I am just so NOT ready for this,

Just nine more weeks until the days start getting longer.

Canning is all done now. There were still tomatoes left in the greenhouse, but after making a couple of batches of salsa and canning them, I called it quits. We got the chicks out of the greenhouse and into the chicken house, but they still haven’t quite figured out that’s where they need to go at night, so we get to go out after dark and chase them in.

Honey knows where to go to get warm, on my bead kiln,

Some of my latest earrings,

Just got back from the cities with our new van. A big orange exclamation point came on in it Sunday morning on our way to meeting. Christian looked it up in the manual and thought it was the brake override system, so we turned around and came home and made an appointment with the dealer. Sigh, guess what it was… low pressure on one of the tires.

So I made a shopping day of it. I went to Fleet Farm and bought new chores boots, dog and cat food, and various other things, then went to Trader Joe’s (wasn’t really all that impressed with it) and then hit Costco to stock up on a few things.

It’s been horribly drearing the past few days, wet and cloudy and dark. A portent of what’s to come.

Think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts…

I did more canning this year than I have for a very long time, I don’t know how many quarts of tomato sauce, 30 pints of grape juice, 20 quarts of grape juice, and 7 of apple juice. I’ve got most of my plants inside now, and next week will start digging up all of the dahlias and other bulbs and tuck them away in the basement. Nick came yesterday and picked up our two steers, and by now they’re hanging in a meat locker. Now we have to get our freezers cleared out and defrosted.

This is a really cool bead that I listed on Etsy, it’s got pink metallic shimmers over the striations. Neat!

Got to end with another snagged silly pet pic,

A very impressive young lady, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjGL6YY6oMs

The Internet is a wonderful tool which can be abused by unscrupulous people. I was on Pinterest searching for horse drawings to pin on one of my boards. It’s a way of getting other artists’ works noticed, and their work is an inspiration to me. Much to my surprise, I came across a very familiar horse drawing, and was not so pleasantly surprised to see a young woman claiming to have done it herself. I filed a copyright complaint with Pinterest and waited until today to see if it would be taken down. In the meantime, a friend left a comment about it not being her drawing. This is the what has transpired,

Horse drawing I’ve drawn :) good?

1 repine 5 comments

Uploaded by

Sarah Arthur

• 
  Laurel Rigoulot Diebolt
  That’s ‘interesting’ that you say you’ve drawn this, because I know the original artist you’ve copied this from… I know she has kindly asked you to take it down, too.
• 
  Sarah Arthur
  I have drawn It from a reference photo, which the reference photo was probably was hers. If you’d like, I can take it off Pinterest. I haven’t sold it or anything, but kept my drawing for me to look at. But I have drawn it, I can show you my “Drawing in progress” photos. I’m sorry if I offended her.
• 
  betsymn
  Sarah, please remove this pin. You couldn’t have drawn it from a reference photo because I took the photo myself and have never posted it. And if you want to be an artist, I would suggest you research copyright law and infringement. Under the Fair Use law drawing from a photo is acceptable to a certain degree, but tracing over another artist’s work and calling it your own is very unethical.
• 
  Missy Hilger
  I also follow the work of the original artist. This belongs to someone else and is very unethical.
• 
  Lynne Kasper
  Please remove this pin. My Betsy is a wonderful artist and your copy is not flattery is is unethical.

Here is my drawing on the left, and hers on the right,

My drawing has my name on it, which she erased and replaced with her own. The pin still hasn’t been taken down.

On to better things. Gertrude saying hello to me,

Does she look like she’s bulging out a bit? I think so (she’s the one on the very left).

Dexter, the bull,

And here are the chicks in the greenhouse. I’m going to let them out tomorrow for the first time, since it’s going to be such a nice day.

I’ve been very busy canning the past couple of weeks. I’ve frozen and canned I don’t know how many quarts of tomato sauce, in the area of 30 pints of grape juice, and now I’m making apple cider. I LOVE my steamer juicer, shown below. It’s just the cat’s meow!

And some beads I’ve recently listed,

Life is good…

I’m trying not to read the news, it’s just all so depressing, politicians doing the blame game, new ‘alleged’ chemical attacks in Syria, murders, stupid people committing crimes and thinking they won’t get caught (maybe I’ve been watching too much Discovery ID), and on and on and on.

It’s been a depressing day. Christian took Baxter, our oldest kitty, to the vet and had him put down (he was laying on the floor meowing and couldn’t move). We buried him out by Chester and all of the rest. Instead of my farm being named Greyhaven, maybe it should be named Pet Cemetery. I told Christian that sometimes I wonder if it’s worth the pain, and he said to just look at Suka when we go to bed at night.

