I’m in a serious funk here, it’s cold and cloudy and windy here. I wish I weren’t so in tune with the weather, days like this I just want to go curl up in bed with my puppies and my iPad. Not very productive…

Last week when it was nice and warm, I went out to get a picture of the nest in the refuge. I’m assuming from the size it’s a bald eagle’s nest. For the past 3-4 years, we’ve had a bald eagle swooping down in the pasture to grab left over hay. It’s fun to see them fly right by my window.

A pretty cardinal,

and a pretty amaryllis.

I finished my Tiger drawing and am on to my next one,

Some humor to brighten a gloomy day,

January 2015

We’re having our January thaw, and it is SOOOOO nice to go outside without my fingers going numb in a matter of minutes. Winter is on its way out…

I took this picture last month and forgot to post it. It was a grapefruit from my tree, and it was delicious!

I’m almost done with my leopard drawing, and so far, I’m pleased with it. It’s coming out nicely.

Time to start looking for something else. I think I will do a tiger. I was watching a show called Tiger Dynasty on National Geographic Wild, and there were a couple of scenes that struck me.

Some new beads on Facebook; the first is on dichroic glass, and I’m not sure I like it, the second is a pretty Galaxy bead.

It’s a howler out there tonight! It snowed today, and then the wind switched to the northwest, so it’s blowing the cold air back in. But there’s hope!! Next week we’ll start warming up. Yup, time to start poring over the seed catalogs.
After a couple of false starts, my leopard drawing is progressing nicely,

Double Helix came out with a new glass, Iaso, and I’ve got a half pound coming Monday. I’m really excited about it, it’s a copper glass,

and reduced,

Some new beads on Facebook,

Sunshine!! Blue Sky!!!! I see them both! It’s been a long, cold, dreary, cloudy month, and I’m glad it’s on its way out. We got about an inch of snow yesterday, so everything looks fresh and clean now. Life is good…

I finished my zebra drawing, and I like the way it turned out. I’m on an African wildlife kick, so my next one is of a leopard.

Every cold wave for the past month and a half, I say ‘This has to be the last one, it has to start warming up!’ The sun was kind of shining yesterday, and I so wanted to get outside and play in the dirt with my bobcat, but with everything still covered in snow and a frigid NW wind, it didn’t happen. It’s 6° right now, and that NW wind is still blowing. So very, very, very tired of winter.

I’ve been playing with a new style of beads. I think I’ll try putting some murrini on the next one I make.

My parrot drawing is progressing. As usual, I’m not entirely happy with the progress. Maybe after a few more watercolor washes to pop the color I’ll like it better.

And a little humor for the day,

It’s a blustery, cold March day here. Oh, how quickly we forget… it’s 43° here, a month ago that would have been a heat wave.

I’ve opened a new Etsy shop (besides revamping my website) to sell my prints and notecards, and am slowly getting it stocked. It’s https://www.etsy.com/shop/GreyhavenArt. Between the website and the new shop, everything else was put on the back burner.

Our last trip to Florida we spent several days at a nice RV park in Gainesville, and they had an outdoor aviary with parrots in it. They were nice enough to let me spend some time inside to take pictures. Here’s the start of my drawing of one of the parrots,

I’m still doing beads, here’s some of my latest listings,

I really, really enjoy Pinterest. I’ve got lots and lots of recipes there, along with gardening and bead and art inspirations. I’ve also found a couple of my drawings there, with others claiming to have done them. I just can’t put my finished drawings on the internet without a watermark any more. I don’t like doing that, because it really detracts from the drawing, but really have no choice. I was really surprised to see how many people were using my Friesian stallion drawing, but the majority of them were using it for their profile pictures, so no harm done.

I’m starting on a new drawing. This one is of a Percheron I saw at the Horse Expo several years ago. This is what I’ve gotten done so far (just a phone photo, not a scan, so it’s kind of rough).

Done with my colt drawing!!!

Up From a Nap,

I had a flock of crows harassing a hawk this morning, so I had my camera ready when this bald eagle went by, and the crows went after him instead of the hawk.

Sometimes I think I might be just a little bit obsessed with birds and beads.

Today started out so grey and gloomy, but the sun peeked out this afternoon. I soaked it up! My cardinals (yes, they’re mine! I claim ownership!!) came back to the feeder today, and hung around long enough for me to change the battery in my camera and put the long lens on. Should have seen me fumbling for the battery charger one handed, hanging onto the camera with the other, and all the time watching the bird on the feeder.


I’ve got some pretty beads to show tonight. When I look at the photos, I find myself thinking I sure hope they look this good to others. I can’t see the beads myself unless I use 4.00 reading glasses, so when I look at them to list them, I’m not all that impressed with them, but when I look at the photos, my reaction is, wow! I need to make another one like that!! (That’s if I remember what glasses I used). A good example of that is this one:

 It could be Aurae underneath, or maybe Psyche... or this one:

 Kalypso, maybe?

And then if you want to get to real frustration, try TerraNova,

 TerraNova needs to be heated red dripping hot, then cooled (but not cooled to where it might break when you put it back into the flame), and then heated again, then cooled, then encased with clear, but you can’t get the bead too hot when melting the clear, because that takes away the color so you’re left with muted browns. Maybe 1 out of 10 comes out with this beautiful coloring.

I like the way the storming came out on these two,

That’s why the silver glasses get to be an addiction, there’s always a surprise waiting when you open the kiln.

Cool! I had 3 Red Cardinals come visit today, a male and 2 females. I don’t often get them up by the house, so I was pretty excited to see them.

My favorite glass is Dark Aurae, but it’s an odd lot from Double Helix, and hasn’t been made since 2009. This is Dark Aurae, gorgeous striations and colors,

I’ve been buying any new test batches that Double Helix comes out with, and I have found a combination of glasses that comes pretty close to Dark Aurae. I haven’t been able to get the blue and purple combinations yet, but I can get the lovely striations and shimmers of Dark Aurae,

 And on that note, I’m cold! I’m heading to bed with my iPad, and my nice cozy warm mattress pad and electric blanket.

In 24 years of working on a Mac, I’m for the first time reverting to a previous OS version. Lion (OS 10.7), in my opinion, has very little to recommend, unless you use it only for surfing the net and social networking, as in a iPhone or iPad. For serious work, it stinks. One of the new features they’re touting is auto-save and resume. If you close an unsaved document, it will automatically open the next time you open that program. In reality, it slows down opening programs tremendously, because it has to look to see if there are any unsaved documents. And it locks documents older than 2 weeks. Actually, that was the last straw for me. I have a folder of 118 photos of beads that need to be cropped and edited. I have to individually unlock each one to work on it. So now I’m copying data off of one of my hard drives, and tomorrow morning, after it’s all done, I’ll reinstall Snow Leopard. Disappointing!

It has certainly been a huge change in weather this past month and a half. All summer we had lots of rain, but then the spigot turned off in September. We’ve had the driest September on record, and today was the warmest Oct. 5th on record (over 125 yrs. of records). We really need rain, and I will not at all regret seeing 80s go away and nice cool 60s come back.

The birds certainly have been enjoying the weather, though. This one took a bath and sat in my tree fluffing up and wiggling his tail feathers; I just had to watch him and laugh!

 

 I love chickadees, they are so lively and saucy. Here’s one enjoying the water.