Barb's Weblog

Halloween night is over, and all the spooks have crawled away to their dens.
We went to visit friends Craig and Lauren last night and discovered their front yard had sprouted dead people and gravestones, spooky monsters and jack o lanterns...Creepy music and smoke filled the air...it was nicely scary.


It was very cold and we didn't get home to hot tub til late. It was about 35 degrees in the air, 106 in the water. Felt great.
Tonight we are hoping for our first tub-in-the-snowfall...if it comes. We are just north of the forecast area, and we rarely get the wet weather most of the area gets, but we can at least hope it gets up this far.

Its too cold to go hang with mom tonight, but Haole went up to visit for a bit. I'll cook her dinner or something tomorrow. Some nights its just nice to stay home and relax. I finished a really pretty piece today and am sort of lingering over the tumbler waiting for it to do the burnish polish step. I can't wait to see it done.

I should have a really striking ring photographed for you to see tomorrow or the next day. Its a fabulous London Blue Topaz set in a silver and gold ring. Its very large and striking and is a real pleasure to look at. Wish it was mine to wear! Huge chunky colored stones are screamingly popular in the industry now, and I have such a softer style usually, its nice to have set that big faceted rock in a ring! Tho I gave been making a lot more BIG stone rings, they have generally been lavender chalcedonies, agates and jaspers, softer looking cabochons. Faceted really pops the excitement level up a bit!

I do have a lot of nice gold rings in stock now, set with amethyst, odd colored garnets, silvery green sapphires. Also some new pretty trillian amethysts in cute little settings, 14kt. Come see them at Custers Christmas Arts and Crafts Show or the Seattle Best of the Northwest. I will be extending a discount offer to those of you on my mailing list.

After the Seattle Best I will be showing at Jewelers Bench in Freeland exclusively. We won't go out again until the NW Flower and Garden Show in early February, my absolute favorite and the most exhausting event of the year. 5 days is pretty hard, and by the 4th day this year I had hurt my back and needed help, but got it in the form of advice from a massage therapist in another booth, and muscle relaxers from friends, and my helper Lauren who did the show with me made me do the recommended stretch every half hour, and it all turned out ok. By sunday I was able to finish the show out (with the help of the exceptionally sexy Jesse, the sunday helper, who wowed 'my ladies' for me while I finished up trades and visiting and the last days sales). I just love that show, and the gardening frenzy it inspires in me! Last spring's show was really a good one, a favorite in the last few years, some years have seemed more wonderful than others...tho if I wasn't a vendor I would still go to the show and see it every year. Its really so beautiful!

I always enjoy the eating of 'city' food, too. Generally the show gets out too late for food, but one nite Lauren and I ate out at Dragonfish and the chicken was so unashamedly fiery without sacrificing even a tiny bit of flavor, I was in heaven! Good thing no one else liked the hot and spicy dish, I was chowing down very happily on it all alone! And after load out sunday night, 13 Coins, my favorite Seattle restaurant put the finishing touch on a wonderful Flower Show week. Might have been the Long Island Teas, and dinner with Haole and Jesse, but I'm pretty sure its just the great food and fun waitstaff. And the knowledge that the night would be spent at home back in my own bed after 6 days in the city!

Thats all for tonight. Heres one more look at the graveyard in Clinton!

7:44 PM — e-mail me your comments

Everyone in the Puget Sound HAD to have been aware of that howling blast yesterday, and if you have your power back on and no trees on your house, you are feeling pretty much reborn and hopefull. This is how it looked here at sunset last night, trees whipping around, flaming sky. This is right off the camera, no photoshop or anything. Just the STORM feature in full use!

We came thru fine, just debris from the trees on the deck, no big branches or anythig serious. An older man was killed by a falling tree right up our road early in the storm yesterday, and a friend painting a house in Lagoon Point on the beach said the waves were crashing against the front window as high as he was- on a tall ladder painting above the windows! Said there was a foot of water on the road on the way out.

It was a weird day all around. Felt very strange and uncomfortable all morning so I knew something was up. When the power went off it was almost a relief to close up the workshop and refocus on the real world. Deal with things like closing up the air spaces, protecting plants and finding the supply of candles and lamps, food. We have battery TVs, so we watched the newscasts and stuff til 24 came on and I got to watch the season opener. Gonna be a wild one again, can't wait for next week.

OK thats it for today. Got to get the deck cleared off again and get to work. A special ring order nearly completed, but lost a tiny but crucial finding at the last moment before the power went out! Isn't it always like that!
B

10:22 AM — e-mail me your comments

It was another unusual nice weekend, colder but clear. We missed out on the rain the mainland had all last week, and enjoyed the warmish windy weather. Now its dawned cool and gray, very nice tho. We spent the weekend doing odds and ends. Shopping at Big Sister in Langley, dog walks at the Dog Park and lots of gardening. Haole cleared trails that had overgrown, cut out brush and carried off dead branches and broken limbs from last weeks wind. He set up our little deck top greenhouses and I moved all the deck plants into it, and planted potfulls of tulips and other spring bulbs. We cut screen for those pots as the squirrels dig up the bulbs and steal them, or just dig them up and throw them around on the deck and I am determined not to feed them the expensive bulbs this year.

Today's walk was at the beach, all quiet and still down there except for kingfishers squawking and the usual other beach birds like ducks and herons and crows. Last week I saw a huge dead salmon with a single bite out of it that the gulls were enjoying, and the water was full of seals. Today that fish was a bit of skin and a huge head lined with vicious sharp pink teeth. Not much left!

Here is a picture of that fun necklace with the carved amber I mentioned, the scan doesn't show the whole face carving, but its still pretty cool.



Thats all for today. I want to make a batch of leaves and stuff to warm up on so I can do a wonderful custom job for my friends Andy and Mary in Oregon. Its too special to dive into cold!
Barb

12:30 PM — e-mail me your comments