Oh, burrrrrrrrr!!! I am COLD!! It’s 16° out there, and I’m going to either go melt some glass or go to bed and turn on my electric blanket and mattress pad heater on high. Wait a minute! It’s after 8 p.m., too late to melt glass...

I do have some color to show though, I’ve got more amaryllis to show off,




Love, love, love amaryllis!!!!!

Gertrude and the twins are doing fine. We’ve named the calves Whopper and Wendy (animals destined for the butcher get names that remind us that they aren’t pets). It will be a couple of years before it’s time for them to leave, so by then we’ll be able to tell if Wendy is fertile or not. If she’s not, then we can think of her as Wendy’s Burger, or something like that.

We’ve finally gotten some snow, so I’ve been keeping them locked up in the barn. Pretty soon I’ll start letting them out during the day and introduce them to the snow. It looks like we’re getting into the March swing of things, with snowstorms piling up. There are two more systems moving in this week.

I lifted this from a talented glassworker, Sarah Hornik, http://www.glassbysarah.com/. So true!


I’m still in a beadmaking rut, so I’ve been continuing with murrini making. Here’s some of my better experiments,


I’m amazed at how much encasing can change the look of glass. Here’s an example,

It’s what making working with glass exciting (and sometimes frustrating). You just never know what you’re going to come out with.

We went out to do chores and saw that Gertrude had a calf! Finally!!! So got the bread and calcium gel and went out there to get some calcium into her, and she was standing there eating the afterbirth. No way was I going to stick my hand in that mouth! It’s a boy calf, which was a little disappointing because I was hoping for a girl. Christian went around to start doing the hay, and there was another calf by the gate! Unfortunately, it’s a girl. In cows, if a girl (called a freemartin) is part of a mixed sex pair of twins, it’s usually sterile. :(

We went out to do chores and saw that Gertrude had a calf! Finally!!! So got the bread and calcium gel and went out there to get some calcium into her, and she was standing there eating the afterbirth. No way was I going to stick my hand in that mouth! It’s a boy calf, which was a little disappointing because I was hoping for a girl. Christian went around to start doing the hay, and there was another calf by the gate! Unfortunately, it’s a girl. In cows, if a girl (called a freemartin) is part of a mixed sex pair of twins, it’s usually sterile. :(