More flower photos, a gorgeous rich velvety red Gilmore amaryllis,

And some more beads,

Lots of pretty flower pictures tonight. I’m getting the spring bug. We’re had really warm weather the last couple of days, and the snow is melting.

Christian thought if he held up Chunk by the amaryllis, it would give a better idea of how huge these blossoms are. Chunk had other ideas, like chomp!

The other Peacock Blossom bud has opened,

And a gorgeous Red Lion,

Another shot of the Minerva, or it this a Gilmore? I didn’t label the bulb.

The red-bellied woodpecker came back,

Stupid pet photos! This is Chunk flying through the air trying to get into the garbage can (he jumped from the litter box bucket),

And here’s Suka in his new snow box. He outgrew the other one. He does love his snow!


Bead photos,

And thanks again to Amy, AK Designs, for writing the tutorial on how to make these beads!

Life with a puppy:
6:30 a.m. Puppy yawning loud enough to wake the whole house,
6:35 turn on hallway light so I can dodge any wet spots on way to let puppy out
6:40 tug of war between puppy and me for my bra
6:45 break up fight between Pip and puppy for sqeaky toy
7:00 break up fight between Pip and puppy for sqeaky toy
7:20 get puppy off of cat
7:25 separate ferret and puppy because ferret grabbed puppy by the lip (don't feel bad for ferret! It's revenge for puppy dragging ferret around by the tail.)
7:35 puppy knocks over dust pan & broom trying to chase cat

I had a very unsettling shock. As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve been getting the old farm house cleaned out over the past two years because it’s falling down, and it was time to get in there and save what we could. A lot of stuff we just put in rubbermaid boxes and put in the trailer house or I bought them back and put them in my basement. Yesterday when I went down there to get some more amaryllis bulbs, I grabbed some small boxes and bought them up to look through them.

One box had sympathy cards from 1949, and it took a while to figure out they were from when my older brother was born. He was born severely deformed and live just a short while after birth.

The next box I opened was much worse. There was a billfold and a bank book, both charred, and a small box with charred coins and metal buttons and clasps. They were from my Dad. He was killed in a farming accident when I was 14 months old, out plowing and the tractor turned over on him and caught fire. My mother never went through the billfold. There were still photos of my two older sisters, his driver’s license, and some half burned papers still in it.

All I can think about is how horrible it must have been for Mom. She deserved so much better of a life than she had, and it’s my firm belief that she will get that life after the resurrection.

Another frigid day today. My fingers were just numb after coming in from doing chores. If I were rich, I’d have a heated barn, and a heated garage with a skid loader for hauling hay. In my dreams, sigh.

Goofy cat photo, Peaches and S.C. sitting on the posts staring at each other.

My amaryllis bulbs are just gorgeous this year! Here’s another shot of a double petaled one,

And this one is a Minerva,

And this one is the Minerva beside a HUMONGOUS Apple Blossom. The Apple Blossom measures 8 1/2” wide! And both of them have another blossom stalk coming up.

I love working with glass, but it gets so frustrating when I don’t take notes. I did this Galaxy stringer, but I can’t remember what glasses I used!

And here’s a couple of pretty Dark Auraes,

I wasn’t sure what to call this one, Wood Grain maybe?

January is done with (not that February is any better, with snow and frigid cold NW winds). I’ve really been in the dumps, and while I’ve been making a lot of beads, it’s been perfunctory. I’ve been trying to get beads done for the AGLF Random Bags of Glass, but at $5 a bag, I’m not going to make $15 beads. And that has left me uninspired. Uninspired, and in the dumps.

I’m watching Al Roker reporting the weather from Chicago. They’re getting the weather we had over the past couple of days, and then it’s heading east. Everyone, except maybe southern California, has got to be so tired of this winter.

