for now so I can get busy on those remnant canes. I want to go swimming today, but it's pretty overcast, so don't know if we'll go or not. See you later, hope you're all having a wonderful summer.

Back into clay.

2010-05-05T12:30:00.000-05:00

Starting over, again.

As many of you know, I had major surgery a year ago and have had trouble getting going again. I have had pretty bad depression (perhaps hormonal, perhaps not???) and just no real interest in anything. It's also been a very bad winter for someone with Fibromyalgia and I've been in a lot of pain from both the surgery and the Fibro). I've tried several times to get things going, but it's always been an effort. Suddenly a couple days ago, my muse popped its little head back up and said, "Let's go play clay, you know "we" wanted to do this and that and try this and that, the clay table is waiting, let's get busy". Of course, the muse, as usual, has lousy timing, now it's spring/summer and yard work and traveling await, but all the same, I welcome that creative muse back into my life. Fortunately, on most of my travels, the muse can go with me, as I have a portable studio in our Fifth Wheel, which I showed a couple blog posts ago.

One of the things I plan to do is write a couple of tutorials. That's time consuming, I have found out, LOL. I guess I usually jump in with both feet in a huge way, as I make canes to sell and I wanted to write my tutorial for the average person wanting to actually USE their cane creation. So I had to scale myself way back. I've also noticed with doing tutorials with my Play Clay Day group, many people want exact amounts to work with the first time they try a new tutorial and few tutorials give the exact amounts or measurements. As the 3-4 of us work together to follow a tutorial, we come up with all kinds of different interpretations of the instructions. We've even found that many books, although they may tell you the ratios to use, don't actually tell you how much you need to complete the instructions as written. It can be very frustrating, even for an experienced clayer, so how much more frustrating this must be for a beginner. So, that is what I am going to try to address in my tutorials. So, I need to finish this up so I can get back to my clay desk.

Perhaps this has been discussed, elsewhere, but I have been out of the loop for awhile. A couple of days ago while browsing in Michael's I saw that they have changed their clay tools drastically, in addition to carrying Lisa Pavelka stuff now, they also have newly packaged Sculpey tools (exactly like the "Studio" tools)--(I also noticed Hobby Lobby is selling out on all the "Studio" clay). But there was also a new Extruder set (as well as a cutter set) made by Walnut Hollow. This extruder appears to have the exact same die set as the Makins. The main difference is that it has a HANDLE that actually cranks, rather than the bar you have to hand twist. Of course I went home and got my 40% off coupon and purchased one. It was about $25.00 before the coupon.

My review is mixed. The barrel is a little shorter and thinner than the Makins. The crank handle is great, except it is held on with a screw on thing and the nut doesn't stay on and the top is a weird rounded tip allen wrench (guessing metric, as my allen wrench doesn't fit it well).

The O ring gasket doesn't fit nearly as snugly as in the Makins so clay stays in the barrel and actually squeezes past the pusher and gums up where the threaded part is and gets stuck between the top and the pusher thing. The dies are identical right down to the exact same shapes in the kit as in the Makins kit. So, in closing, the only thing this extruder has in its favor is the crank type handle =( Overall, not happy with it and will stick with my Makins for now. Was originally planning to buy 2 (one for home and one for the 5th wheel studio), but won't bother now.

I just can't resist leaving you with a cute story and picture of my favorite pooch. We have a garden window in the back of our "den/computer room/craft room/clay room". It sticks out from the back of the house about 21 1/2 " and is lovely, except, the person who put it in didn't bother to tell me it gets too hot to grow many plants in it and not knowing this, I went ahead and had it put in. To add insult to injury, it is also on the South side of the house, so it gets way too much sun and heat to grow much of anything in it.

Our puppy, Snuffles, is almost 8 months old now and is an acrobat extraordinare, LOLOL. She is also a bit of an escape artist and very creative in her efforts to be with us. So, back to the garden window. I had taken to just kind of using it as a "holding place" for stuff. There were still dead or dying plants in it and it was pretty full. One morning, Mr. C got up to go to work and let Snuffles out of her crate (although the gate was still up half way across the room--she is doing so well on her potty training that she had graduated to having half the room to play in, and that half didn't include the clay area or the garden window--I needed to get a new cabinet and get some craft/clay stuff put up before we let her have the run of the room). I came in about an hour later and couldn't find her anywhere. I called and rushed around and started to call Mr.C to see if he hadn't told me something, when I heard a little whimper, so I knew she was there somewhere. I started searching again and then saw something move in the mess I had in that window. Plants had been knocked over, dirt etc. was everywhere, LOL, but there was my puppy, she had gotten herself up there (probably to try to get to Mr. C as he goes out that way to go to his car). So, I got her down and put away again and tried to figure out how she had gotten out.

Next day we went and got another cabinet so I could put up the clay/craft stuff so she would be safe out, loose in the room during the day (she still gets crated at night). I also cleaned off the bottom of the Garden Window to make it accessible for Snuffles and Coco the cat. Cat can get up there easily, Snuffles can't. To get into the window she had to climb onto the chair, up onto the back of the rocking recliner, and then leap onto the window (which is why she couldn't get herself back down that first time). So, I says to Mr. C: "We need to make some kind of a ramp for her so she can walk up there". Mr. C., being my HERO, rolls his eyes and shakes his head, as he says, "OK, we probably have some scrap wood we can make a little ramp for her". So, we went out to the garage/barn (have you noticed a trend here? Nothing at our home is just one thing or has just one purpose, LOLOL we're not only multi-taskers, we're multi-users, LOL). We found a 6" board (which is really only 5 1/2" if you know anything about wood). It was about the right length and looked like it would work fine. Then I said, she needs little steps so she doesn't slide off, so poor Mr. C cuts a bunch of 1 X 2 pieces to attach and make little steps and some of that stuff that goes around the wall to hide the edge of your carpet or tile, can't think of what it is called right this minute, to make a little edge so she won't fall off. We have to make a special trip to the hardware (fortunately, in our little town, so only a 10 minute drive rather than clear to the big towns a half hour away) to get some L brackets to attach it to the wall. So Mr. C makes this perfect little ramp and I start training Snuffles to use her little ramp so she can get in the window. I sigh and Mr. C. patiently asks, "What's wrong?' I say, "It won't work, it's too steep and too slick, she can't do it and I'm afraid she'll just launch herself off the window and hurt herself. Could we re do it and make it a little higher on the bottom end so it's not as steep. She can jump up onto it at about 12". What can we do to make it not slippery?" Mr. C. (see, he's truly my Hero) takes it down, goes back to the barn/garage and finds some astroturf we have leftover from another project, staples the astroturf to the ramp and reinstalls it about a foot higher on the lower end. I start retraining her, and it WORKS!!! Hooray, now puppy is happy, she can get up in the window and watch us coming and going when she can't go with us. So, all the craft stuff is put away, Snuffles has the run of the den, and even can go with me into other rooms of the house and she's in puppy heaven, LOL. One other quick story, she wants to be with us, no matter what we do or where we go. She doesn't particularly like baths in the kitchen sink, but we let her go into the bathroom with us when we took a shower and she jumped right in with us. Now she gets a shower every day, anywhere I go, there goes she, it's hilarious. We happen to have a pool, so we even decided she had better have a puppy life jacket as I suspect she'll try to come swimming with us too. Silly puppy. Anyway, here's a picture of Snuffles in her window. Hope you enjoy.

So, I'm done and ready to get back to the clay table and my first tutorial, see you later. S

Clay Play Days, March 13 & April 11

2010-04-25T15:17:00.000-05:00

We had a lot of fun at our last three Polymer Clay Play Day. Sheesh, it seems weird to be writing about something that happened March 13 and April 11, when we just had ANOTHER Clay Play Day yesterday, April 24, but I'll do it anyway, LOL I may be a ditz, but I'm a thorough ditz, LOLOL

All three PC Play Days, it was just me, my sister, our friend, and Mom.

March 13 we were exploring faux stones. We tried just "river rocks", as well as faux amethyst, faux rose quartz, and faux marble in differing colors. Some we liked, some we didn't, some needed sanding, which none of us like to do, LOL.

We had a wonderful messy time but our hands looked worse than a little kid's hands while coloring Easter eggs.

Since Gail and Reni both work in health care fields, these beautifully stained hands wouldn't have gone over too well at work. . . but we had a wonderful rescue remedy available to us.

I don't know if I have ever mentioned it, but my daughter Becky happens to be a Soap Artisan and has her own business Moon Silver Soapworks. At my request she has developed a special recipe for a VERY special soap. She calls it Scrubby Soap and it is fantastic at getting almost anything off your hands. Originally she designed it to take the Polymer Clay residue off my hands since anything else that worked also dried my hands out horribly. Becky's Scrubby Hands soap is fantastic at not only removing Polymer Clay residue, but it also leaves my hands feeling soft, moisturized and clean. We also know it works great for grease and garden stains, but didn't have a clue if it would help with these alcohol dyes and paint or not. We tried it and WOW, it worked, and here's the proof (photo above of clean hands). Becky also has other wonderful soaps and candles with lovely colors and scents or unscented, if you happen to be sensitive to scents. Go visit Moon Silver Soapworks for further information.

We also made some of our river rocks into Christi Friesen style rock gardens and rock garden pendants.

Don't you just love Reni's take on the "Pet Rocks" from the '70s?

Mom doesn't clay with us, she just comes to keep us company and chat with us. Here she is holding our efforts for the day.

Mom also comes to cuddle with Snuffles:

April 11, we had a specific project we needed to complete. Mom has a special group of Lady Friends she meets with on a regular basis for friendship, support, encouragement, and personal/spiritual growth. Mom will be giving a presentation in May and for her presentation she has chosen to use the topic of Positive Thinking and Attitude is her by-word. So, we decided to make some of my Secret Stones (based on something I got out of the Book and Video "The Secret", which, by the way, I thoroughly enjoyed). The idea is a small reminder of a word that has special meaning to you. I started out with just the word gratitude, but so many people saw them and wanted other words that I decided to make others and called them Secret Stones: I wanted them fairly small so people could carry them in their pocket or put them on or in their desk or any special place where they would see them or feel them and be able to remind themselves of the special thought or word they chose.

So, Mom was telling us about her presentation and wanted some small token to give her friends to go with her presentation and we thought of the Secret Stones with the word Attitude on them. So, we spent the Clay Play Day making Attitude stones for Mom and other "Secret Stones" for ourselves and friends.

While the "Secret Stones" were curing, we also made some Faux Malachite. It was an interesting experience. We had several tutorials for making faux malachite which were all quite different. Reni followed one, but tweaked the colors, I followed another but didn't like the colors, so changed them up a bit, and Gail followed one made with the extruder and the colors listed in the same Tutorial Reni used.

All in all, a very successful Polymer Clay Play Day.

Yesterday, April 24 we had another Polymer Clay Play Day. We tried a new tutorial for a flower cane: Flowers with Curling Petals by Zuleykah. Zuleykah is a very generous Polymer Clay Artist who does beautiful cane work as well as miniatures that look good enough to eat and other dimensional jewelry. Zuleykah has a great blog and freely shares many how too posts on there as well. This was a fun tutorial, although it was a little difficult as we didn't know how much clay to start with or to use for the different parts. We managed it though and came up with the following canes:

We find it amazing that 3 people working alongside one another and following the exact same instructions can come up with 3 totally different looking canes. As a group we decided we had used too much white and the purple one has too "high" a curled petal to look like it's curing over. This is a cute flower even without the curling petals though, as shown on the second blue one. Thanks Zuleykah for a fun tutorial. While researching the website for this tutorial, I found a new one I had asked Zuleykah to make a couple of months ago for a sunflower cane and it's in her store right now. Thanks Zuleykah.

We finished out our Clay Play Day, yesterday with attempting some bargello canes. I just love the look of Bargello, most especially the way Kim Cavendar does it (link is to a long past workshop, but shows what I'm talking about). Unfortunately, our attempts came nowhere even close to Kim's and weren't even worth taking pictures of. We still had fun and got some new ideas to try and techniques to practice.

So, now I'm all caught up on my blog, if everybody hasn't already given up on me and nobody's reading it anymore, LOL. Otherwise, all is okay in my world. Sun is shining today, temps are in the 60's, and now I'm back to my clay table for another attempt at bargello a different way, LOL. Hope you are all having a wonderful 2010, so far. Smiles

Where does time go?

2010-04-25T13:08:00.000-05:00

I just want to know where the time goes. I used to work full time, take care of my house, hubby, and 2 kids, volunteer for anything the kids and/or their schools needed and still got some other stuff done. Here I am 15 years later and it seems like the days have gotten shorter or something because I'm always a day late and a dollar short. . . Oh well, enough grouching, here's the missing post I promised several weeks ago.

Let's see, this one was supposed to be about polymer clay, wasn't it? Let me go fetch some pictures and I'll figure out what I'm supposed to be writing about. . . (yes, even my cell phone ring tone is "If I only had a brain", LOLOL

While we were on our camping trip to Kentucky, I started working on a new cane. We choose this particular 5th wheel so that I would have an area to clay in. The original idea didn't work out as to where I was going to work, but we worked it out. We got a special coffee table that the lid raises up to table height and since it's just the two of us, we use that for our "dining table" and the actual dining area has become my mini studio. It works out great. I can leave my glass table top on the table and leave my clay stuff out as I'm working on whatever. Here are a couple pictures of my mini studio:

I have this idea for making what I am personally calling a "Mandalascope" cane. Here is the picture of the first one I wanted to try. I loved the colors and the design and felt it would translate well into clay:

It did, and it didn't, LOLOL.

Here is the put together cane.
It went together perfectly, the colors were good or at least as close as I could get them:

It was hard to reduce because of the non equaliteral size and shape, but it did reduce and reduced fairly well. BUT. . .

As you will see, in the following pictures, the individual parts were too small to allow for much reduction. It worked, but I don't like it!!!!

It's pretty, but not what I was visualizing, so back to the drawing board. Maybe I should stick to flowers and butterflies and leaves, they seem to be what I do best, LOLOL

Anyway, that was my big project during that short trip to Kentucky. I also started some more leaf canes, as my store is nearly empty and I need to get some more canes in there. I also had an idea for making the Sarah Shriver type Kaleidoscope a little bigger and more "mine", I'll have to try that in the near future.

