A Long Month

It has been a long and adventurous month!  In the first place, it has been years since I have worked full time. And I have never had a job where I needed to be at work at 6:30 a.m.  So that has been quite an adjustment.  I no longer putter around the house in the morning washing dishes and sweeping and whatever else that I find to do.  No, I must get up at the extremely unholy hour of 4:30 and rush through my morning and out the door by 6:00 a.m. to be to work on time.

I first started out working as the salad bar person.  And I enjoyed doing this.  I was responsible for making sure that all twenty items plus greens, and dressings were stocked and looked pretty.  I like to make things look pretty and I liked to chat briefly with the people that came through the salad bar.

I was just getting it all figured out and into place when I was asked to transfer into the bakery.  This is essentially a promotion (without a pay raise yet), so I agreed with some trepidation.  Well, I do enjoy the bakery and I have a large amount of freedom to be creative.

So my poor brain has felt completely overstuffed with information for the last month.  I am only now beginning to feel like I know what I am doing and am comfortable doing it.

Then to make matters really exciting, my daughter also got a job.  Her first full-time job--she has been looking for a long time for work.  She is working an opposite schedule from me.  She killed her car some time ago and it has been interesting trying to get her to work on time.  Oh, and I also get to do her chores in the evening.  This includes feeding the horses and trying to convince all her cats that they need to go indoors for the night...Mostly the cats run off and then reappear after my daughter has come home from work.

Now that things are beginning to level out and not be quite so stressful, I need to start preparing for a show in December and get back into making beads on a regular basis.  I hope to start doing that this weekend.

Hooray!!!!!

I have a job!

Camo Jewelry

A friend of ours is getting married very shortly.  She is a farm girl and a hunter.  Her bridesmaids will be wearing camouflage satin dresses.  As soon as I heard that I began to design jewelry for her and her bridesmaids.

The bride's favorite color is green and her dress will have a camouflage sash.  So she get white and green for her jewelry.  The white flowers have gold sparkly dots and there are gold sparkles in the green flowers.

This is her necklace.  It is 24 inches long and I wanted to make sure it had some substance as well as simplicity, so each side has double chains.









Below is a close-up of the pendant.



The bridesmaids are more the traditional camouflage colors.  Each set is slightly different and one of the necklaces is nineteen inches while the others are twenty-three inches.

Random Musings

 I know--it's fall, and this is obviously a spring picture.  However, all will soon become clear.  This is my lovely apricot tree that I assumed would provide me apricots for years to come.  Alas, it is not to be.  We had a crazy storm fly through Thursday evening.  It snapped my poor apricot tree off at the ground and sent it skipping across the driveway.  I was amused to discover that while the tree went sailing away, nothing on the bac deck even moved in the wind.

Now the yard looks barren and strange. 
We will begin looking for new apricot trees soon.  I want at least two and I would like two different varieties--an early and a later producing tree.

I am still faithfully applying for three jobs a week--as required by the unemployment department.  But I am very weary of filling out job applications!  I would really like to be working already. (As I am sure the other millions of unemployed would also prefer.)  Oh, well, this too shall pass.

I am very excited to be able to finally replace one of our poorly functioning toilets with a new one.  And we also have two new kitchen cabinets to replace the ones that are inconvenient and breaking.  The drawers are breaking, so that the top one falls into the drawer below--causing much distress.  It is going to be so wonderful to have new drawers that easily open and a cabinet large enough for all my pots!

I won! I won! I won!

So, as you all know, I entered a piece of my jewelry in the local art show.  For me, this was mostly about networking, getting my name and what I do out there in the community and helping a worthwhile cause.  Oh, yeah!  And for fun.

Imagine my surprise to actually discover a ribbon next to my submission.  I had won second place!  I was pretty tickled with the whole experience--not the least of which was receiving a $50.00 prize check!  (It's already spent on metal-working tools to go along with my glass.)

I know, second place doesn't sound like such a huge deal. But to me it was a big deal.  This is the very first time that I have entered an art show.  And while I make things that I like and are true to my artistic voice it is nice to get a little validation that what I like isn't totally awful.

Fantasia

Our small community has an art show every August.  This year I was invited to display some of my jewelry for the show.

This is what I finally made and submitted.  I have named it Fantasia.

This is (obviously) a close-up of the front dangle.  I was going to hang drop beads from the brass flower and then decided that I preferred the small seed beads on long headpins to resemble stamens.

I loved the frit that I used for these.  It is very fine and gives almost a water-color type effect to the glass.  This is what I always hope to achieve with frit and finally discovered how to get that stain of color rather than obvious spots.

I love the sparkle of dichro and almost always can find a place for it in anything I make.  The charms and chain and front pendant were all procured from a local bead store.

When I took this to the show to have it entered the lady who was accepting submissions seemed somewhat disappointed that I had brought her only one entry.  I was given to understand that next year I need to submit three entries...and the necklace I was wearing was very pretty.  Well, yes, it was, but it didn't meet the criteria of being completed within the last twelve months.

Heredity

Growing up I had two grandmothers--like most people.  There was California Grandma and Saskatchewan Grandma.  Both of them were very different and I only realized recently how much impact they actually had on me.  We moved a lot while I was growing up and both grandmothers provided a sense of constancy--they never moved.

California Grandma was artistic and musical.  She had a grand piano that I inherited and her house was full of books.  There was always something to read and usually a jig-saw puzzle needing to be finished.  She did not like to cook.  In fact she was a terrible cook.  She worked in the psychiatric field.  And her house was always a disaster.  She also loved to travel and would visit us with some frequency.

Saskatchewan Grandma was pragmatic and practical.  She didn't like to cook either, but her food tasted good.  Her house was clean and she had an enormous, weed-free garden.  Although, she was a firm believer in education, there were very few books in her house.  I don't know how many times I read James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small because it was the only book I could find to read.  Well, I guess there were also some Ukrainian books, but I didn't speak Ukrainian, much less read it. Because of the farm and the work it entailed, Saskatchewan Grandma rarely traveled.

Here is where things become interesting.  I am artistic and musical.  I love to read.  However, I love to cook and I am both good at it and can make food that tastes good.  My house is not spotless, but it is not usually a complete disaster.  I have an enormous garden, but it is not weed-free...I am able to preserve what grows in my garden.  My house is also full of books and music.

I am amused to discover that I am not like one grandmother more than another, but am a combination of the two with my own twist thrown in for good measure.