And what is with people? A woman in Minneapolis tried mailing a puppy?!? And on the news this morning a woman sent a video to Dr. Phil showing how she punished her 7 yr. old by making him drink hot sauce, and by giving him a cold shower. Dang! What’s wrong with washing the mouth out with soap? At least that way you get clean teeth (voice of experience there). :)

Flowers, flowers, where’s all of my flowers? I want flowers!!!! These are two of the bulbs I bought online last fall.


My nephews were up Sunday. They got the chains put on the snowthrower, but it was so cold today, I just called and had the driveway plowed out. They also got my doggy door put in, but again, it’s so cold, I have to keep it closed.

Suka is a typical teeny bopper, lots of energy in between his naps, and a pest. He picks on Squeak, and the cats, and here he is bugging Chester,

And here’s the Stupid Pet Photo, Pip relaxing on her favorite spot, the back of the recliner,

 That little box on her collar is the neatest invention for anyone with a yappy dog. It seems to work best with smaller dogs, the bigs ones tend to just ignore it. It has an audio sensor, and when the dog barks, it sprays out citronella. When she’s got that on, she doesn’t get into those frenzied barking streaks.

Oh, gad, the windchills just west of us are already down to -30°.

I HATE WINTER!!!!!

ETA: I’ve been hoarding my Dark Aurae because it was an odd lot from Double Helix, and while they said they would probably have more when they did another run of Aurae, that was months ago. I’m down to 11 rods. Whahhhhhh!!!! I LOVE this glass, and this is why,

ETA: My sister came up last week and we did some more digging into our genealogy, and traced our Dad’s line back to our great-great-grandfather, who was born in Germany in 1806. He and his wife and kids immigrated to the US in 1858, and he died 2 years later of the fever. Our great-great-grandfather on our Mom’s side was born in 1821, and immigrated with his wife and 4 kids in 1867, and died 4 years later. Life was hard on the men back then.

This is my Mom’s grandparents, Wilhelm and Wilhelmina,

Here’s a family photo, my Mom is front center, mid 1920s

My Mom,

And after her Dad died of a heart attack at age 51, she and her brother did the farming.

I am superwoman!!!

I double mopped half dozen BIG puddles of puppy diarrhea and still did 11 minutes on the elliptical.

ETA: Oh my gosh, I’ve got goofy cats. Peaches was on my kiln desk, which is against the windows, making weird noises. So I went to look at her, and there she was, looking at a blue jay on the ground outside. She was practically drooling in anticipation.

This time a year ago I was in the emergency room in Monticello saying goodbye to David.

He had gone to the bathroom about 6 p.m., and when he came out he just stood there, unable to move. Christian and I got him into his chair and called 911. The ambulance came, and instead of getting him to the hospital (they couldn’t even get a blood pressure reading on him), they stood around waiting for another ambulance that had a special gurney that lifted up and down. I rode with them to the hospital, and sat and cried and prayed. After a couple of hours they decided to transport him down to the cities, but being we were in the middle of a bad snowstorm, they couldn’t call the helicopter, and they wouldn’t let me ride down with them. So I said goodbye to him. I don’t know if he heard me, there was no sign of it (I found out later that his heart quit on the way to the hospital and they had to do CPR on him). I called my neighbor and asked her to sit with Lukas while Christian came and picked me up. Throughout the night I talked to my sister-in-law, who went down there to be with him and called me to tell me that he was hooked up to machines, and he wouldn’t want that done, and then the doctors, one wanting to try to find out what had bought this on (did he drink rubbing alcohol, or takes some drugs, etc.), another one telling me if he wasn’t hooked up to a kidney dialysis machine he would die, and the night nurse telling me what they were doing with him.

The next morning I talked again to the main doctor, trying to figure out what I should do, if I should come down and have him taken off the machines or wait. He held out hope that there was a chance of recovery, so I waited. Again that night, I was told he was going downhill, but when I called the night nurse, she said no, he was holding his own, but then at 4 a.m. she called and said the tests were coming back worse, and that it was a matter of time. I told her I would have to wait until daylight to come down. I have developed eye problems, so I have to wear prism glasses to see to drive, and headlights fracture into dozens of lights. So the next morning I went to the hospital and requested they take him off the machines. My sister and David’s sister and her family were there, along with David’s two children from his previous marriage. We all stood around his bed and watched the heart monitor. That was the most difficult time of my life. I held his hand and felt it getting colder. It didn’t take long, 20 minutes? The monitor beeped slower and slower, and then it started picking up and going faster. There were those brief moments of hope, that it was all wrong, he was going to be OK. But then it stopped.