I almost forgot, although it's a little late now, LOL. Just before we left on our trip I received the Around the World Swap started by Tonja Lenderman . This was a swap of Trash to Treasures. Tonja started it out with a box full of goodies, could be anything, didn't even have to be Polymer Clay. Mostly any crafty stuff you wanted to move on to someone else. As each participant received it, they were to take out anything they felt they wanted or could use and then add roughly the same amount of stuff and send it to the next person on the list. It went all over the world. It finally got to me a couple days before we left on our trip. Here is a quick picture of what was there when it got to me: this was a bulk rate small medium flat rate Priority box and it was stuffed to the gills, honestly stuffed. Problem was that some things had gotten broken being stuffed so tightly. Also, even after I took out the few things I wanted, there just wasn't any room to add my stuff.

So, I called Tonja and we decided I should throw out anything broken, and then sort it and send any definite duplicates back to Tonja, add my stuff to the original box, and send it on. So, this is what I did, and added some of my stuff to both boxes, the one to Tonja and the one to the next person on the list.

Here are some of the things I wanted to add back into the box, but since they didn't all fit, I couldn't. Some of them I put in the extra box back to Tonja, I added what I could and then sent it on.

I also included a box of miscellaneous canes. I was disappointed that I couldn't put in all I had planned, as I had some nice supply type items I had hoped someone else could get some use out of.

It turned out that someone who didn't make it into the first swap wanted to start another one, so Tonja used the box of extras and sent it to that person to help them start their own Trash to Treasure Swap.

So, that's it for this post, but I have two more I need to do today, I'm so very far behind and this is my priority today, to catch up the blog. Thanks for visiting with me, watch for more today. Smiles S

No excuse. . .

2010-04-05T14:55:00.001-05:00

Hmmm, well, here I am again, better late than never, I guess. I have absolutely no excuse, either. Oh yeah, I could make up excuses 'til the cows come home, but it doesn't really matter, now does it??? I'm going to break this into 2 posts, because I have so much to add. Some is personal people kind of stuff and some is Polymer Clay stuff and it's too much for 1 post. First I'll do the personal kind of stuff.

Okay, first we were in Nevada for a week of R&R and to see Mr. C's Dad and Step-Mom. Then we both got horribly sick with bronchitis and upper respiratory infections and just plain didn't feel like doing anything. We did have a Clay Play Day sandwiched in there, but that's in the next post (even though it happened first, LOLOL). Then we started getting ready for our first camping trip of the season, a short jaunt to be sure everything is in working order. We didn't have a clue where to go, but it was Mr. C's 4 day weekend (he gets one of those every 6 weeks, I think I explained his crazy schedule, in a previous post, LOL). Since that 4 day weekend also had Good Friday attached, (which was a Holiday for him as he's on relief crew that week), he took 1 day of vacation so they couldn't force him to do any overtime, thereby giving us a 6 day long weekend with only 1 actual vacation day. Isn't that grand??? We didn't have a clue where to go, as I said before. My only request was that it be south, I wanted out of the cold. (As a side note here, it was apparently very nice and warm, although stormy at home while we were gone). We only wanted a 1 day drive (4-6 hours is plenty pulling this monstrosity of a 5th wheel we call our Condo on Wheels). So we chose to go to the Kentucky Lakes area.

It has been beautiful. The trees are starting to leaf out, the flowering bushes and spring flowers are all blooming. The weather has been sunshiny for the most part with temps in the 80s. We are the only people at the campground we ended up choosing, LOL. It's not a fancy campground, but our only requirements were sewer, water, 50 amp electric and large enough pull thru sites to handle our 40 ft 5th wheel.

There have been a couple overnighters, but we're the only ones staying here. We've driven around some to see the sights, but planned on some hiking which our lazy fannies need and didn't do, LOLOL We've mostly just hung out at the trailer, doing clay and computer stuff and just plain relaxing. It's been nice.

Miss Snuffles has had the time of her life. She is with her most favorite people in the world nearly 24/7, she has windows she can get up in and see the world pass by. She can run and chase toys without skidding across the floor and into the walls. She's also an excellent car/truck passenger. She has her own little "booster seat" so she can see out the window if she wants, but mostly she just curls up and sleeps. I've tried to catch her picture, but she's so interested in everything I do that if I get the camera out she leaves off what she's doing to come see what I have in my hand. I do have one "bad picture" taken in a "rear view mirror", of her in her car seat. She has been so good. We realized about 10 days before our trip that she had never been on carpeting and since she's "litter box trained" to a puppy pad we suddenly realized she might not know the difference between carpet and her potty pad. So we put a bunch of rugs down in her puppy area (she's doing so well she has graduated to half the den, now, rather than just a 6 ft area). She tore up the rugs, she chewed and played and scratched and tried to "dig to China" through them. We were really starting to worry about how this was going to work out. As we prepared the trailer we took her out there with us and helped her learn to climb up the steps and back down them (she's a great jumper, as small as she is). Our poor old Sheltie was so set in his ways he hated camping and hated having to be carried into and out of the trailer (he couldn't jump or climb, he was old and had arthritis) that after the first couple of tries, we gave up and just took him to his familiar kennel when we went on trips. He was happier that way, and therefore, so were we, but I really wanted to be able to bring our dog along, and now with Snuffles, we CAN. Anyway, she has only started to have one accident and fortunately we caught her and showed her where she was supposed to go and she's not had a single accident since, KNOCK ON WOOD!!!

Oh, I forgot, at the end of March, Snuffles had her first haircut. She was starting to look like a mop, an actual rag mop and even though I know Shih-Tzu's are known for their long flowing hair, she is only half Shih-Tzu and we wanted her hair kept easy to care for. So we had her cut in a puppy type cut and she looks so cute. The gal who did it said she was very good, in spite of being such a wiggle butt!!! Isn't she just the cutest??? She's the light of our pet lives, LOL.

One last picture, for now and then I'll leave the puppy stories behind (at least for now, LOL)

Ooo, wheee, we just got 2 neighbors, wonder if they're just here for the night or to saty awhile?

So, that's it for an update of what I've been doing on a personal note, on to the Polymer Clay stuff in the next post.

Okay, so I lied, we just finished nearly a mile long hike with poor little short legs, (Snuffles, not mine, although mine are pretty short too, LOL). We never did find the stupid river, LOL. But here are a few more pictures for your enjoyment:

And, last but now least, another picture of our big truck and 5th wheel:
And that's truly all for this trip, except for the clay info:

I'm Baaaccckkkk

2010-02-24T12:43:00.000-06:00

Boy have we had a wild week. We were actually out of town (didn't want to announce it ahead of time, didn't want to "invite" any burglars or anything by announcing we'd be gone, LMAO). Although we have absolutely nothing we own that would be worth a burglar's time or effort, I still want to protect what is mine. We may not own anything worth stealing monetarily, but it all has sentimental or emotional worth to me.

So, you may ask, where did you go, what did you do, what did you see. . . patience, my friend, I'm getting to that and I'll tell you all about it.

First things first, is an explanation that Mr. C's Dad and Step-Mom live in Albuquerque, NM. They happen to enjoy casinos and Mr. C's Mom used to live in CA. so, in order to fit them all into our vacation time we used to go to CA to see "Mom" and then met "Dad" and "J" in Las Vegas or Laughlin, NV for a few days of fun. Mr. C's Mom, has, sadly, departed this life (very unexpectedly 4 years ago) but we always had such fun with "Dad and J" that we still try to meet them in NV at least once a year. We fly out and they drive from Albuquerque and we meet in Laughlin. We try out all the casinos and walk and talk and eat and chat and eat and play and eat (well, you get the idea). We actually aren't "big" gamblers, we only play penny machines and Mr. C usually won't even put in the smallest wager, LMAO. I always use "all my lines" at the lowest penny amount as all I really want is to play with the bonuses. (If you don't know anything about slot machines, the previous sentences won't make a bit of sense to you, so just understand that we are really cheap gamblers, LOLOLOL). We view gambling as a shopping trip, we decide how much we can afford to spend on these games and that is that. As to how we did this year, I'll get to that later.

Anyway, so we left last Sunday (Valentine's Day) to drive to St. Louis, where we would spend the night at a place that lets you leave your car with them and then would fly out on Monday. Usually we fly Southwest and go for non-stop flights, but decided we didn't want to get up at the b---crack of dawn (as daughter B so eloquently puts it) to go sit at the airport waiting for a flight. So, we opted for American with a change of planes in Dallas. . . well, we should have gotten a clue that our luck was not going to run well that first night. . .

We got to St. Louis with only cold rain. So far, so good, stopped at Collinsville at Golden Corral (our very favorite place to eat). When we left the restaurant there was roughly an eighth of an inch of ice on all the windows and it was still coming down but was turning white (slushy, icy, hard, sleety, snowy, nasty white). We left fot the motel and slip slid our way the next 20 miles (more or less, it seemed like 80) to the motel. Even the semis were only creeping along, people in the ditches on all sides of us. Scary drive, especially when we didn't know the roads that well or where we were going, but we got there. We were a little worried about our flight the next morning, but we got up and called and no problem, flights were as scheduled etc. So we took the motel van to the Airport and found our terminal and gate, had breakfast and went to sit and wait, and wait, and wait. . . and wait. Our boarding time came and went and finally they announced that our flight would be delayed by about 2 hours. The plane we were supposed to take had come from Washington D.C. and when it got to St. Louis one of the "de-icer valves" wouldn't open, so they had to get us another plane and get it all ready etc. We were supposed to have about 3 hours between planes in Dallas, so we weren't too worried. . . until we finally got on our plane and waited to take off etc. and looked at the map of the Dallas Airport. We've never been to or through the Dallas airport before. . . it's HUGE and kind of like a clover leaf and the only way to get from terminal to terminal is via a monorail kind of train. Of course, they announce the gates for the connecting flights and we're landing two terminals away from where our connecting flight is going to be. If we could have been first off the plane we might have made it. . . we had twenty minutes from the time we left our seats to get off the plane, and through the crowds and onto the monorail thing and then to our gate. . . I'm sure you've already seen the punch line in all this. . . yep, we made it about 5 minutes too late. Other people from our flight were there waiting too and said the plane left a few minutes early because they were there before us and it was already gone.

So, we patiently waited in line for them to put us on the next available fight. BUT, the next flight that had seats available was at 6:00 AM THE NEXT MORNING!!!! What are we supposed to do until 6 am the next morning. This would mean we would/could lose our rental car price (which was very good), our Hotel reservation, etc. If we left and got a motel, there is every chance we wouldn't be able to find a motel with shuttle service early enough to get us back to the airport early enough (since you have to do an hour to two hour early check in nowadays). We asked if there was anything else they could do, any other flight, any other airlines etc. They said all we could do was go to the ticket counter and see if they could and would do anything else. So, that's what we did (which meant another trip through security, which anyone who flies nowadays knows is a royal pain in the. . . well, you know where).

So we trudged out to the Ticket Counter and fortunately got a very nice agent with an extra observant multi-tasking fellow agent next to him. He looked and looked trying to find us another flight and wasn't having any luck. The gal next to him was on the phone waiting for an answer from another airline and was looking over our guy's shoulder and pointed and said, what about that US Air Flight. He had been scrolling through quickly enough he hadn't seen it. He thanked her profusely (and so did we, LOL) and he went back to it and found 2 seats still available on it for 2 hours from then (at least he said it "looked like they were viable/available seats on a viable flight"). Hooray, he issued the tickets with priority passes and boarding and we went back through security and to the US Air gate where the guy issued us actual boarding passes and seats assignments etc.

We called the Rental Car place, they said no problem, we called our Hotel and they said, no problem. We called Mr. C's Dad and J and told them we would see them the next morning as we'd be in really, really late. So we sat and patiently waited, but everything went off as planned, we got to Las Vegas and got our car and took off on the drive to Laughlin. We got to our Hotel and found that in spite of our calling ahead they had given away our room. A little aside here, I am horribly allergic (as in asthmatic) to smoke (which is why we chose Laughlin over Las Vegas, as most of the casinos have non-smoking areas). I still take my Singular and my allergy meds and inhaler with us anytime we will be in that type of places though, just in case. The only room they had available was a handicapped smoking room (but the guy says, "maybe since it's for handicapped people they aren't as healthy and not as apt to smoke"----NOT). The minute we got off the elevator we knew we were in trouble. It reeked, even in the hallways. The room was so bad I thought I would choke to death, but I medicated myself and said, well, we don't really have a choice, we'll make do for one night.

Another little aside here (although it's a little personal. . .) I have a personal hang-up/phobia, whatever you want to call it, about showers and tubs, especially public ones. I am creeped out (the computer says that's not a word, but it is in MY dictionary) very easily if bathing facilities aren't just as I expect them to be and I won't sleep or bathe in those situations. This turned out to be one of those situations. I was setting out our personal items to get ready for bed and Mr. C comes into the bathroom and moves aside the shower curtain and said, "Did you see this?" Of course he knew I hadn't seen it or he would have already heard about it, LOL. It wasn't a nice clean white tub/shower combo, it was a handicapped room with a shower open to the bathroom, all dark tiles and the drain in the middle of the bathroom floor. So, without further ado we will skip the fact that I didn't get any sleep that night and the next morning we dragged all our luggage down to the desk and told them it wouldn't do and if they couldn't provide the room we had paid for we would have to go elsewhere. Low and behold, they said, we'll put you in room such and such, they just left, it's another handicapped room, but is non-smoking. We said, NO, we want a regular room with a regular tub/shower, a king size bed and non-smoking, like we reserved. He hemmed and hawed and said come back at 11 and he'd see who had checked out and try to get us into a room then. So we left our bags with them and went and had breakfast with Dad and J.

We should have known by this time that "Lady Luck" had totally deserted us, LMAO, and sure enough, none of us won anything. That's okay for Mr C and me, as I said before, we don't go expecting to win, we don't view it that way, to us gambling is like paying to play a game of golf or go to the movie or something, we spend for a few hours of entertainment.