Jim, my neighbor’s boy who’s biking to South America to raise money for the Randy Shaver Foundation (http://pedalingforpennies.info/), stopped at Craters of the Moon National Monument. There were two older women (63 and 70) missing there, and they found the body of one the day before yesterday. They think the older one was injured and the younger one went to get help, but she went off the pathway and died from exposure. That country is not to be taken lightly, especially at this time of the year, and the lava fields are rough and dangerous at any time of the year. So very sad.

I really need to do something to get out of this funk. I’m going to see if the torch will cooperate and let me make some beads.

I’m making tomato sauce today, and hopefully will have it boiled down enough to can yet tonight. My neighbor came over to help pick tomatoes this morning, and we filled my garden cart about 2/3rds full. There are some impressively big tomatoes in there.

I was looking at my photos and thought I’d include this one of our bull, Dexter, that I took the other night. He is such an impressive boy!

That’s it for tonight, off to do some cleaning.

I’m trying really hard to get photos done so I can list some beads, but it seems not to be the night for it. Looked out the window and saw a gorgeous rainbow, so I had to grab my camera and get some photos, and of course, the cows had to come see what I was doing, and hoping for some bread, I imagine.

Sorry, Daisy May, none tonight. Go visit Lynn, maybe she has some apples.

Well, that was fun! We finally got some rain, 2.32” in less than an hour. Our entire basement has an inch of water in it. We’ve had flooding in the front half, but never the entire basement. And we had a pond in the back yard, never had that before either.

A video of the wind and rain, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7QXY-Uf_wc

And a couple more videos, one of Christian feeding the chicks a grasshopper,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DW4UEXEy1wk

and Suka playing with Squeak, which lasted until he tried grabbing her hind leg,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQMbqCGkeSg

Cool! I was featured on today’s Glass Beads Daily, http://glassbeadsdaily.blogspot.com/2013/09/big-hole-glass-beads-91813.html?showComment=1379550978155#c1378412209717332115

Now I want to go make beads instead of taking photos and listing!

A fun night ahead if my torch cooperates. I got a new shipment of glass in, with some new colors. I’m done getting them entered into inventory, now I have to label the new rods so I can make some test beads.

We also got our first load of hay in today. He bought a round bale, so when I get my tractor back I’m going to put the bale spear on it to see if my old 8N is got enough horsepower to lift it. If it does, we’ll get the next load in round bales, because then we’ll use the tractor to carry hay as long as we can get to the feeder with it. Once we get decent snow, we have to switch to the snowmobile and sleds to haul flakes out.

I don’t remember such a bee/wasp-busy year before. Christian took down my Baltimore Oriole feeder because there were so many bumblebees and wasps on it, the orioles wouldn’t even come near it. Here’s some bumblebees busy on a flower,

And next year I have to remember to plant more of the four o’clocks and nicotiana up closer to the house. They smell so, so lovely!

And finally, a hummer visiting some of my glads,

.08” of rain this morning, the most rain we’ve have in more than a month. We need rain!!
Jim, my neighbor’s son, is just tooling along on his bike ride to raise money for the Randy Shaver Cancer fund. He’s into day 22 on his ride to the tip of South America, and he’s in one of my most favorite states, Wyoming. Here’s a photo off of his website, Pedaling For Pennies,

Next year I really need to get back out there!

It’s been quite a busy couple of weeks. We bought a new van!! Technology sure has changed vehicles in the last 13 years. The new van has a backup camera, a side camera for changing lanes, and it pairs with my iPhone so I can listen to the music on it, and hands free talking on the phone. LOL, I can answer the phone with a button on the steering wheel, and if I want to call home, all I do is touch a button and say who I want to call, it pauses the music and places the call, and when I’m done, it resumes the music. Really neat. And the last row of seats fold down into a trunk area, so we don’t have to take out the seat to make room for hauling feed. Just so cool!

My nephews were up to work on my greenhouse yesterday, but they didn’t get much done, it was way too hot to be working outside. Hopefully they’ll be back up this weekend to get the plastic on, because I’ve got a bumper crop of tomatoes, three rows, 30’ long. Next year, LESS tomato plants and further apart!!!


Here’s a batch that I stewed down and froze,

I went down and picked up my nephew last week and had to take a picture of his granddaughter. Oh, what a cutie pie!

And a picture of Pip sucking up to James, one of Mark’s boys,

I’ve found out that Pyr is a cat magnet. If he’s in the studio and Suka is not, she comes out and does some serious snuggling,

I need to get some beads listed tomorrow,




And here’s a couple of funny internet photos:


I can certainly relate to the last one!!!

Oh, this is just brutal! 98° on the north side of the house, and it’s going to be hot, hot, hot for the the rest of the week. Everything is just burnt dry because we haven’t had any rain all month. No, I take that back! We had .04” last week.

Just got to love Pinterest,