We all left the room while they removed the machine hookups and then they asked if I wanted to go back and say goodbye. I went in, and saw him laying there, and I couldn’t do it. I left the room.

David died of septic shock. He had an infection that went into his bloodstream and shut down his organs. Over the next weeks and months I felt so guilty for not just calling a doctor and somehow making him go, instead of just trying to get him to call, or even let me make an appointment. By the time he consented to let me make an appointment, it was already too late.

We never had a funeral for him. I couldn’t do it. A friend suggested having a memorial service for him when the weather warmed up, but I didn’t do that either. I still miss him, and it still hurts.

Etsy is becoming VERY user unfriendly, at least as far as the seller goes.

Up until now, Etsy has had forums, Announcements, Site Help, Business Topics, International, Ideas, Bugs, Critiques, Techniques & Materials, Teams and Events, Promotions, and Etc. You could browse the threads or search for specific info. Well, Etsy has announced that they’re closing the Forums and if you want to discuss anything, you have to join a Team. This is part of Rob White’s announcement, “International and Techniques & Materials are two incredibly broad topics which we have decided are best served not with umbrella teams created by us, but as a myriad of individual communities in which community members can take part. ”

Unless you join, you won’t be able to see the posts. So if I want to find some information, say, about coral, I would have to join a beading team, a jewelry team, and maybe I want information on setting coral in silver, so join a metalworking team and a PMC team, and then maybe a marketing team. Then I would have to search each team’s posts to find any information. Right now they have over 1,100 teams (and that’s before migrating the forums!). Sounds like a colossal waste of time. My personal opinion is that they’re tired of getting bashed in the forums, so they’re shutting them down.

19.3° below zero, and still dropping.

I WANT SPRING!!!!

-22.5° this morning, sigh. I am so tired of the cold. On the bright side, I saw a 29° (above zero!!!) in the extended forecast.

The chimney guy came yesterday and looked at the chimney. He said there was minimal damage, but he’s going to write up an estimate on getting it relined and if I have the money this summer, I may do that. He also said we could get flexible rods at the hardware store in Princeton so we can clean the flue from the bottom instead of going up on the roof, so Christian is running up there today. He said the chimney was almost clogged, and because our stove is so old, it’s not airtight and that makes for more creosote buildup. But I refuse to replace it. This is the stove that my Mom’s family used to heat their house when she was a kid. It’s a lovely wood-grained brown enamel, and it is just so toasty warm.

I got another bunch of test glasses from Double Helix yesterday, so I’m off to see what I can get them to do. I sure wish they would make another batch of Dark Aurae. It is my most favorite glass, but it’s an odd lot, so they may never make another batch. :( These are a couple of beads made with Dark Aurae. Getting the green is a hit-or-miss, it just depends on the oxygen-propane proportions and how long I flash it. There’s no telling how it will turn out, which makes it more fun.

I sell my beads on Etsy and ArtFire. When ArtFire first started up, I signed up for it. It wasn’t the fact that it’s cheaper to sell on ArtFire, it was because of the direction Etsy was taking. In 2008, even when shown evidence of fraud, they chose to ignore it. There was such an outpouring of indignation and people closing their shops, they finally had to pay attention to it.

Then there wwere the $2.99 Chinese ‘sterling silver-cored’ beads, in the Handmade section. Handmade, sure, in a ‘family’ factory. Sterling silver? More like white copper.