We went back to the desk at 11 and they assigned us to a room but we couldn't get the keys until it had been cleaned. So, we finally got into our room and it was just as expected and the rest of the time was fairly uneventful. One evening we went to an Oakridge Boys Concert (which is why we chose to go at the particular time of year we chose, LOL). It was a good concert, as usual, with one exception. I don't understand why nowadays at concerts they always shine or flash lights into the audience. I happen to have an undiagnosed case of strobe epilepsy. My family all know about it and I know to protect in certain instances (like light flashing through trees while driving) but when it is unexpected it can throw me into petit mal seizures which isn't fun at all, so half the concert I sat there with my hands tightly over my eyes, which made it much less enjoyable. We've seen the Oakridge Boys in Concert many many times and after they got their own theater in Branson decided we wouldn't be able to see them anymore because in their new theater they had decided to join the bandwagon and start the flashing lights into the audience stuff. We thought we'd be safe due to the small stage size and venue at the Casino, so we went to see them, but no, they had the stupid lights there, too. We have always enjoyed concerts, but have walked out on a couple due to the light situation and have finally concluded we can no longer attend any concerts, as it seems "everybody's doin' it" with the light shows now. So, guess I'm stuck with my CDs (which is lots less expensive, at least).

So, we enjoyed our 4 days with Dad and J and the weather couldn't be beat. It was in the mid 60s and the sun was shining and it was just beautiful. I could have gladly stayed for the rest of the winter. All I needed was my puppy, my clay, and my own bed and I'd have been a happy camper. Actually, if you don't already know, we own a 40 ft fifth wheel trailer, just so I DO have my own bed and shower etc. as well as a mini clay studio "to go". Only problem is that Mr. C isn't retired yet, so we are still restrained by "vacation time" and don't want to waste that precious time on driving. So, when we go West, we fly. When we go to see the kids or anywhere in the East or Central US we take our trailer. It is so nice, we jokingly call it our condo on wheels. We plan it to be our "retirement home" when we finally get to that stage.

The final two days of our vacation we went back to Las Vegas and stayed there. Our Hotel room there was "supposedly" a non smoking room, but the smell was so imbedded in the carpet, drapes, etc. that it might as well have been a smoking room (and, in fact, I suspect it is a smoking room when they need extra smoking rooms).

But, we had the most marvelous time on Saturday night. We went to see:

His show was absolutely fantastic. I laughed until I almost cried.
If you don't know who Terry Fator is, go to YouTube and search for him and watch a couple of his videos. He won America's Got Talent a year or so ago and is a fantastic entertainer. He is a ventriloquist, but not JUST a ventriloquist, he's also an impersonator, but not JUST an impersonator, he is a SINGING impersonator, BUT. . . not JUST a singing impersonator, he combines all three talents and is a singing impersonating ventriloquist.

We own his DVD "Live in Las Vegas" but his show doesn't just follow his DVD, he mixes it up and changes it a bit.

He did start the show with is great turtle and had many of the same puppets he normally uses, but had some new stuff/acts as well.

He even has a new puppet we've never seen before and I want to go back again to video tape that part to share with my friends.

Mr. Fator is the nicest guy. Although the theater says no cameras etc. Mr. Fator said point blank that he doesn't care if you have cameras (as he put it, we all know we smuggled in our cameras and might as well use them), and that flashes don't bother him or his puppets and we were welcome to take all the photos we want and could even video tape portions of the show. He said the ushers would stop anyone trying to tape the entire show, but if we wanted to just tape our favorite parts he didn't care.

Anyway, this is the newest puppet, he's "a Beatle" when asked which one, the following picture was shown (as well as many others).

He also claimed to be a songwriter and every couple of lines or jokes he would say he had written a song about it. The songs were all "re-worded" Beatle songs and they were hilarious, including one about Tiger Woods. We want to go back again and tape that part, it was so cute and funny.

He closed his show with the Turtle and he singing one of the songs he did on America's got talent. It was just wonderful and we all left with big smiles on our faces.

Mr. C and I had our picture taken, one of the very few with both of us in it.

The final night in Las Vegas, we went to see Rick Thomas, a magician. He was okay and his act was okay, but if you've ever seen David Copperfield, you've seen Rick Thomas. He did have some cool/pretty tigers and birds in his show, but way too much song and music and lights for our liking. In the hour and a quarter long show, if you took out all the music/dance/light stuff the actual magic was probably about 20 minutes worth, if that.

So, we were ready to come back home and get back to our usual routines.

You know the saying, though. . . "What happens in Las Vegas, STAYS in Las Vegas"? Well, in this instance that wasn't true, because Mr. C got bronchitis and an ear infection and brought it home with him and ever so nicely shared it with me, so we're neither one feeling too good.

One more little bit of excitement happened on the way home, though. . . (I'm never flying through Dallas again). . . We got to Dallas with plenty of time to catch our connecting flight. Went to get on that automated monorail thing (no driver, no people, no bell to ring or anything. . . yes, there's a reason I'm telling this). We needed to get from Terminal C to Terminal D (which for some weird reason goes through Terminal E, which makes no sense, but. . . that's the way it is). So, we get on and it stops for the second half of Terminal C, stops for Terminal E, and says the next stop is Terminal D, gates 1-20 (we needed D-37) and to stand away from the doors yada, yada, yada, and then it blows PAST that stop. It announces Terminal D, gates 21-40 and blows PAST that stop, goes about half way to the next stop (Terminal A, I think) and just stops, in the middle of two stops, in the middle of the air, so to speak. We're all looking at each other and Mr. C says, what do we have, a runaway car??? Finally, the speaker comes on and they announce there has been a security breech in Terminal D and so they can't let anyone on or off the monorail thing at Terminal D. We're all still looking at each other saying, Uh, what do we do now, sit and ride this thing all day until it decides it can let us off at our terminal, (we're personally down to about 20 minutes to our next flight, now). Finally, they announce they have cleared the security problem and will continue our "ride". So, it gets to the next stop, we all stream off our monorail car and across the platform and onto the car going the other direction BACK to Terminal D. No more excitement after that, we got safely to our Terminal, our Gate, onto our plane and back to St. Louis. Got the Van back to our Car and headed home. We got home about 11 pm and fell into bed.

Oh yeah, I told you I'd tell you how the gambling went. . . well. . . as expected, we LOST, LOLOLOLOL No big surprise there. BUT, we only spent about half what we had "earmarked" for spending, so we feel we came home winners anyway. Actually, we won some and we lost some, but the machines weren't nearly as "loose" as they have been in the past, so they weren't nearly as much fun.

So, yesterday, we spent going to the Dr. for Mr. C and getting the puppy picked up and grocery shopping to refill the fridge and started catching up on computer, mail, etc. Today I've spent the morning catching up on all the blogs I follow, playing with Snuffles, and just generally relaxing. It is so COLD here though, I wish I was back in Laughlin.

So, that's all my news, hopefully my Fairy Child teacher has my critique's done on my heads so I can continue with my sculpting class and away I go. Hope you missed us a little bit. Talk to you later. Smiles

Blog Slug!!!

2010-02-11T13:28:00.000-06:00

Oooohhh, boy, have I been a blog slug lately (I obviously made up that term, but I think it fits). I have no excuse whatsoever, except that I have absolutely nothing to say or write about. My thoughts seem to have taken a hiatus (which for me is a blessing, honestly!!!). I've been lazy as lazy as can be. We're getting ready to take a trip in the near future (I'll tell you all about it when we get back, LOL) and I'm not anywhere near ready.

I have to admit, I've taken a bit of a "trip" to Facebook and have been so busy building up my farm and my zoo that there just hasn't been any room or time for anything else. I honestly think there must be some type of subliminal messaging going on in the background of those games, as it's honestly ALL I WANTED to do for days and hours on end. Even my sweet Mr. C. got into the act and we have found ourselves lost for hours every evening building our farms, snagging bonuses, hatching eggs, plowing, planting, waiting and harvesting crops, just to do it all again. I also had 3 other games I was supposed to be playing, but I finally gave up on trying to keep up on 5 games. Sorry to anybody I "ignore" on their invites, but 2 games is all I can handle and actually more than I SHOULD be playing. But it's such fun, and relaxing and non-demanding (unless trying to catch all the bonuses could be called demanding). I now have my farm basically where I want it and I'm happy with the level I'm on with my zoo, so I plan to take a break (I'm actually finally getting a little bored with them. . .) and I'm ready to get back to what's important (life, clay, housework, you know, REAL things like that). But I must admit it's been a good break, I don't think I've done anything like this in my life, and I've had a lot of fun.

We have had a bit of snow and cold, again, but nothing compared to what our daughter B and her family have had out in VA. She said the kids have only gone to school 1 (one) day in February due to weather. They lost power for several days and finally had to resort to a motel for some heat for the kids. The kids didn't mind at all, they got to go swimming, so they were in seventh heaven.

Well, I'd better run for now, have things to do and get off this COMPUTER. More later.

PS. I haven't posted about my sculpture class and critique, yet because the instructor got called out of state unexpectedly and hasn't had a chance to do the critique yet. I'll let you know when she does. Hugs and smiles to all my friends.

Oh NO, I've lost my followers

2010-02-01T20:16:00.000-06:00

I just came to check into comments (I was right, we ran half the day, so I didn't have anything new to post about) and my followers have all disappeared. PLEASE, if you were a follower, "join" up (or whatever) again, I like to see who looks at my blog, it gives me a sense of connection. Thanks, Sad Smile and hugs, S

Oops, I've been a slacker!

2010-01-31T20:11:00.002-06:00

Ummm, here it is Sunday, January 31, and the last post I wrote was on the 27th. No excuse, I've just been a slacker. I've been doing things around the house, but don't really think you want to see me cleaning the bathroom or folding our clothes, do you? No, didn't think so. . .

One thing I did was graduate Snuffles from her little Ex-Pen area to the entire end of the "den", so she's in our computer area with us, loose, for the most part. Along with her freedom and "advanced age", she is starting her training, with "crate training". Since she will travel with us on vacations, she has to not "just" use the potty box whenever she wants to, she also needs to learn some control of those "functions". So, at night, she has to be in her crate and if we leave the house, she has to be in her crate, but otherwise she's loose with us, now.

We spend most of the day (at least one of us does--the one of us who is at home during the day, LOL) in the den, as that's where my clay "studio" (isn't that a fine sounding title) and our computers are located. She is also wearing a collar with her rabies tag and an ID charm with her name and phone number, and she doesn't much appreciate that jingling going on, LOL. She is pretty much over her surgery now, has to get her stitches out next week, but is running around and jumping around normally.

Speaking of computers, (remember, when I was talking about Snuffles being loose in the computer area of our den???) I also have to confess, I've become absolutely addicted to 3 Facebook games. My favorite is Farmville (if you're a Farmville Farmer, look me up and become my neighbor, please). I also play Zoo World and could use some more friends there, too (as well as a lot more gift animals, the limited variety, if possible, LOL). My third game is Tiki Farm (but it's not demanding, because if you're busy and don't get your crops harvested they don't die on you). You get a bonus if you DO manage to get them harvested as soon as they are ripe, but there is no "punishment". It is on an island and there is a sandy beach to play/build on, as well as lots of tropical plants and trees, so if you want an easy, relaxing, non demanding game, come on over and join me, my daughter B, and my daughter-in-law M on Tiki Island, LOL.

In addition to housework, I've also gotten my clay table all cleaned off and yesterday started my class on Sculpting the Fairy Child. As expected, I had no trouble making the armature(s) (I'm doing 3 different sizes at once, I know, I'm an over achiever).

I've started the heads (which has always been my "bugaboo" where sculpting is concerned). I can do the bodies, legs, arms, even the feet and hands fairly well. But the face. . . After redoing a mermaid's face for about the 25th time, I actually got so frustrated I threw a tantrum and threw her head against the wall. I was mortified I had done that, I'm a VERY controlled person. I don't throw tantrums, I rarely show anybody but my husband how I truly feel about many things. I hardly ever cry and almost never raise my voice (even when I had kids home. . . notice, I said ALMOST, so if our kids are reading this you can't say, yeah, "never???"). If I cry, you can be pretty sure whatever caused it is really overwhelming. Oh, Mr. C. reminds me to say, I "leak" on occasion (silent tears dripping down my face) but that's usually from a sad song or extreme pride or missing our kids and grandkids--did I ever tell you we have 5 absolutely wonderful grandkids, being a Nana is fantastic, at least when they're around. Our kids are both AirForce spouses, so they and the grands don't live near us and we usually only get to see them once a year. We were fortunate to have 3 of them living with us when they were born and for at least the first year of their lives (and two of them were here with us for 3 years). So, I miss them a lot. But, I digress. . .

Anyway, back to the throwing of the poor mermaid's head. I'll repeat, I was mortified and just sat there in shock for a few minutes before very quietly picking up all the pieces, carefully wrapping the mermaids body (which was perfect, in my opinion) up and putting her in a box. I picked up all the pieces and decided I needed a time out and I have not even attempted to sculpt since then. BUT, it's my overriding "thing" I want to learn and want to be able to do. As you've probably noticed from my Mom and Sister's comments, in general crafty, cooking, sewing types of things come very easily to me. Caning comes very easily to me. So for me to find something I "can't do" (other than drawing and painting, which I won't even attempt, LOL) has been very lowering for me. It's a real challenge, which makes me want to "master" it all the more, LOL. (What's that saying about "Pride going before a fall" or something like that, LOL. But the mermaid incident happened probably over 8 years ago and I've never attempted a sculpture since. At least a sculpture of a "person" type thing.

I do Christi Friesen type sculpture and her methods are very freeing, since they are representational or "stylized" rather than realistic, I have a blast with them.

Here's an example of one of my pieces a la Christi Friesen. She is such a fantastic person, teacher, artist, and writer. She encourages people to use their creations any way they please (even selling them) but asks to be given credit for the inspiration.

This is actually a hidden jewelry box, and I thought it was good enough to send it in to a contest at PolymerCafe and it not only got in, it was the first one listed and had a full page spread. I felt pretty special, I can tell you. So, why can I do this kind of stuff but can't make a "FACE" for heaven's sake. We all have faces, we look at them everyday, why can't I seem to sculpt one?

So, I've decided no more excuses, I AM going to learn how to sculpt.

So, back to my class. I got the armatures done, got my clay all mixed (by hand, it isn't as likely to cause moonies--little placquing places in the clay that look like little moons and not something you want on a doll's face, LOL).

Today, I started the faces. One is about an 1 1/4", the second is about 1", and the third is about 3/4". So far, they look just like the instructor's examples, except for the mouths :-( I just can't seem to get the feel for how to "turn up" the top lip. So, I decided to come write my blog and let them cool down again before I try the mouths again. I've only had to redo the big one once and the little one once (one because of the mouth, the other because of the nose, she's supposed to be a fairy, and she had a huge honker, LOL). They still have a long way to go, as they are just roughed out, at this point. But so far I feel pretty positive. Here are pictures of them. They look kind of like aliens right now, and aren't nearly as smooth as the instructors, but I'm satisfied for my first try. I'll submit them to Kori (the instructor) tomorrow and let her critique what I have so far.

