Bracelet

Here's a photo of one of my bracelets I've just sold. I'm very pleased with it! It's a pattern from Beadwork Magazine that I've adapted.

Thanksgiving, Beads, and Tornados

• Paul and I had a lovely Thanksgiving with a couple of our friends. Neither one of us managed to go home to visit our family's this year (a good 1000 mile drive for either one). Our menu included 2 turkeys; 2 stuffings; 5 vegetables; 2 types of rolls; and 5 pies/deserts. This was originally going to be for 4 people (what can I say--we all like to cook!) and luckily a few more came. However, we still had tons of leftovers. Yay!

• Flowers/Beadwork: I am taking samples of my work today to be looked at to see if it is up to the standards of The Art House which is the non-commission Ocean Springs Art Association's artists co-op. Hopefully, I'll get to sell it there!

• Another interesting thing that has happened lately is a result of a really bad weather front that came through the area last week. The little yacht club bar where I bartend part-time was hit by a waterspout or tornado. The building itself is a trailer courtesy of Hurricane Katrina and was knocked askew on its blocks. A truck was blown over and some boats were crushed and blown into the road. Picnic tables and outdoor heaters were blown away. Everything except the boats has been repaired or cleaned up.

• We've finished tiling our kitchen too! Paul did a wonderful job laying the tile and then I grouted. It looks great!

Hypocrita glauca Beaded Moth - Progress

I've finally managed to finish the last wing and get them attached to the body. The only thing now is to add antennae and legs. Paul and I are in the middle of tiling our kitchen floor, so my beadwork has been on hold.

Hypocrita glauca Beaded Moth

Here is my progress on a 3-dimensional beaded moth I've been working on. There was an article on Karen Paust and her work in the last issue of Bead & Button. I was very influenced! My inspiration is this scan of a tropical Hypocrita glauca moth that is a piece of Joseph Scheer's artwork.
Below are the top wings, body, and a bottom wing. I still have to make the other bottom wing, legs, antennae, and proboscis. The wings are made with brickstitch and the body peyote stitch. I used BeadCreatorPro 3.0 to design the wings.

West Virginia

* Shrimp Boil *

It’s been over a month since I've last posted! At the beginning of September, Paul and I went to visit my parents in WV. I love going back in the summer when all the flowers are blooming and everything is beautiful and green, not to mention the weather is great. The first family thing we did was to have a good southern shrimp boil. My dad thinks it’s very nifty to eat out in the yard with the food piled on a board (covered with plastic of course!) supported by sawhorses. I believe it was a success! I also got to see my godson Daniel and his mom Naomi : ).

* Rattlesnakes *

My dad has been doing a bit of research on a couple of populations of rattlesnakes in some extremely rugged mountain areas, so of course we wanted to check out the dens and see some snakes. Above are the snake hunters, my dad tubing a snake to safely (for him and the snake both!) collect data, and a baby rattlesnake.

* Via Ferrata *

The last highlight (or extremely dumb thing we did) of the trip was an excursion I went on with my Mom. Paul and my Dad don’t care that much for heights, so they went snake hunting again. My Mom decided she really needed to climb the Via Ferrata at Nelson Rocks Preserve and needed someone to go with her. As I don’t really have issues with heights, I volunteered. Little did we know what we were getting into. The Via Ferrata is long rock climbing route with permanently fixed cables for protection that you are clipped into AT ALL TIMES! We ended up climbing 2 parallel rock fins of Tuscarora sandstone that jut out of the mountain from the top to the valley and tower hundreds of feet above the treetops. Needless to say, there were some very choice expletives tossed around when we climbed up the front face and could see what we had to climb to get down the back face and up the front face of the second rock fin. We had to cross a swinging bridge stretched between the two fins made up of a couple of cables and some 2 x 4’s with 1.5 ft gaps between them. The scenery was spectacular and the climb was defiantly interesting (read: have a very healthy respect for safety lines!). I think I will double check any of my mother’s schemes in the future to figure out exactly what she is getting me into. We had a great time! However, after Paul and I had been back home in MS for a week, my mom called and told us a girl had just fallen off the Via Ferrata and was killed. She was going around a tree, wasn’t clipped in, slipped and fell over 150 ft to the ground. I still recommend the climb though, my mom and I had no trouble; that just reinforced the need to always be clipped to the cable, no matter the situation or how comfortable you feel.

Green Cymbidium Orchids

I've been working on some cymbidium orchids for awhile now--since March!--and I haven't been able to get them to look like what is in my mind's eye. I finally found the perfect color of a yellowish green bead and redid the petals over again. I made them slightly larger this time, so each bloom is ~ 70 mm (almost 3 in) across. I had 7 blooms I formed into a flower spike and decided I need a couple of more blooms so I've made 3 more. Here's the progress:



The 3 additional blossomsOn another note, I've FINALLY finished the summer quarter of sampling on the saltpannes for work!! It has been fairly miserable--super hot and humid. This morning it was 90 degrees F without humidity counted in at 9 am; I think I went through 4 Gatorade bottles/hr. Needless to say I've been fairly sweaty and gross for the past 2 weeks : ).

Fig preserves

Yesterday Paul, Paul's mom, and I made a HUGE batch of fig preserves. I think we had about 20 lbs of figs that Paul and I picked last year and froze--it was time to clean out the freezer to make room for other goodies. The basic recipe we used (passed along by a good southern belle and slightly modified) was: half the amount of sugar to amount of figs; add a couple of thin slices of lemon and cook slowly for 4 - 5 hrs over medium low heat. We ended up with 43 half pints and 12 quarter pints which gave us 24 1/2 pints (11.6 L) of fig preserves!