Then there was the article on the Etsy blog from Temple St. Clair about how coral should be banned from jewelry, disregarding the fact that there are coral beds that are sustainably harvested throughout the world. Temple St. Clair is a big name jewelry designer. Not a jewelry maker who makes her own jewelry to sell on Etsy, but a jewelry designer whose lines sell at places like Saks and Target. Why was she even on the Etsy blog?!

Then there’s the rape card debacle. A seller by the name of ‘youstupidb****’ (you fill in the letters, I refuse to type it out) opened a shop, selling cards showing a line drawing of a woman crouching in a shower with the words ‘congratulations, you got bad touched.’ There were other cards congratulating people on having a Downs baby, and having AIDS. This was Administration’s response to complaints, “I understand that some items on the site may be upsetting. The themes of this shop could be considered controversial, and I can see how they touch very personally. Etsy hosts a diverse global community with a very broad range of sensibilities, as well as a wide variety of artistic expression. Etsy does not control the content provided by members, and we do not pre-screen content before it is posted on the site. You may find some things to be offensive, harmful, inaccurate or deceptive.” The story finally got picked up by CNN, and Etsy removed the listings.

Etsy has every right to allow repugnant things like the cards to be sold. But I question my place in an organization like that, whose standards seem to be at lowest level of decency just because people have the right to say what they want.

I saw a new bird today!! A red-bellied woodpecker. According to my bird book, they’re supposed to move south for the winter. Silly bird! What’s he doing here?

6 a.m., Suka jumped up on the bed and stuck his cold nose in my face, 6:30 Lukas got up to go to the bathroom. Luckily he didn’t step in the pile of puppy poo by his door. While he was in there I put the dogs out and mopped up the puppy pee in the foyer. Got the puppy poo cleaned up and Lukas back into bed, took a shower, went back into my bedroom and grabbed the drying rack (I hang rugs on it to dry instead of running them through the dryer) before it fell on the floor (Peaches the cat was up on the top rung, straddling it, and jumped off when I came into the room). Sat down on the bed and kept Suka from jumping onto my lap. Got dressed and started the coffee and the wood stove. Put Suka and Pip outside because they were chasing each other up and down the hallway. Let them back in. Got my coffee and went to my studio, filled the ferrets’ food and water containers, kept Suka from grabbing Chunk’s tail, go closed Lukas’ bedroom door that the cat got open, played with Suka to distract him from the ferrets. Sat down to have some coffee.

And how is your day going?

ETA: And my day continues swimmingly. The cat kept on trying to open Lukas’ door, so he never did get back to sleep, so I got him up to give him a shower, and the shower drain was clogged. Tried plunging it, got a sliver in my hand from the plunger, so had to resort to the snake. Then we had a chimney fire! Luckily, my nephews are up, and after I threw a chimney fire extinguisher into the stove, they went down in the basement and up in the attic to check on things. So tomorrow I get to call a chimney guy to come inspect it and make sure the flue didn’t get damaged. :( That’s going to be a few hundred dollars. If I didn’t like burning wood so much, I wouldn’t burn wood. End of story, I hope.

Winter is getting really old here. It’s -3° and this is what it looked like a couple of days ago. Yuck!

 So to counter all of that white, here’s a lovely holiday cactus that’s blooming,

 Luscious, warm colors....

 Suka is growing so fast! He’s still so darned cute, and now he has one ear that wants to stand up.

I finished up figuring out inventory tonight. Jeepers, there’s got to be an easier way to do this! 5 hours!

I took photos of beads to get listed, but nothing really exciting. I’m not sure I like the red dots on this one, although the Galaxy plunges came out nice.

This is TerraNova 2.1, a really nice glass if you heat, cool, heat and cool it just right.

I like this one, with just a hint of purple in it.

LOL, Pip is sleeping on the chair behind me, and she’s snoring. Goofy dog.

Did you know that, when it’s -14°, if you blow on a glass door to defrost a hole so you can watch the dogs when you let them out, it forms huge crystals?

Yes, I know, it looks pretty, but, sigh, I am so ready for spring. And I think the cats are too. Do you think they can get any closer?