I also have my eyes ready, which I think is the next step, I'm trying not to look ahead as I don't want to get overwhelmed and discouraged.

Tomorrow is Mr. C's "weekend", so we'll be running half the day and so I probably won't get more done tomorrow, but I'll let you know how the teacher's critique comes out on Tuesday or Wednesday.

So, until then. . . Have a wonderful Monday. Smiles, S

Busy but no Clay

2010-01-27T18:08:00.000-06:00

Hi, it's me again, no post yesterday, absolutely nothing came to mind for me to write about, other than taking the puppy and cat to the vet to be spayed and you already knew about that, LOL.

So, today has been a very busy day. First I picked up the poor puppy and cat. Cat doesn't seem bothered at all, but poor puppy, just lays in her little bed with her head down and her big eyes looking so sad and befuddled. Then she falls asleep and has little puppy dreams, whimper, cry, whimper, cry, she's never done THAT before. Well, I know how awful I felt after my hysterectomy, so I guess I have to understand, but I feel so sorry for her. How come they give people pain meds after surgery, but not pets???

So, what have I been so busy with today, you may ask (hoping for some clay and/or caning news)? Alas and alack (is that how you spell that?) NO CLAY, again today. Although the day isn't over yet and since I'm writing this early, maybe I can still fit some in (well, doubt it, since I didn't finish it until almost 6 pm). BUT, now everything is done (except the exercise part that I am trying to do daily), so there is nothing on my plate to do tomorrow. Hooray, Clay Table, here I come.

First, this morning I made these:

Homemade Egg Noodles from my Grandma Zook's recipe (sadly she's no longer with us to make them for me, she was the best noodle maker in the world). She also made Homemade Angel Food Cake and "beat the egg whites on a plate", BY HAND (I make make it from scratch, but I use the mixer, LOL) and it is fantastic.

My Grandma was a fascinating woman. She was widowed when my Mom was only 4 years old and never remarried. She lived an interesting life, of which we only know bits and pieces. She told stories of moving to FL with her husband during the depression and living in a tent because they couldn't find or afford anywhere else to live. She told of a day her husband brought a big old fish home for dinner and plopped it into a pan and apparently she didn't know it hadn't been cleaned or anything yet, because next thing she knew it was flopping all over the place.

She eventually became the Secretary to the City Clerk of Bloomington, IL. She ended up going to all the City meetings because her boss didn't take minutes, LOL, and when he resigned, she decided to run for the office of City Clerk. This was a time when it was almost unheard of for a woman to be political, at all, let alone actually "run for an office". She not only ran, she beat out 5 men for the position and then held the position for a total of 4 terms (16 years) before she retired.

She never learned to drive and she either walked, took the bus, or the men she worked for gave her rides home (after meetings when it was dark and the buses weren't running and her friends didn't want her to walk home alone in the dark). She was so much fun and so loving. It was really weird to go out with her, like downtown to go shopping, because it seemed like she knew EVERYBODY in town and would have to stop and talk to each one of them (perpetually campaigning, I guess). She was rather straight laced, though, and my sister and I loved to tease her by talking about rather risque subjects (at least they were risque back then, especially from teenage girls). We'd talk about things like pre-marital sex (neither of us was interested, we just liked to egg her on) and she'd get this absolutely shocked look on her face. We'd say things like, "Well, Grandma, you guys used to do it, you'd just do it in the bushes." She'd look horrified, start blushing, and say, "Oh, you girls!" (but she never denied it and we'd rib her mercilessly).

My favorite story of my Grandma was after she was retired, I don't remember how old she was, but she was probably in her late 70's. My boyfriend (at the time) and I had gone out to dinner at a little Mom and Pop type Italian restaurant (but I'm talking REAL Italian and really good, even though the place looked like a little hole in the wall place way off the beaten path). My Grandma came in with 3 of her cronies, they sat down and ordered their food and drink and I got the shock of my life. My GRANDMA ordered a beer, and not just a beer, but actually drank it OUT OF THE BOTTLE. You can bet I held that over her head for a long time, LOL. My very upright, straight laced, past public servant, 70 something year old Grandma, drinking beer in public out of a bottle.

Oh, and speaking of her cronies reminds me, although she didn't drive, as she got much older, a couple of her friends also didn't drive and the one who did could barely see, so the passengers would tell her where to turn and where to go and what was there and she would drive that way. It was unbelievable. She was such a hoot.

While my noodles were drying, I started cutting up veges and meat to make this:

Homemade Goulash from my Grandma Kitty's recipe (she's also sadly missing from my life). She was a great cook of everything. The funny thing, to me, is that when I was a kid, I didn't particularly care for this Goulash, but I really like it now. Over the years I've tweaked it a bit, but I'm sure she did that also, as she was one of those women who cooked with a "pinch of this and a handful of that and a little of whatever".

I also have some wonderful memories of her, My Dad's Mom. I probably got my ability, interest, and love of crafting and sewing from her. She was an actual tailor for a long time and had her own button making business. She tried just about every craft that came along, although I think her and my Grandpa's first love was rocks, minerals, and gemstones. They went on rock hunting expeditions (and sometimes took us with them) and had all the equipment to cut, polish, slice, etc. the rocks they found. They had huge specimens and small ones, common ones and rare ones.

This Grandma had no political aspirations, she was a wonderfully comfortable Grandma who would hold me on her lap and sing songs to me (songs I know and sing to this day, although sadly, many of the words have been lost through the years and they are old songs that you can't find in books anymore). Shadrach, Meshack and Abendigo (not a clue how those names are properly spelled), Preacher Went Out A Huntin', Fiddle I Fee, K-K-K-Katie, The Moon Shines tonight on Little Redwing, the old Cowboy songs.

Unfortunately, she developed Alzheimer's and the last 10-15 years of her life were not pleasant ones, so I try to just remember the good times with her.

Anyway, while the Noodles were cooking and the start of the Goulash was simmering away, I also made these:

Mmmm, Homemade Peanut Butter Cookies. This recipe came from my very special Mommy (and I'm not sure where she got the recipe). They are a very light, almost crisp peanut butter cookie and the dough tastes almost exactly like the inside of a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. I can never decide if I like the cookie or the dough better.

This also reminds me of something my daughter B recently wrote on her Facebook Wall. She was in the process of making homemade cinnamon rolls (my recipe, this time, and they are out of this world good, if I do say so myself ;-p) So, the question was: "How can you tell when the Castle (or Ziegler/Zeigler) women have been baking?" heeheehee, I'll let you make a guess in the comments (to make a comment, click on the "conversation bubble at the top right of this post). (B, you already know the answer, so you can't answer tonight!!!)

So, after all this yummy fun, I was left with this:

Which is all cleaned up, either in the dishwasher or hand washed, dried and put away.

AND, in spite of all this yummy cooking that was going on I still managed to get this done:

As well as remembering to do this:

BUT, while I was doing this I happened to glance out of the window and saw more of THIS:

Yep, more snow, and it's supposed to get down in the single digits cold again tonight. . . I HATE WINTER, LOLOL

So, it's been a very busy day, even though I didn't get any claying done.

While I was clearing out the dishwasher though, I remembered something I wanted to talk about yesterday, that IS clay related.

Every morning for the past couple of years I've had a Cranberry Juice cocktail made from Fresh Cranberry Juice Concentrate (2 oz Cranberry Juice Concentrate--no sweetener in 20 oz of water). The Cranberry Juice Concentrate comes in these little 8 oz. glass bottles. They are about 5 inches tall and not very big around and the top 1/4 looks kind of like cut beveled glass. I've been blithely throwing these little bottles out for the past several years and yesterday, for some unknown reason, it struck me that these would make absolutely gorgeous bud vases with the lower straight sided part covered in clay. Here's a picture, what do you think? If I covered the "threaded top" and the straight part below the design part, wouldn't they make cute little vases?

So, "That's All Folks", at least for tonight. Talk to you tomorrow. Smiles, S

Another Snowy Day

2010-01-25T18:47:00.001-06:00

Well, here in Central IL, it's another snowy, windy, COLD Day. Today was Mr. C's "Sunday", and we did our usual Monday errands and then came home and have tried to keep warm ever since. The wind is just ferocious, though and seems to be seeping in through the walls or something. The rest of the day was mostly devoted to taking care of animals, feeding, grooming, cleaning kitten pens and pans, clipping nails, etc.

Tomorrow my sweet Snuffles is going to the Vet to be spayed along with the only cat we are keeping, also to be spayed. I gave the puppy a bath and groomed her all up for her vet visit tomorrow, but I'm not a groomer, and I'm afraid I really botched up her face, LOLOL

Here is a before picture of her cute little face: (The dog is the one with the cute little face, just ignore the other person, LOL).

So, here are some pictures of her with her freshly trimmed "butchered" little face (no, I didn't cut her, although I got pretty close). How on earth do the groomers keep them still long enough to trim them? I think next time it will be to a groomer she will go. Thank goodness puppy hair grows back quickly.

Fortunately, she doesn't seem to know or care that I butchered her grooming job and just goes on smiling, loving us, and playing her funny, silly puppy games. She's not too happy though, to have had her food and water removed for the night (pre-surgery, no food or water).

I really don't have too much more to say today, it'll be an early night for us, as Mr. C has to be up bright and early for another 12 hour work day tomorrow. Except for taking the puppy and cat to the vet tomorrow morning, there's not much on my agenda (if you don't count laundry and dishes ;-p ) So, hopefully I can finally get those eye canes reduced. See you then. . . SMILES

Short

2010-01-24T18:03:00.000-06:00

Hi, this is just a very short post, as not much went on today.

One thing I want to point out to my loyal friends and followers. The comments section is not really gone from my blog, look at the top of the blog post, there is a little 'conversation bubble' there. Click on that to make a comment. My Blog guru (aka daughter, Becky) has been hard at work on my Blog and that is a little fun addition she found for it. It never dawned on either of us that nobody would notice it or realize that is where you need to click to make the comments now. As comments are made the numbers show how many comments are made. Now, I challenge you to test this out and be sure it works, by making a comment and then checking back to see if the number changes (and I ask you to make a comment, just so I can be sure it is actually working, lol).

Today is Mr. C's "Saturday" for this long week of 12 hour days (hooray, he gets two days off this week and there's only one week left of this "outage", so he'll go back to "normal" work hours--normal for where he works anyway, see one of the previous posts for details, LOL). We decided to celebrate by driving clear to Springfield, about an hour and 15 minutes away, to go to our favorite restaurant, Golden Corral (OK, so I never claimed to be gourmets!!!) We also did some errands: getting a new BIG mailbox to finally replace the dinky one the State of IL replaced our old one with and some kitten food. We almost bought some things we really didn't need at Walmart, but in the end put them all back, all because of a magazine article I read while I was in the hospital.

I'm not sure, but I think it was in either Good Housekeeping or Better Homes and Gardens (I was waiting to go get the second scan after the stress test and I was hungry, bored and a bit crabby by then). Anyway, this article was about a family that decided to take a vow to stop spending. I got the impression they were fairly well off and just bought whatever struck their fancy, whether it was new furniture or a new purse. They had several daughters. They decided they were spending way too much, way too frivolously (that's a hard word to write, but the spell checker says that's how it's spelled, so guess I'll leave it). So they sat down and decided to do this together as a family. They decided what items would be exempt, such as food, toilet paper, school supplies, mainly consumables and they wouldn't purchase ANYTHING else for an ENTIRE YEAR. They learned to repurpose lots of things, such as one girl's tennies were getting a little too tight, and she wanted a new pair, but they weren't for school, just because she wanted them. Mom remembered that a couple years ago she had purchased a pair of brightly striped tennies for herself but they were a little too small so she never wore them and just stuck them up in the attic, so she ran and got them and they fit the daughter perfectly and she was thrilled with the wild stripes. Another daughter wanted to start a journal but didn't have any extra paper, but one of her sisters had purchased extra spiral notebooks for school a couple years before and there were some she had only used a couple pages of so she gave those to the one wanting to journal. They learned to be very creative about gift giving and learned a very interesting lesson about frivolous and/or impulse buying. They found they could do a lot more things as a family (outings to special places or special activities or meals out) as well as put away more than $500.00 per month that before they had just been frittering away. After the year, they just continued it as a way of life and are lots happier with their simplified and scaled down spending. So, today, we chose several things at Walmart, but then I asked, we have a larger size one of these, do we really want to get another one for just a week or two of use when we could use the larger one and just not fill it as full? We picked up some DVDs we weren't sure we had and then I asked, you know, we have lots of DVDs we've never watched, do we really need/want to get some more (especially since one was one we weren't sure if we already had it or not ;-p ) I was going to get some new toothbrush heads for my Sonic Care toothbrush thing, but I don't really need them for another 3-6 months, so why did I need to get them NOW? So, in the end we ended up putting everything back and walked out of Walmart without buying ANYTHING, which is definitely a first for us, LOL (which is why we call it Wallet-Mart).

Anyway, although we don't intend to go that extreme, it was an interesting one day insight into how much we spend mindlessly, just because we WANT it or MIGHT need it "someday" in the future. I intend to continue trying to look at my spending this way and see if I can't help keep more money in the bank than in the store. In this economy, every little bit helps.

Well, so much for a short post, sorry, sometimes my mind just runs away with itself (actually what you read here is the way my brain works nearly 24 hours a day, which is why I have a sleep disorder and Fibromyalgia, LOL, it just never shuts down).

So, to bring this to a close, the temps were all the way up to 41* today, the BIG mailbox is now installed, (for which I'm sure our Mailman will be grateful), and now I'm done with my blog post for the day and still have time for a movie tonight. Hope everyone else had a good day. Smiles

Another Fun Clay Play Day

2010-01-23T19:54:00.000-06:00

First thing today, I want to show off the beautiful flowers Becky and family sent me while I was in the hospital. When they finally got me up to my room, this is the first thing I saw. It was a real pick-me-up, thank you, guys.

Today, we had another Clay Play Day. The same people were there, my sister, Gail, our friend Reni, and our Mom. We had another busy, long, but educational and fun day. I keep telling them, I'm trying to teach you techniques, not just projects, although we do projects as part of our techniques.