Fishing

I've been throw trap sampling for work this week and am totally exhausted. Yesterday we were sampling on Deer Island in 34° C (93° F) heat with about 95 % humidity--I didn't think we would make it!! Throw trap sampling is used to collect organisms (usually nekton) from a know volume of water, in this case on flooded salt pannes. Our throw trap is aaluminumum box 1 m square by 75 cm high. Basically, the entire process is a HUGE pain in the bum, but we end up with good data so I guess it's all worth it. At least that's what I tell myself so I can get through it!

Paul made it back safe and sound (only slightly sun burnt--yeah for sunscreen!) from his larval billfish collecting cruise/fishing adventure to the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. In the breaks between sampling he caught another marlin, slightly smaller this year, which was released, a wahoo, some amberjack, and other miscellaneous pelagics. I don't even think sleep was in his schedule--too much fishing to cram into any spare minute!!

Paul's White marlin (Tetrapturus albidus; less than 100 lbs.)

Paul and Wahoo (Acanthocybium solanderi)

Larval Marlin (~ 1 cm long)

Short bigeye (Pristigenys alta; ~ 10 in long)

Leaves

Leaves and greenery--every pretty flower arrangement needs lots of them! I've been experimenting with different leaf shapes and types and here are a few so far. We have compound to the left and below are toothed leaves close to the stem. I reversed the basic wire on the bottom so it wouldn't show on the back of the leaf.

I think the large drooping tropical leaves are my favorite. They add interest to the bouquet with leaf shading and shape. I have a bunch of fantasy flowers I still need to add leaves to and put on stems--I just can't figure out which ones to use! I've been sorting insect samples today at work, which is pretty brainless, so I've had lots of time to think about what I'd rather be doing-like finishing up some of my flowers. I'm also in the process of painting our guest bathroom and can't wait to be able to finish that this evening. I got a really neat shower curtain in the Brigitte pattern from Pottery Barn that I'm using as inspiration.

Experimental Flowers

Here are a couple of more flowers I've made recently but haven't had a chance to post. The first is a purple poppy like flower; I was trying to figure out what would the size diffence in petals be if I used 15/o, 11/o, and 10/o beads for the same pattern. I also tried making the leaves with a reverse basic wire on the bottom so the wire can't be seen in the finished flower.

The next flowers are my attempts at some West Virgina wildflowers: fire pink and phlox. These were both made with Victorian technique. It seems to be better for very small, detailed flowers.

A lot of catching up since April!

Wow! It's been awhile since I've last posted!!! So here's a brief run down on my life since April. Our friends Mike and Kim got married in June in Kim's hometown close to Pittsburg, PA; Paul was in the wedding party. Lovely ceremoney! Congratulations to the happy bride and groom!

Mr. and Mrs. Michael L.

Paul & I at the wedding. Isn't he hansome!

After that we finally got all the hurricane damage to our house fixed, siding and all! Then to top it all off, Paul and I painted the ENTIRE outside of our house. Huge amount of work that took a good two weeks. The house came out beautiful! So, after that we needed some rest and relaxation and went kayaking on Red Creek (MS) for the day with a couple of our friends. Very neat, can't wait to get out there again.

Paul and James siding the house
Paul fishing on Red Creek

Also, good bars have been hard to come by since Katrina destroyed most of them as they were on the water, so we've found one in Pascagoula, MS that has really good bands--Buck Cherry, Nonpoint, Revelation Theory, Candle Box to name a few. It's weird how every small aspect of your life is changed by a natural distaster of this magnitude--who would have thought it would be hard to find a bar???

Getting ready to go to Thunders!

Now about my flowers! Since we've been spending every waking moment trying to fix our house, I haven't had much time to work on any. However I did make some poppies for one of my friends for her birthday. I've also sold my first arrangement!

Poppies for TashaMy first arrangement I've ever sold!

Paul's also accomplished one of the milestones as a graduate student--He passed his comprehensive exam's yesterday--YEAH! Congratulations! He's been studying for them for the past month. We went out to celebrate last evening with a few drinks. He's leaving this Sunday to go on a research cruise to collect larval billfish somewhere in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. Hopefully he'll get to do a little blue water fishing on the side and catch us some goodies for our freezer :) He caught a marlin last year--released it as it is not the best fish to eat.

South Florida

Over the last weekend, Paul and I drove down to Ft. Lauderdale to see our friends who will be getting married in June (It was a bachlor/bachlorette bash). We had a neat house close to the beach. It ended up being a very interesting and fun time. We all got lovely tans, checked out the area, and learned to love Jäger bombs. At the end of our stay, we went to the Everglades for an air boat ride. Here's a couple of photos:

The north-eastern Everglades

Purple Gallinule

A Florida gator eye--Guess how close I was to take this picture :)

Back to a previous post

Back in February I mentioned I helped one of my friends celebrate her 30th in Mobile, AL--I've finally got the pictures back! Here's the before: And here's at the end of the night: On another note, the birthday girl was in a terrible car accident on Tuesday, which Paul and I actually saw on the way back from Florida. We didn't know it was our friends in the accident at the time. The car was so smashed, it just looked like a twisted chunk of silver metal. Luckily, she and the guy she was with are going to be okay!

Azaleas

I wanted to share our lovely azaleas (and my new roof!). I almost had these ripped out when we first bought the house, but Paul trimmed them up and now they are blooming beautifully!