Today, we made 'night light boxes'. Cute little boxes, hinged together with tubes of clay and wire, with cut outs of translucent clay and cute lids. Hmm, not a very good description, is it, how about I show you some pictures, instead: Gail's is the blue one with the butterfly cut outs, Reni's is the yellow one with the hearts. Mine was a kind of brick red with angel cut outs and the handle on the lid was three angels (holding hands) around the center with a single halo over their heads. Since Mom doesn't "do clay", I gave that one to her and forgot to take a picture before she left (which was shortly after lunch).

First picture, in the light, second picture with them lit up. I know it's a little dark, but the "light up" part wouldn't show up if it wasn't dark.

I have to share with you, the most hilarious part of this was watching Reni and Gail on their way to the car at the end of the day "using" their lights to light the way to the car and singing "This Little Light of Mine" at the top of their lungs. It's a good thing we live in the middle of a cornfield, LOL

Then, we went and had a delicious lunch of Taco's, with all the trimmings, and fruit for dessert (along with some new recipe Chocolate Chip cookies Mom brought. They have a box of instant vanilla pudding in them). Everybody else said the cookies were delicious, but I didn't have any, as I don't do nuts in cookies, I'm allergic to pudding and (I know I'm weird, but) I don't like chocolate chips or chocolate chip cookies. But I still appreciate Mom's contribution, Thanks, Mom.

After our delicious lunch, we made some translucent flower canes from Marie's tutorial on her blog, Art From My Heart. We deliberately made different colors so we could use them for our final project for the day. Gail made orange and blue, Reni made turquoise and violet, and I made fushia and purple, and then I added a yellow, since I think we need yellow for a full set of flowers, LOL.

Finally, we made some more puffy things, only this time they were flower charms made from Zuleykha's Tutorial, found on her blog: Zuleykha's Polymer Clay. These were quite fun and challenging to make, as the clay kept trying to pull away from the charm frames. We succeeded, though:

So, another fun Clay Play Day, is past and gone (except I still have to cure the charms, LOL). Gail, Reni, and Mom are all safely home, Mr. C just got home from work and has the next two days off, HOORAY!!!

So, with two last pictures of Gail and Reni working hard, I'll close for tonight and "talk to you" tomorrow.

Good Night!!!

Catching up and my very first ever award!!!

2010-01-22T12:57:00.003-06:00

The first thing is a huge THANK YOU for the honor of being awarded
This Sunshine Award. It's especially appreciated on a grey gloomy day when I don't feel so great, anyway. It was a real lift to my heart when I saw it this morning.

The Sunshine Award
is awarded to bloggers whose positivity and creativity
inspires others in the blog world.A big thankyou to "Almond Joy" of http://colscreations.blogspot.com/
I really enjoy her Frog Muse and her use and love of COLOR!

The rules for accepting this award:
Put the logo on your blog or within your post.
Pass the award onto 12 bloggers.
Link the nominees within your post.
Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.

Hmmm, 12 bloggers, it will be hard to narrow it down, so many bloggers have had an impact with my life and work. I also don't know how to put anybody else's pictures in here, so it will just be a list and link, in no particular order, LOL.

Marie of Art from my Heart for her generosity of spirit in sharing her love of life and polymer clay with us.

Carolyn & Dave of 2goodclaymates because it's so nice to read of people working together and their willingness to share their enjoyment of each other and their artistic cooperation.

Delores of followingtrolltracks for sharing the stories of Hob Knobby Hollow and the adventures and lives of her trolls.

Jael of jaelsjewels as she is my friend and makes beautiful jewelry.

Becky of midnightlatherings and Moonsilver Soapworks for the great "Scrubby Hands Soap" she designed for me to get the clay residue off my hands while still keeping them soft and moisturized. She also happens to be my computer guru and wonderful daughter.

Susan of both A Walk in the Park and Let's Lose Weight This Year for her art and humanity in addressing a difficult subject with humor and understanding for all our foibles.

Sally of Kudzu's Whimzy for her wonderful Dragons and fun tutorials.

Moe of Moe Art Polymer Clay Creations for her sage advice, friendship and encouragement, as well as being a great polymer clay artist.

Jackie of The Pleasant Pheasant, again, for her friendship, wonderful advice and encouragement of EVERYBODY and their work on Polymer Clay Central.

Zuleykha of Zuleykha's Polymer Clay for her beautiful work and sharing nature.

Vanessa of A Fanciful Twist for her wonderful witty sharing nature and her encouragement for all us us to remember to use our imaginations and appreciation of the world around us.

Julie of Julie Eakes complex canes in polymer clay for her wonderful canes and sharing her experiences in creating those canes.

My thanks, also, to all, who read this blog, as your encouragement and comments and experiences you share with me make a big difference. So, THANKS!

Disappearance

2010-01-22T10:46:00.000-06:00

Hi, just a quick note for now to explain my disappearance the past two days: I spent the last two days in the hospital. Here’s the whole story. Tuesday, I was driving over to Champaign to go to Michael’s to get some Polymer Clay, because it’s on sale and I’m running low. About half way over there, I suddenly got a very sharp pain right behind my left breast (like an electric shock). The actual sharp pain only lasted maybe 10-15 seconds. It took me a few seconds to figure out what was happening and it seems like it was “forever”, it took my breath away, it was so sharp and fast. Then my heart started pounding so hard (not particularly fast, just HARD) I could actually feel the pulsing and beats (if I had a second hand I could have taken my pulse without even touching my wrist or throat). Then the pain started across my chest and into my left shoulder and down my arm. All this time I’m still driving along, wondering what in the world is going on and wondering if I should go to Carle Clinic when I got to Champaign. By the time I got to Champaign, except for a tightness across my chest it was all over, so I went ahead and did my errands, went to Red Lobster for lunch and then went home. Off and on the rest of the day and night, every once in awhile, it would feel like my heart hiccupped, the hard beating would start up again and I’d break out in a sweat, I checked my blood pressure and it was very high. The next morning Verle urged me to go to the Dr. and get it checked out, or to at least call Gail and ask her if she thought I should get it checked out. So, with both of them saying go get it checked out and the message at my Dr.’s office saying if you are having any kind of chest pain to go to the ER, rather than making an appt to see the Dr. I finally decided to go to the ER. By this time all I have is the tightness across my chest and it feels bruised (like I’ve been tackled or something). So, they did an EKG and blood work etc. and put a ‘Nitro Patch’ on me. About an hour later, the nurse finally came back in and I told him I thought I was having an allergic reaction to the Nitro Patch. He asked why and I told him my tongue was swollen and my tongue, and throat itched and burned and I was having trouble swallowing. He lifted up the Nitro Patch and said, hmmm, it is pretty red under here, let’s take it off. Verle said, later, well, you shouldn’t be too surprised, think about it, you know you’re allergic to Glycerin (tests years ago), what is a Nitro Patch? Try nitro GLYCERIN, LOL. The nurse finally came back in (about another hour later) and I asked for something to drink and were they going to do anything about the allergic reaction as I was having trouble swallowing. He looked at the patch area again and decided to clean it off with some alcohol to get the residue off and said the Dr. said just wait and see if it got worse!!! He sent somebody else back with a glass of water. Around 1 pm I finally asked if I could possibly have something to eat as I hadn’t eaten in over 24 hours (since lunch the day before, since I didn’t know what they might need to do). So he brought me a menu and let me order something to eat (off the cardiac menu, LOL). The first blood tests came out ok, but the ‘hospitalist’ said she had talked to the cardiologist and they decided to do 3 enzyme tests 8 hours apart so they were admitting me. So, finally (about 8 hours after I got there) they took me to a room, got me all re-wired (to a portable thing, so at least I could go to the bathroom etc.).

Then, they did 2 glucose tests one around 4 pm and another at 10:30 PM and the final enzyme blood draw at 1:15 am and then another complete fasting blood profile (draw) around 5 am and then vitals around 6 am, so a second night of almost no sleep. The 3 enzyme tests were okay so they decided we’d do the stress test, but wanted it fasting. Guy came in and gave me a radioactive dye around 10:30, I went for the first ‘scan’ around 11:30, then did the stress test. The Dr. doing the stress test told the students that normally they only take people to a certain heart rate but he decided to take me higher to see what happened!!!! Then I sat for a half hour (I had to ask for something to drink and eat, but I was still marked in the system as fasting, so they wouldn’t give me anything to eat, although they did bring me something to drink). They did the final scan and sent me back to my room. Finally, around 4:30 the Dr. came in and said, although the Dr. doing the stress test was a bit concerned about my stress test, the scans were fine and showed my heart was sound and working normally. I asked him, then what happened, why did I have the pain and hard heart beats. He said, sometimes, our bodies kind of misfire, for no apparent reason. He thought my heart had just misfired and then tried to reestablish the correct rhythm with the hard heartbeats and spent the rest of the day and night trying to reinforce the correct rhythm (which is why it had the occasional hiccup feeling and increased heart beats) and that I did the right thing to come get it checked out. Now we know that my heart is sound and working perfectly fine and to just ignore it if it happens again and is fairly similar to the first time. I also asked him why the Dr. was concerned about my stress test, it was because I apparently reached my target heart rate much more quickly than he expected me to. Well, number 1, I’m way overweight, number 2, I’m way out of condition, I haven’t done any exercise of any kind since I had my hysterectomy, and number 3, I had pushed myself to the limit during the test, I thought that was what you were supposed to do. So, neither the Dr. nor I were worried about that. I told the Dr. I know I need to start exercising and lose this excess weight. He just looked at me and said, “You know what you need to do.” And that was that.

Then, of course, we had to wait for the hospitalist to do the final discharge and all that and they let me go home around 5:30, with no change in medications, no high blood pressure meds, no cholesterol meds, no diabetes meds, they said all those things were fine. So I was pretty pleased, but I was so tired, and even now, feel really exhausted. So, I’m fine, just tired, fat, and out of condition, LOL.

Once I catch up on all my computer stuff, I'll begin my eye cane reductions, although I suspect they won't get done until next week sometime. We are having another Clay Play Day tomorrow, but I'm not sure what we're doing yet, so if I don't post again today, I'll have something to write about/show tomorrow.

Have a great day. Smiles and hugs to all.

Lack of posts

2010-01-21T19:46:00.000-06:00

Sorry for the lack of posts the past 2 days. I had a "cardiac episode/scare" and I just got home from the hospital about 10 minutes ago. I'm exhausted, so I'm off to bed, I'll catch up tomorrow.

Tomorrow's Another Day!

2010-01-19T19:57:00.000-06:00

I didn't post yesterday, just because we were busy in town (1/2 hour each way) etc. and didn't have anything worth blogging about. Mr. C and I had a nice breakfast together (it was his 'Sunday'), I went to the Chiropractor, he got his H1N1 vaccination, finally and we did our weekly shopping. Came home put it all away, played on Facebook (what an addiction lolololol) for awhile, played with the puppy and then went to bed. 4:55 am comes around pretty early. The weather here in IL is lousy, just grey, cold, windy, "freezing fog" which is a term I have never heard until this year, but which makes roads, sidewalks, etc. VERY slick and it's black ice and thin, so you don't see it. I hate winter, LOL, oops, I promised to not say that too often, didn't I?

Today was about the same, LOL. I ran to the 'other' town (45 minutes one way in the other direction) to get Polymer Clay at Michael's (along with a bunch of rain checks, as they weren't well stocked) and to get another Makin's Green extruder to have as a back-up. I sure like that little extruder for small things. The weather was still like yesterday with the sky spitting little frozen hard flakes of ice/snow (not pretty snowflakes, this is tiny and hard, more like sleet, but white, LOL). I treated myself to Red Lobster for Lunch (since Mr. C doesn't care for Red Lobster, I reserve it for lone lunches or occasionally I'm in town when my Mom and sister are available and we'll all go there for lunch. That's always a nice luncheon).

A little sad news (if you don't like sad news and/or cats, just skip down past the pictures to the rest of the polymer clay post). I don't know if you know or not, but Mr. C and I have been showing and raising Selkirk Rex Cats for the past year. We recently decided this wasn't what we enjoy doing anymore, so we have been selling off all our kitties, except for the few we want to keep as pets, but we still had 2 pregnant queens when we made this decision, so we have two last litters to raise and find homes for (and wouldn't you know it, Selkirk Rex usually only have about 3 kittens in a litter--NO, not this time, just when we're trying to get "out of cats" one litter has 6 and the other has 7). Selkirk Rex are interesting cats, as they have Curly Hair (honestly, curly, like a sheep--they're known as "the cat in sheep's clothing).

So they are interesting, but we have had cats all our lives and these are the strangest cats we've ever had. They almost never can have kittens without help, so you have to be sure to be right on hand or you'll lose the litter. The Mom's feed their kittens, but don't bother to wash them or clean them at all. The kittens, fortunately, mature quickly and start eating (along with nursing) around 3 weeks. But, they are always filthy, black all around their noses and mouths and just plain dirty. It's been so cold I don't want to give them baths, so our last two litters are really awful looking. You know how most other kinds of cats are forever cleaning themselves, licking and licking, and licking, nearly all the time? We hardly ever see these cats cleaning themselves, let alone their kittens. The gene that makes them curly is also a dominant gene, so roughly 25% of these kittens are homozygous and have 2 of the curly gene. These are the weirdest kittens. They look more like Sharpei puppies than kittens, their skin appears too large for their bodies, they have huge bat ears and are just plain ugly. They also often lose their hair, because the extra curl makes the hair extra brittle, so you have these nearly naked kittens with these folds of skin and huge ears, wait a minute, I'll find a picture to show you.

Anyway, back to the sad part, for some reason, a small percentage of these kittens "fail to thrive". Here at our house it's always been after they are weaned. They seem perfectly happy and healthy until about 10-12 weeks and then they just plain quit growing (which is why we never let our kittens go until 14-16 weeks of age). Vets can't find anything wrong with them (it's officially called Fading Kitten Syndrome or simply Failure to Thrive), they eat and drink and all that goes with that, they just start wasting away. They don't seem to be in pain at all, they just seem cold and lose their vitality, and want to be held all the time. We have our own theory, based on the history that has presented to us, and that is has always been after they were weaned, that there is some kind of enzyme deficiency that makes them unable to metabolize solid food, and the milk replacers just don't do the job. Poor little things, there's nothing you can do for them, but watch them slowly die. We lost one of those kittens today. In a way it was a blessing, as the kitty is in a better place now, but it also makes me incredibly sad to have to watch these kittens slowly waste away and know we can't do anything to stop it.

So, I've been a bit down today and didn't get much accomplished. I DID get the end caps on the eye canes and will start their reduction tomorrow. The reason they needed 'end caps' is because since they are square, I can reduce them with what I call the "Jana Whack Method". To learn more about this great reduction technique I refer you to Jana Roberts Benzon's Website to purchase her video: Arabesque Caning (as well as to see some fabulous Polymer Clay Cane 'eye candy'). Jana is a fantastic Polymer Clay Artist and Jewelry Designer, a fantastic teacher and just all 'round wonderful, warm, witty, and fun person to be around. I've had the good fortune to have taken a couple of workshops with her and learned so much.

I also wasted WAY too much time playing Facebook games, I have gotten slightly addicted to Farmville, Tiki Farm, and Zoo World. Yes, I know, Facebook can be a dangerous place and I'm taking a chance, but I'm having fun playing games with my kids long distance. They've gotten me quite well set up in both my farms and my zoo, LOL. Tomorrow I will be setting a timer to limit my time "playing".

I've been listening to Pandora Radio, today. Mr. C set it up for me to play mostly late 60's to 70's music. It's great because I don't have to change the discs (except that they started a Christmas song segment that I had to say Thumbs down on so it went back to the music I like).

Well, Mr. C is home and it's nearly bed time for us, as 4:55 am comes around pretty early. I hope everyone still reading this has a wonderful night and that we remember 'tomorrow's another day' and plan for it to be better than today. Smiles

What a waste!!!

2010-01-17T18:38:00.000-06:00

Hahahah, boy has today been a waste. It's been one of those do nothing but play kind of days. I worked at cleaning up the scraps, I mean leftovers from yesterday's Clay Play Day and cured the stuff we finished yesterday, but otherwise it's been a total waste of a day. I've had fun though, I've been running back and forth between my clay table and my computer playing silly games. So, I have no pictures to show, no earth shattering news to share, nada, just a lazy, playful day. I hope you had such a relaxing day as I did :-) Have a great night, smiles and hugs to all.

Hooray for Clay Playmates

2010-01-16T20:20:00.000-06:00

Hmmm, maybe that isn't a good title, sounds like we're doing Playboy or something. One of us might fit the bill, but the other three are definitely out of the running, LMAO.

Today was the January date for having people come over and play with me polymer clay with me. It's so much fun to sometimes have company to do clay work with. This month it just happens that we can fit in two Clay Play Days, one today and one next Saturday.

It's obvious my sister reads my blog, as she brought me a bunch of Ultramarine Blue Premo. I did find out though, that if you mix 1 pkg of purple with 2 pkgs of Cobalt Blue, you can come very close to Ultramarine Blue, in a pinch.

We aren't a very big group, although we'd love to have some other polymer clay artists join us. Right now, it's just me, my sister, Gail, her bestest friend, Reni (Reni's my friend, too, but I'm 4 years younger than them and they've been friends since they were kids and I was just the "little sister"). Our Mom also joins us, although she isn't really into the claying part. She usually brings a knitting project along and just sits and knits and chats with us.

As you can see, my Mom also likes Snuffles, just a little bit. She's getting bigger than we expected her to, I mean Snuffles, not my MOM, but she's still within the size range we wanted.

Today for lunch, I fixed lasagna, as I mentioned yesterday. I was pleased to find those "cook in the oven" lasagna noodles really DO work. It was really good. We had jello with fruit for dessert.

Our Clay Play Days usually take the form of classes with me as the instructor. Sometimes we try a technique out of a book or a magazine or off the internet. Since Valentine's Day will be coming up soon, we did hearts today. We used Iris Mishly's free tutorial for a Cookie Cutter Square Heart Cane . Thanks, Iris, you write a great tutorial.

We then went on to make some pattern sheets with some of my canes and made some puffy hearts in the same way we have always made 'pillow beads'. The first time we made them we made square pillow beads, but then we challenged each other and ourselves to make other shapes, so we've made butterfly pillow beads, round pillow beads, star shaped pillow beads (which are very hard to close by the way). The only difference this time was that we borrowed a finishing technique (again from Iris Mishly) to put a striped border around our pillow bead seams.

The top ones are my sister's, the middle ones are mine, and the bottom ones are Reni's. We had a blast, lots of chatter and trading ideas and colors etc. I was pleased with my pattern sheet and my hearts, but didn't really like the colors I chose for the seam around my hearts. I really liked both Gail's and Reni's colors. Something for me to work on for the future.

As we were cleaning up, Reni was rolling some of her leftover striped seam clay into little rolled up beads, which struck me as a really good idea, but I though of a way to take it one step further. I used all my scrap from today and extruded tube beads from my Makin's trusty green Extruder and then wrapped my left over striped sheet around it to make beads. I then cut them into about 8mm tube beads. Half of them I did the stripes around the bead, and the other half have the stripes going lengthwise along the bead. It sure beat turning that pretty sheet of stripes into a muted sheet of who knows what color, LOL, and now I have beads to go along with my hearts.

So, here's what I have to show for a day full of fun . . .

and a close up of my hearts with some of my older canes on them:

I'm almost completely out of that butterfly cane, guess I'd better get busy making some more of them, as I really like butterfly canes.

Tomorrow I have to get some leaf canes done for our eBay listings. Then I have to get busy reducing those eye canes I started earlier in the week. My sculpting class starts January 29, and I want to have everything else off my work space by then so I can concentrate all my energy on my Fairy Child (remember, sculpting is VERY difficult for me, wish me good sculpting vibes, please). So, until next time, I'm off to bed. Smiles!

Ready for Clay Play Day

2010-01-15T20:09:00.006-06:00

Good evening, first of all, I have to satisfy a reader about my dinky mailbox problem, so I went out today and walked out to my mailbox (the snow, by the way, would have been perfect for making a snowman, but I was a woman on a mission). So, here's how far it is to my mailbox from my house:

Wouldn't you know it, as soon as I stepped outside the door, the mailman pulled up with our mail, because, you guessed it, we had a box as well as a roll of bubble wrap and there was no way it was going in that itty bitty white mailbox. This second picture is of our mailman pulling out of our driveway after giving me the mail.

This third picture is from right across the highway from my driveway entrance to the mailbox (see, you can't even see the itty bitty mailbox.

Finally, this picture shows the itty bitty mailbox with our poor uprooted mailbox just laying there in the ditch.

And one last picture of our old mailbox propped up beside the itty bitty white mailbox, after which I dragged the old one up to the house since I was out there playing with it anyway. It was a relatively nice day today. It doesn't look like such a big size difference in the picture, but believe me, it is a huge difference.

So, what's on my clay desk today, besides the mess from yesterday? Well, as I picked through the left-overs I found several extruded lengths I was able to piece together to make 3 more eye cane sets. I'm not sure how much like an eye color they will be, but they'll be interesting and who says what colors Fairy eyes can be, anyway.

Then I got busy sorting colors and sheeting out the rest of the leftovers.

Yeah, I know, I'm rather 'anal' about things like my leftovers. I can't just throw them in a bag or drawer or bin or anything, I have to have them sheeted out ready to be used. I've even been known to drive people and instructors nuts as I patiently pick apart cane ends to separate the colors. Oh well, it makes me happy and doesn't harm anybody else, so guess I'll keep on doing it.

When I checked the blogs I follow in the morning, I got a great idea from my friend Jackie, at her blog The Pleasant Pheasant to use a portable DVD player to watch my polymer clay videos right at my clay table. Thanks, Jackie, what a great idea. (AND, I just called Mr. C at work and told him about Jackie's post and mentioned I'd use my Polymer Clay DVDs a lot more if I had something like that and he said, go look at Amazon and see what you can find and we'll discuss it when I get home tonight, hee, hee, that means I get to get one---YES!!!).
So, back to my pasta machine and my sheeting obsession. . .
Then I was checking blogs during 'my lunch break', yes, I know I work at home, I'm a Polymer Clay Artist, but if I don't schedule my days, I'll just fritter them away either on this 'puter, or reading, or just plain playing with the puppy. If I didn't schedule myself, I wouldn't get any housework done, either and then we wouldn't have any clothes to wear, LOL--I was going to be a little more crass than that, but decided it wouldn't really be my style. Anyway, I digress, so on my lunch break, I read another of my favorite blogs Let's Lose Weight This Year (although just like me, it's been more than a year since I started reading this blog and not much weight has been lost by either of us), but, that's beside the point. In today's post, she was talking about her brother loving Bill Cosby when he was a kid and being able to recite parts of them. It just really hit home to me, because I had just been sitting there, mindlessly sheeting the left-overs from the eye cane sets and it came to me that lots of people post "what I'm listening to" on their blogs, and I just don't fit in at all. I'm almost embarrassed to admit what I listen to, but it's stuff I was raised with and to this day it's still my favorite mindless listening. The other day something was said on Facebook, by my daughter B, about loving music and being a music/drama geek in high school and I wrote back, "All right, what am I listening to right now?" Darned if the kid didn't hit half of it right on the head (and the rest she guessed were already queued up for the next day), LMAO. I'm talking about records (see I already dated myself, LOL) I mean cds like Peter Paul and Mary, The Smother's Brothers, Alan Sherman, Ray Stevens, and The Irish Rovers (who are fantastic in person, too, by the way). The music I listen to is older than "the oldies", LOL. John Denver is high on my list of favorites, and any and all of the older musicals, Camelot, Brigadoon, Sound of Music, etc. I also love the old Cowboy songs, many of which my Grandma used to sing to me. I occasionally do country, but don't have a clue who any of the modern musicians are. I guess since they bring me pleasure and contentment, nobody else has to listen to them (except for poor Mr. C, who, although he doesn't mind my choice of music does object to hearing the same ones over and over again for several days).

Okay, lunch break over, back to sheeting, and finally, I have it done: Isn't that a pretty rainbow of colors ready to be reused? There was only one washed out one this time (the green ones), the others are ready to go. I'll eventually work some fluorescent green or fluorescent yellow into it to brighten it up.

So, this is what I have to show for the past weeks work. I'm very pleased, a total of 15 different combinations of colors for eventual transformation into Eye canes.

Next, I had to get my clay shelves restocked from my reserves (I sure hope Michael's has another clay sale soon or I'll be having to place an order with Munro's, my reserves are nearly gone.) Does anybody know if you can create Ultramarine Blue from Cobalt Blue? I'm completely out of Ultramarine Blue. So, clay shelves are now as restocked as I can make them.

Now it's time to get the rest of the work stations ready for Clay Play Day, hooray, I really enjoy our Clay Play Days, wish more people could/would join us.

I've even had time to get the spaghetti sauce ready for the lasagna for tomorrow. I'm trying something new. They now make a lasagna noodle you don't have to precook, I'm going to try it, I'll let you know how it works out. I make my lasagna weird (like most things, LOLOL). I don't happen to like cottage or ricotta cheese, so I use entirely mozzarella cheese in my lasagna. So it's really more like 'baked spaghetti', but once again, heheheh, it makes me happy and nobody else has ever complained. I had a foretaste, as I had actual spaghetti for my dinner tonight, since I had already cooked the sauce and made plenty (remember, I have trouble only cooking for one or two, . I really haven't taken to this "empty nest" thing very well, in many ways.

So, guess I'd better get going, and let you out of this madhouse, too. Thanks for visiting, 'see' you tomorrow.

Oops, I thought it was Friday!

2010-01-14T21:31:00.000-06:00

Here I was rushing around like a madwoman, trying to get my extruding done and my clay table cleared off before Clay Play Day Saturday/tomorrow, and then I checked in on Facebook and saw an invitation from Jackie to join The Claypen Chat on Polymer Clay Central (which I know is always on Thursday). Hmmm, I never seem to make it to Claypen Chat, so I rushed over to do that and. . . first of all, remember that reformatting my computer got a week or so ago? I didn't have JAVA something or other and I need JAVA whatever to go on chat, so I quickly download that, but. . . JAVA doesn't play well with Google Chrome (although it says right on the thing they're working on it, LMAO). I finally got into the chat, but couldn't get the website, with the pictures, to load. So I disconnected from chat and changed my browser back to Internet Explorer and then went back to chat and tried to reconnect. Guess what happened next. . . it connected, I was able to get the pictures and had a wonderful hour or so with a great bunch of other polymer clay addicts, from all over the world. Thanks to any of you who read this, I had a great time. In the middle of Claypen chat I realized it must not be Friday and checked the computer clock/date thingie and sure enough, it was Thursday. With Mr. C's weird schedule and me not having a schedule, I often lose track of the date, days, etc. If I ever had to go to the hospital and got asked what day is it, they would think I was really bad off, as I probably couldn't tell them, LOL.....

Then, I started work on the rest of my extrusions, and TA DA, I finished extruding everything, and even got the first part of the eye canes all assembled.

I know, they don't look much like eyes,
yet, but as I always tell my clay buddies
during clay play day,
just trust me. . . it'll be right when we're done.

So, tomorrow, I need to get my clay desk all cleaned off again to truly get ready for clay play day:

Yuck, what a mess. I'll put all the like colors together and make new sheets of the combined yellows, greens, blues, turquoises, browns, etc. I need everything cleared off by Saturday morning for our clay play day.
So I won't get to reducing the new canes until Sunday. Then I'll use the Jana Whack Method to reduce them, which is always a good tension reliever.

If anybody in Central IL is ever interested, I host a Polymer Clay Play Day every so often. We try for once a month, occasionally it is twice and sometimes we miss completely (depends on Mr. C's schedule, our vacations, my sister's schedule etc.) Our Clay Play Days are always on Saturday and usually go from about 9 to whenever. People can do whatever they want, but at present, since it's usually just me, my sister, and her best friend and neither of them knows too much about polymer clay, it usually turns into a class, but we sure have a good time. We play clay all morning, break for lunch (either I provide it, we bring sack lunches, they bring something, or we have a potluck). Then back to the clay tables. We have lots of fun and laughs. This month, weather permitting (Oh yeah, how could I forget, one other item that determines clay play days. . . the WEATHER!!!) we're able to have 2 clay days.

Let's see, did anything else momentous (it should be obvious by now that I live a VERY quiet life, LMAO) happen today? Yes, I got tons of requests to add friends on Facebook. That would be great if I could figure out how Facebook works, (laughing at myself here, folks). I didn't even know I was ON Facebook until my daughter pointed it out to me, DUH! Now people are sending me 'gifts' and asking me to send them 'gifts' back and I don't have a clue. B, my daughter, is going to "call you this weekend and walk you through gifts and apps". I feel so incredibly stupid. . . EVERYBODY is doing Facebook, and I can't figure it out, LOL. This is also the daughter that is designing my banner and buttons etc. for the blog and signatures etc., isn't that wonderful? I think so.

I also have a little rant about the State of IL. As I've pointed out before, we live in the middle of a cornfield; however, we also live on a US Highway. Our mailbox is across the street from our long driveway, as that's where the Postmaster General says it has to be. There is a paved shoulder on our section of the highway and our mailbox is set back from that shoulder. Every year we lose our mailbox to the snowplows at least once, sometimes more (and occasionally to the tractors/combines, but not every year to them). We go out and if we're lucky the mail hasn't been delivered yet, but sometimes it has and our mailbox and mail (hopefully) are lying in the ditch. We don't think we've ever actually lost any mail yet, but we can't be sure. We have a very large mailbox, one of the Rubbermaid kind (hoping it would be less destructible by the snowplows--obviously NOT!) because we do a lot of on-line shopping and get lots of all sizes of boxes. So, this year Mr. C. has had enough (with a couple of feet of snow and frozen ground, we can't even replace the mailbox lying in the ditch, although he makes a heroic effort with the assistance of Gorilla Brand "duct" tape, LMAO). So, we wrote to the snowplow people to ask them to talk to their drivers about trying to not hit the mailbox. They write back that we've written to the wrong place and we need to direct our complaint to the county snow plow people. So, we write to them, and they politely write back that we've written to the wrong place, since we're on a US Highway, we need to write to the Highway dept. So, we write to them (fortunately, all on email, so it doesn't take a couple weeks at each place). The Highway dept writes back that understandably they are a little busy at the moment but they will call us to discuss it. So, we have our mailbox back in service, carefully (and heavily) duct taped in place, it works for us, it works for the mailman--remember, I can say mailman, he really is a man, at least I think so. . . Yesterday Mr. C picked up the mail on his way home from work (I'm not goin' out in the cold to get the mail, ) in the dark (since he's working 7 am to 7 pm, he leaves home at 6, in the dark and doesn't get home until about 7:40, also in the dark). He comes into the house and says, "Did you see 'they' put a new mailbox up for us today?" Uh, no, what happened to we'll call you to discuss it? So, I finally had to go out today, to the store for lasagna makings for Clay Play Day and to mail some canes out, and here is this little tiny white standard metal mailbox that a checkbook box order wouldn't fit in, grrr, and our old mailbox now lying in the snow/ditch beside this new one. They even put in a new post (which it didn't need, the post was still intact). We didn't want them to replace the mailbox, we just want them to quit hitting it. So, when I went to the post office I asked the gal at the counter to please apologize to our mailman for the tiny mailbox the state had put up and explained it all to her. She was about dying laughing, as she said, but you guys get boxes all the time, you NEED the bigger box. I agreed and she said she'd tell our mailman. Mr. C says next time we get to town we'll get a big standard mailbox and just screw it in, in place of the tiny mailbox, so I guess it will get fixed eventually. But it's just one of those little things that nags the daylights out of a person. They said they'd CALL.

Oh, and UPS brought me my new keyboard and mouse today. Mr. C helped me remove the old chewed wired ones and put in the new ones and they are working GREAT (except I'm used to the split ergonomic keyboard and they're really hard to find anymore, so I'm hitting a few wrong keys, but I'll get used to it). It's still an ergonomic one, called the wave and I like it a lot. I just type too quickly and then it does multiple key strokes (like a whole row of g or t or h or whatever). Hopefully we'll get used to each other eventually. Both this mouse and keyboard are much more responsive than the last two I've had.

So, that's it for my big and exciting day today. I hope you've had a good day, too. Good night!

Extruder Workout

2010-01-13T20:23:00.000-06:00

Hi, what a day, I've been giving that PCExpress cordless extruder quite a workout today. I've gotten 7 eye cane sets extruded and put together, I only have 4 or 5 left to go, and then my least favorite part of cane making begins, reduction. Hmmm, that word gives me problems all over the place, I personally need to reduce, too, reduce weight, reduce inches, reduce clutter, I could go on and on, but I'd really rather not, LOL.

Here's a sneak peek of what my clay desk looks like right now:

I've tried a bunch of variations of my usual method, so we'll see what works best for the most interesting eyes. Of course, by the time I get them down to pin head size, I suppose it doesn't really matter, but if someone wanted them for larger dolls or animals, they'll be really interesting.

The extruder worked out very well. A little slower than I'd like, but lots faster and easier than cranking them out by hand, LOL. I have extruded most of the day without recharging the battery, so I'm pleased with that.

I did have a couple of things that I wasn't very pleased about, today. My old cordless computer keyboard and mouse weren't working well before we did the upgrade, but after we did the upgrade they were even worse, so I hooked up a corded keyboard we had purchased awhile back and got a corded mouse. My not so wonderful puppy today (or maybe yesterday or even the past several days, LOL) has been launching sneak attacks on the keyboard cord, naughty puppy!!! It's not quite all the way chewed through yet, but enough that I ordered a new cordless keyboard and mouse today.

I'm also not pleased with myself about something and I'm not sure how to find a compromise. I decided I needed to be more active on the few groups I belong to, rather than just lurking all the time. I followed through on that goal today, but then I got 'caught up' in the internet, blogs, this link to that link, etc. and I didn't get off the computer until noon. How can I compromise my goal of being more involved and yet not get sidetracked? I'm sure other people have this problem, how do you solve it?

Otherwise it was a beautiful day, in the mid 30s F with the sun shining. Except for the cord problem, Snuffles and I had a wonderful day, we played and cuddled, and she used her litter box consistently. I got everything done I needed to get done, and even with the distraction of the internet I got 7 of my eye canes ready to reduce. All in all, it was a good day, and now it's nearly bedtime, so I'll toddle off to dreamland and wish you all a good night!

I entered

2010-01-13T09:42:00.001-06:00

This is just a quickie blog post to say I've entered a couple of blog giveaways. I'd like to have a blog giveaway, but can't think of anything to give away, yet. I will eventually.

The first giveaway I entered is for a "chance to win your own angel, made for you, by me, with your specifics and input", from Marie over at Art From My Heart. My "words of wisdom" (I love Marie's term for 'comments') are: Hi Marie, what a wonderful way to start the New Year, with an angel giveaway. I wish I hadn't read the other comments first, I keep thinking, "Oh yes, like that!" LOL. However, staying true to my own heart, if she were my Heart Angel, she would be filled with Rainbows in any way of your choosing. Rainbows for hope eternal and love and beauty in the world around us. I hope I win, Marie is such a talented artist, it would be such an honor to own something made by her, just for me. I don't know if I am allowed to post a picture from somebody else's blog, so you'll just have to go see for yourself.

The second giveaway I entered is for a chance to win a Tungsten Ring. This giveaway is sponsored by Mrs. B at Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom. I went to the Tungsten Ring Site and chose which ring I liked the best, which is the Womens 6mm Beveled Edge Tungsten Carbide Band. I haven't worn a wedding ring in years, unfortunately, I outgrew mine. I'm working on getting back down to that size, but for now, I just miss having a wedding ring, as Mrs. B states: "I realized that I missed wearing a wedding ring and having that constant reminder of love and devotion." She wrote more than that, of course, and you can visit her website (link above) to read the rest.

So, thank you, Ladies, for this chance to join in the fun of your giveaways. Smiles, Sue C

Gratitude

2010-01-12T19:55:00.001-06:00

Whew, I finished mixing colors and sheeting out the rest of my eye cane sheets.

Then I began rolling them into cylinders that would fit into the extruder barrel. I'm going to use my super duper Polymer Clay Express Cordless Extruder for the first time. I got it as a gift when it first came out but then life got in the way and I did very little claying that year, so I never used it. I hope it works well, because the arthritis in my left thumb/wrist is horrible today. I don't think I would be as ambitious if I didn't have a motorized Pasta Machine, either, I LOVE my motorized Pasta Machine. I'd like it even better if I'd get my "new and improved" model D.R.E.A.M. Machine back from PCExpress. Oops, better not go there, this is supposed to be a positive blog.

Anyway, a quick aside here as a little Gratitude note: I just want to publicly express how much I appreciate the fantastic husband I have. I've seen a lot of posts lately (probably economy driven) about spouses being very negative about their wives craft/hobbies. Mr. C is truly a wonder. He's the one who keeps gifting me with the wonderful new PC toys. He encourages anything I want to do clay wise, even this recent bug for eye canes. Wait until you see them all laid out. He walks by the trash by my Pasta Machine and just shakes his head, rolls his eyes and asks, "I suppose you couldn't have used 'left-overs' could you? How much new clay will you need to replace this?" When I point out that at least I'm using 'old clay', he just closes his eyes, shakes his head, and walks away. He's so sweet. He says, "As long as I'm busy claying, he knows I'm happy, so it's good enough for him." AND, he does all the eBay work, all I have to do is play clay. I'm so fortunate.

So, back to the clay: Here are the colors I have all ready to extrude tomorrow.

So, 11 colors of eye canes, the colors on the far right are for highlights in some of the other canes.

Oh, I wish I could get a decent picture of what I just saw. Last night, our puppy Snuffles discovered her tail and started chasing it, which was funny enough. Today, she CAUGHT it, LMAO. She caught it and stood there looking puzzled, she pulled on it, and jumped and then started around in the other direction trying to catch whatever had just pulled her tail. It was just hilarious, but of course the minute I turned the camera on she came jumping to play with me. Here is a fuzzy picture of it anyway:

Here's a picture of her playing, too, she's so cute.

Anyway, so this blog post is a post of Gratitude for Mr. C., for my puppy Snuffles, for my Polymer Clay Toys, and for all the friends I have who will read this and chuckle. I hope you've had as productive and happy a day as I've had. Smiles

Another Monday

2010-01-11T19:26:00.000-06:00

Well, here it is Monday, again, already. Where does the time go? Today wasn't much of a thrilling day, but it wasn't a bad day either. The temps got into the mid 20s, Walletmart and Meijers weren't terribly crowded, so we got in and out quickly. Mr. C and I had a nice leisurely breakfast together at Bob Evans. We were home before Noon and I quickly did all my household chores and then started mixing colors and sheeting polymer clay for more eye canes. I only got 3 sets done today (they each take 4-6 colors and I don't make small canes, LOL), but I only had half a day today, so I feel pretty good about that. I only have 4 color sets to go, so I should be able to finish them tomorrow and start the extruding part.

We were worried about the mail man (I don't have to say person, as our mail person is actually a man, LOL) getting to our mailbox due to the snow the plows have thrown up in front of it. Remember, we live in the middle of nowhere and are a very long driveway away from the road and our mailbox. Mr. C was going to go out and shovel away the snow in front of the mailbox, but decided he didn't want to, it was too cold and he didn't care if we got mail today or not. . . (what's with that???). Well, bless our mailman's heart, we not only got mail, there were 3 boxes, so he brought it up to the house to us. Mr. C got an audio book by Michael Crichton he's been wanting, "Pirate". We also got ink our printers badly needed, and look what I got:

I got my order for my sculpting class. A sculpting tree or stand, 4 BIG porcupine quills, and a bunch of sculpting sticks. Kori, the instructor suggests building small heads on these sticks with small balls on the end of them as they're less likely to poke through the head as you work on them.
I had to lay the sculpting tree on it's side to get it in the photo, so tip your head to the right if you want to imagine how it would look upright. It's so you can hang your sculpture while you work on it and has lots of different heights depending on how large your sculpture is.

Well, that's my exciting day today . . . not very, exciting, that is, LOL, but it was a nice day all told. I hope you had a nice day, too. Smiles, S

Oh, I forgot, in the middle of the night last night, I figured out what do to about my humongous cane. When we made a similar design in Jana Roberts Benzon's class in Reno, we started with 3" long triangles of about the same size, 5". So, if I cut this 9" long cane into 3 3" pieces, and put "end caps" on all the exposed ends I should be able to reduce each section separately. Then I can either put the three reduced sections together, cut in half, and put both halves together for the full cane or do each section as a separate cane to be sure they are the same size and fit together correctly. I was so pleased to come up with an answer, even if it was in the middle of the night, LOL. I think it was just because I mentioned it to all of you and it got my mind puzzling on the answer rather than just feeling overwhelmed by the size and giving up. Thanks for your help. S

Busy Day

2010-01-10T19:42:00.001-06:00

Hi, again, what a busy day I've had today and how glad I was to have that left over soup and bread for meals. Mr. C was off work today (it's his Saturday). You see, he works at a Nuclear Power Plant and normally works a rotating shift; with a week of days, a week of training, a week of swings, a week of mids, and a week of whatever they need him for and then starts over. His weekends are also varied within those weeks and aren't always Saturday and Sunday. However, right now they are in a 'refueling outage' so he's working 12 hour days 5-6 days a week (every other week he gets a 2 day weekend, on Sunday and Monday). That's a lot better than in previous years when they had to work 12 hour days 7 days a week during the 'outage'.

Anyway, we decided to wait and go to town. . . just another aside here, we live 3 miles from a town of 2700 people with one IGA--and we're BIG TIME NOW, we've even got A (that's one) stoplight. Therefore, where we shop most often is either 25 miles in one direction or 30 miles in the other direction, so we try to only 'go to town' to do shopping and errands once a week, usually on my Chiropractor day--which SHOULD be Tuesday this week. Since we're basically snowed in (as far as MY car is concerned) and tomorrow is Mr. C's 'Sunday' this week, I'll change my appt and we'll take the Big Blue Truck to town. It is BIG and has 4 wheel drive and 4 back tires, so it doesn't mind the snow. Sheesh, I'm tired just trying to explain all that. That's part of why I don't work outside the home, it just doesn't work schedule wise (the other part is just that I like to be home and play clay, LOL). Anyway, here's a picture of our Big Blue Truck, so you can see I'll be safe tomorrow.

Yeah, that's our "Condo on Wheels" behind it, but I'll tell you more about that later this summer.

Anyway, how did I get so off track, I'm s'posed to be telling you about my busy day today, not about tomorrow. So, since it was so cold we decided to wait and go to town tomorrow, yeah, that's where I was when this all started, which left me free to play clay all day today. That's a good thing, as I have this bug 'somewhere' that I need to make some more eye canes.

Do you ever wonder what makes you do the things you do? I don't usually give it much thought, I just know I'm weird and live with it, LOL, but writing this blog and taking pictures for it really makes me take a look at myself and YEP, I'm weird. For example, it turns out my Sculpting a Fairy Child class doesn't start until January 29, so that gives me 19 days, I think. . . yep, that's right, 19 days to make eye canes. Since I'm weird, and have a slew of color ideas, I may need that 19 days. Here's why I'm weird though. I have a new idea, so I have to COMPLETELY clean off my clay desk before I can start. Why, you may ask, and I'd reply, "Not a clue!" LMAO. But since I did, I thought, gee, maybe somebody would like to see my work/play space so stopped to take a picture or two or well, just look below:

I have a great workspace, with room for 2 people to come play clay with me any time we want.

Here's the space on the left:

and here's the space on the right:

Oh dear, you ask, what's in the tub in the right hand workspace. Hmmm, well, to be quite honest, it's a, well, it's a too big cane. I had this bright idea to make a new type of cane, kind of a Mandala/Kaleidoscope (Mandalascope? LOL) combination. I drew up a whole bunch of them. I thought they would be the correct size to work with, however, my first part came out too large, so I pre-reduced it and then it was 9" long, so I made the rest of the cane 9" long, too. It went together beautifully. Then I started to pick it up to reduce it and realized I couldn't hold it in one hand (I had planned to reduce it the Jana Roberts Benzon Way) but I can't hold it to whack it on the floor, so now I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I suspect I'll just have to write to Jana and ask her, as I know she makes some huge canes. Anyway, this is just one 6th of the cane, it needs reduced and then put together to make the complete Mandalascope. I suppose you want to know what it looks like. It looks and seems silly now, since it's well past the season and it was made in November for a Christmas cane, but since you are interested (or you wouldn't be reading this in the first place, now would you?):

This is the whole cane, all 9" X 51/2" triangle cane weighing in at only 5 1/2 lbs. This is the face of it and the stars should meld together into a nice big star in the center. So, I guess I should probably reduce the size of the rest of the ones I have all planned out, don't you think?

You might also be wondering what's on the wall behind the giant cane on the right hand workstation? It's a fairy door, but this is a special fairy door, because it has a hatch for the water fairies to use, see?

I made this one, but I have another fairy door I received as part of a swap, for the dry land fairies to use:

So, now I have a clean workspace and
I've given you a tour of my studio, whether you wanted one or not, and here's what I've been doing the rest of the day, besides wondering if I'm weird or not. Why can't I just say, "Okay, self, you want to make a different color eye cane, go to it." No, instead, I say, "Okay, self, look at all the colors you could made into eye canes, and fairies could have any colored eyes, so let's make them ALL." And, of course, I can't just make one at a time, I take a couple of days to make ALL my color sets up. So, today, I mixed and sheeted out the first 4 color sets along with several colors for little highlights or sparkles in the eye:

Of course I still have several colors on my desk to mix and sheet up, but then I'll be ready for the extruder.

But that's for another day!
I still don't know why I seem to have to always do things 'assembly line' style, but that's just me, guess I'll just have to live with it. See Ya!

Eyes, Eyes, everywhere

2010-01-09T18:01:00.001-06:00

As planned today, I made eyes. Well, that's not all I did, but that's what's on my Polymer Clay Desk.

Let's start at the beginning of the day, though, shall we? I started the day out by making Homemade Vegetable Soup, or at least that's what it started out to be. I can't quite get the hang of only cooking for one or two and not a family and friends. I originally couldn't decide if I wanted Soup or Stew, and finally settled on Soup. So, I got out the trusty crock pot this morning and dumped the chopped up stew meat into it and then began cutting carrots, celery, potatoes, and onions, and by the time I was done, the crock pot was full and I mean FULL. Hmmm, I asked myself, what now, no room for the V-8 juice (the family recipe calls for Tomato juice, but I don't like it, so I substitute V-8). It can't be soup if there's no liquid. So, I thinks to myself, can I just cook up the meat and veges and then take out half and save it to make stew on Monday and add V-8 to what's left to make my soup? I decided I could and proceeded to do so (I still asked my Mom when I talked to her and Mr. C when I talked to him if they thought it would work, LOL). They were both in favor and indeed it did work. Then I made up a recipe of bread, but put it in little foil loaf pans instead of a big pan and now have 10 beautiful little loaves of homemade bread to go with my homemade soup. Yum!

Well, alright, so there's only 9 now, I had to try some fresh out of the oven, hot, and dripping with butter, didn't I?

So, here's the soup all ready to go for my supper and it's a good thing it's almost that time, as it smells heavenly and I'm hungry.

So, then, I finally got to make my eyes. Have I mentioned why I want or need to make eyes? I'm taking a class with Kori Leppart-Butts at That Creative Place on Sculpting a Child Fairy. When I first got involved with Polymer Clay, it was with the idea of sculpting, but sculpting is very difficult for me, so I tried other techniques, also and, as anyone who knows me well is already aware, I found I had a real knack for making canes. So, I put aside the sculpting and started making canes. Problem is that I don't have any clue what to do with my canes, I just love making them, so Mr. C started selling them to support the purchase of more clay to make. . . more canes, of course.

Back to the eyes, so I've wanted to do sculpting. I can do very simple sculpting, but as seen in my canework, I tend towards realism, so I want to learn to sculpt realistically (hmmm, kind of an oxymoron there, "a realistic fairy". . . well, the next class is sculpting a baby, so it counts). I will need eyes for my Child Fairy and they will need to be small, as I work fairly small and it is a CHILD Fairy, after all. It just so happens that Kori sells eyes that she makes, but I didn't know what color or for sure what size I wanted, and Kori also happens to sell a tutorial for Making Glass-Like Eyes for your OOAK Doll. The rest is history, as today I finally made some eyes. However, after the first batch using Kori's Tutorial, which did come out quite nicely, I do believe, in 2mm, 3mm, and 4mm size and multiple colors, Mr. C reminded me of something.

Mr. C says, "Ummm, those are nice, but why aren't you just using your eye canes you made a couple years ago????" I says, "Ummmm, 'cause I forgot about them." So, I went digging through acres of schtuff and finally found the few I didn't sell (I always keep a couple of samples from every cane I make so I can use them myself. . . well, someday, anyway). Then I proceeded to make my own version of eyes for my Fairy Child using my own eye canes. So I guess I have my own technique, now.

But, I can't decide if I like them better with or without the top coat of gloss:

Problem is, NOW I want more colors, I don't know why I never considered that eyes could come in more colors than just plain brown, blue, and green, so now, I have to take time out to make more variations in eye colors, but I just got word that the Fairy Child class is supposed to start 'yesterday', so guess I'll have to use the eyes I've already made this time around.

So, that's my day for today and now it's time for some homemade vegetable beef soup and bread goodness to warm up my innards on a cold day (the day started at -9.9* and is now up to 1.4*, brrrr). So, until tomorrow. . .

Hooray for Technology

2010-01-08T15:14:00.001-06:00

Hooray, today I get back on track. It's a mixed hooray, for technology (20 years ago I wouldn't have been able to write this blog or share anything with people all around the world in the blink of an eye) and a not so happy effort at learning all technology has to offer (20 years ago it might have been lots easier for my younger and more agile mind to understand and figure out all this new technology).

Hooray, though, because today I have my computer back at about 80% usage. I still have things (mainly games) to load as well as a couple upgraded print programs ordered but not here yet. I have email, and I have internet, and best of all PICTURES, again.

It's a sunshiney 21 degrees of pure white wonderland outside my window and I'm glad to not have to go anywhere today.

Snuffles and I are just hanging out and doing whatever comes into our heads to do (and fortunately it has come into her little pea brain to use her potty box every time today, so far, cross my fingers). Here is a picture of Snuffles, named for the BIG BLACK DOG/GRIM in Harry Potter:

This is how big she actually is:

She's about as far from a HUGE BLACK DOG as I can imagine and just for your information, I didn't choose her name, one guess who did. . . but Snuffles she is and it somehow fits her anyway. She's only 4 months old and we're training her to use a "litter box" so that she can travel in our trailer with us and we don't have to get up at the b---crack of dawn to take her outside every morning. So far she has about the same consistency of doing what I expect as my computer does, remember? 80%.

As I wrote in the last post, I've finished the Christmas Leftover Beads and here are some final pictures of them. Now I just have to remember where I put them so I can find them when the season for red, green, and white rolls around again. I don't have a clue what I'll do with them, maybe try to sell them to a local bead shop or maybe make them into necklaces, or maybe even put them up for auction on eBay. Anybody want any Christmas colored beads???

Here is the whole kit and kaboodle of 12 focals and 187 graduated size beads.

A few of my favorites.

Finished front and back and I'm pleased with how they came out.

Well, I said I was going to make eyes today, so I'd better get busy.

Snowy Day

2010-01-07T17:39:00.002-06:00

I missed a day yesterday, but I now have a mostly working computer. Unfortunately, it has all new software to learn and I don't have any photo software yet. DH is working 12 hour days 6 days a week for the next week, so things can only be fixed a little at a time.

Last night and today we had a beautiful snow storm (and I can't even show you a picture of it), at least it was pretty until the wind started blowing. In case you don't know me too well, I'll try to just say this once (although my family and friends hear it all winter long, every winter. . .) I HATE being cold. I think snow is pretty, but I really truly hate the cold. I have had Fibromyalgia since 1991 and the cold, wet, windy weather really aggravates my stiffness and pain. So, I mostly hibernate during the winter, but I get a lot done (when I don't spend the day playing on the computer, anyway).

Today I got all my household chores done for the week, so tomorrow is devoted to playing clay. I finished the beads and the focals got their crystals and backs, and they are all cured and ready for pictures (but no photo software yet, so that will have to wait). My clay desk is cleared off and ready for some new projects. Tomorrow, I plan to finally make the eyes for the fairy child I'm going to be learning how to sculpt sometime in the next month, through That Creative Place. I'm really excited to be taking an actual class in sculpting, even if it is on-line.

That's my day, in a nutshell, so guess I'll go get some dinner now. See ya!

Frustration

2010-01-05T15:20:00.004-06:00

Good afternoon, I'm trying this from my new and "improved"???? computer. My keyboard and mouse keep sticking or freezing, so this will be a very short post. It appears that for some odd reason, this new system doesn't like a cordless mouse or keyboard. I have an extra keyboard with a cord and am trying it and it seems to be working fine, so guess I'll have to get a new mouse to go with it, sigh, by the time I'm done "fixing" everything I might as well have just purchased a brand new computer.

I have enjoyed following along on a new blog I was recently introduced to through my friend Jackie's Blog. Thank you to Jackie for pointing the way to Cottage Days blog.

Anyway, the best laid plans. . . I haven't gotten anything I planned to do done today, so I'd better get out of here and get busy. I've got clay to cure and eyes to make (not to mention laundry to fold and put away, LOL). Bye

I hate computers!!!

2010-01-04T20:56:00.000-06:00

Wonder why I hate computers??? It's because mine is broke, more or less (it had to be reformatted and new software and memory installed and apparently it doesn't like the changes, so it keeps quitting) and although I'm very grateful there is a computer I can use (my Dear Hubby's), it isn't mine, it doesn't have the same set up, it doesn't even have the same keyboard (so pardon any typos). It takes me about 20 tries to get here to write my blog. Oh well, I'm here, and that's what counts (3 days in a row :-), I wonder when I'll quit counting LOL.

Today is still extremely cold here and I have caught a cold somewhere. I still worked on finishing up my Christmas Leftover beads and focals and have them ready to put in the oven tomorrow. That is the largest project I needed to complete to get my clay desk cleared off and ready for my first sculpting class, Sculpting the Fairy Child, to begin. I also purchased a tutorial from the same instructor for making eyes for my sculptures, so tomorrow I am going to try her method of making eyes so that I'll have some eyes ready to choose from once the class starts. I'm wondering if that is going to look kind of creepy to have a bunch of tiny eyeballs sitting around, LOL.

No pictures today, although I'll have some to share tomorrow after I finish curing the Christmas Leftover Beads. For now, though, it's time for bed, so goodnight. Sue C

On a Roll

2010-01-03T19:15:00.003-06:00

Wow, I'm impressed, with myself, I've actually done two posts in a row. We started our day at 4 am in -4*F weather, with a trip to O'Hare Airport to drop off the last of our adult Selkirk Rex cats for Shipment to Sunny Southern California. Except for the last two litters of kittens, we are now completely out of the Cat showing and breeding hobby. Now I can get busy with my Polymer Clay addiction, again.
What do I have on my table now?

I'm making beads and focal pieces from my Christmas PC Leftovers.

Last year I made this necklace which was a take-off from a Julie Picarello "Lizard Tail" technique that I took a step further to make the rolled beads to go with it.

At a much later date I realized they are similar to Oven Fried Beads "Stacker Beads", although again, I have a slightly different twist to them, also.

These items are fun and relaxing to make and a great use for PC Leftovers when I get tired of making Swirly Beads. So, my time for blogging is at an end for today, and I've finished my "to do list" for today, also, so off to have some more fun. Sue C

Something New for 2010

2010-01-02T14:22:00.001-06:00

Here goes nothing. I'm planning to get my life more under control and document some of my polymer clay endeavors. Maybe nobody will ever even see this, but that's okay because I'm writing it mainly for myself. Maybe after I get the hang of this I'll refer people to it, but I'm pretty computer illiterate and honestly don't have a clue what I am doing.

This past couple of years I have been feeling lost and displaced. As the title of this blog, Chasin' Rainbows, too, reflects, I feel I have been Chasing Rainbows to no avail. I needed someplace and something to make me feel more grounded and accountable. Somewhere I can record my plans and efforts as I work towards meeting goals of increasing my Polymer Clay knowledge, improving my ability as a Polymer Clay Artist, and working towards a healthier me, in mind, body, and soul. Working and playing with Polymer Clay allows my mind and hands to wander back into that blissful state of childhood imagination and creativity which I have sadly misplaced. I needed a place that reminds me that everything has the possibility to improve with effort (and who knows, I might even catch the tail end of one of those Rainbows, someday). Until Next Time, Sue C