Hello

Hi everybody! I haven't blogged in FOREVER! I have been so busy with my shop and with life in general, I've neglected my friends.

Lots of things have happened since I was last here! I bottle raised 10 two week old puppies, and they all made it. Then when they were 4 months old, Parvo struck. I lost 2 of the 5 puppies that were still here, and my inside dogs got it from my clothes. I almost lost Oscar, my weenie dog. He spent 4 days in the hospital, and it almost drove me insane. It was like one of my children was sick. Thankfully, both of my house dogs made it, and everyone is fine.

I was going to add photos of Oscar but the STUPID  Blogger uploader stopped working! So you can see him on Flickr

My son had surgery in May, and is just now getting really well. He had to take 2 quarters off from college, but at least it gave him some perspective, and now, instead of art, he wants to go into medicine. He's really good at art, but there's not really a lot of money in it. There is in medicine!

I've been staying fairly busy with jewelry work, but not as busy as I want it to be. :) This year has been up and down for me with my Etsy shop. I now have a new Artfire shop, too, but I haven't sold anything there, yet.

I'll try to do better with my blog, and I still have some bugs I haven't shown you yet!

Sunday

WOW! I have got to do better with my blog! Sorry! Things have been busy around here with just life stuff.
My youngest was diagnosed as bipolar and put on meds, which seem to help.

I finally bought a car! After 8 years of driving my beloved truck, I found a Chrysler 300 and I bought it. It's not new, because I don't believe in buying new cars. Too much loss with depreciation. It's an '05, but it drives like new. I love it! I've wanted one of these cars sice they first came out. I love that it's a full size car, and it has a gorgeous, low stance. Perfect! Anyway, I guess you can tell I'm proud of it :)

In other news, my Etsy shop has died! I have no idea why, but business is pitiful, and that's not good. I think I'll make a new website of my own and see if that will help.

Sunday

Well, it's Sunday. The end of another busy week, and the beginning of a new one!

I hate it everytime the time changes. I think it's stupid to force our bodies to adjust to the clock. I slept until 11:30 this morning because my usual wake up time is 10 to 10:30. Now I have to train my brain to get up an hour earlier. UGH!

I've been waiting all week for today, just to watch a movie! Well, not really a movie. Tonight on HBO is the first part of a new mini series called The Pacific. It's a WWII movie based on the real lives of three couragous men that lived through it. It's produced by the same people that made Band of Brothers, which is my all time favorite WWII movie.

The Pacific is about the battle in Japan, and I think it will be as good as Band of Brothers.

My Papaw fought in WWII, but he didn't go to Japan. He never talked about it much, and if we asked he just gave short, to the point answers. After watching Band of Brothers, which is based on real men's stories of the war, I can understand why he didn't want to talk about it. It was horrible!

My Papaw lied about his age on his Social Security application so that he could go. There were a lot of children fighting in that war, because the government didn't care how old you were. If you got your parents consent, you could go. There were children there that were barely in their teens! Papaw had to lie because he didn't have parents. They kicked him out when he was 8 years old! EIGHT! He had 4 brothers, and they kicked them all out because they couldn't afford to feed them! WHAT!? He didn't talk about his parents either. He just said they weren't worth knowing. The only thing I know about them is that his mother was native american and his father was white. That's it.

He died 18 years ago from Mesothelioma, and I miss him to this day. I loved that man! Somehow, he turned out to be a kind and caring man that adored his family, and he worked hard his whole life to make sure they had what they needed. He's the reason I love WWII movies. When I watch them, I feel his presence with me.

Stones and Doggies

My 2 favorite things! :)


I finally managed to get Sadie (new earless doggie) to be still enough for a few pics.

She's adorable and a real sweetheart.

She's always smiling, even though she has no ears!

All they need is a little love and attention.

Here's the chocolate lab.

She's beautiful, but still young, so she's a spaz and fairly destructive! But she does kill mice in my shop! And I wish she would go home. I think she belongs to a man just up the road, and I'm going to find out.

And I have to include my baby! The old man. Red.


These are my other babies. Stones! I have had a thing for rocks for as long as I can remember, and I used to spend hours sitting in the driveway, looking for cool rocks. (Yes, I was a weird kid!)

I'm going to put some closer shots on my Flickr page, so if you want to see, you can, but I think that's enough for here! :) I also have some faceted stones to post there.

I'm Baaaaaaack...

I've neglected my blog!

Life has been pretty busy, and it's hard to find time to do it all, but I promise to try harder. I've missed all of my blogging friends.

My youngest son is starting his 3rd quarter at Tech! My daughter in law finally had surgery to remove the cyst. She has endometriosis, and will eventually have to have a hysterectomy, which she wants now, but the doctor won't do it. He says she too young and may want more children. She doesn't!

I spend most of my days in the shop working. Business has slowed to a crawl, but it's still alive, so I keep working! It gives me something to do, and an excuse not to leave the house! I'm such a homebody, and I hate going anywhere.

I have 2 news dogs that just showed up here. I don't know how they always find me!
One of them is a small terrier of some kind, but some asshole cut her ears completely off. She has tiny little points that you can't see because of her hair. She looks like a racoon in the face because she's grey with a black mask. She's adorable and sweet and I don't know how someone could just throw her away.
The other one is a half grown chocolate lab. She's a big, beautiful, sweety and I think she must belong to someone, because she looks healthy and cared for, but she won't leave.

I guess I can show you a couple of my new things, since I haven't done that in so long!

This is my Bayou King alligator eyeball ring.



An African Tribal Mask that I made just for fun:



And a Poppy Ring to match my other Poppy jewelry:



That's about enough of that! I would show you picks of the dogs, but they are to spastic to photograph! If I go out there they're all over me, and It's hard to get a pic, but I'll try later. I'm sure most of you have never seen a dog with no ears before.

Well, I'm off to read some blogs, then go to work for a bit.

Well, we went to Shreveport 5 times and they did nothing! Everytime we go they just schedule another appointment. Yesterday we had to be there at 8am for blood work because she was supposed to have surgery next Tuesday. We had to leave the house at 5am. When they saw her, they didn't do bloodwork and rescheduled her for Dec. 4th.
Today at about 3:30pm she started hurting really bad, so i took her to the ER here at home. Whatever the mass was, it has ruptured, and now she's in the hospital so they can monitor her red blood cells and make sure she's not bleeding internally. If she is, she'll have emergency surgery.
I am very mad about all of this. It is ridiculous what she's been through!
I haven't been blogging, or working on new things lately because I just don't seem to have the energy. I feel very down and out, but it's nothing new to me and it will pass eventually.
I hope you are all well and don't ever have the healthcare problems that we've faced the last few months!

Update

We got an ID and I took my DIL back to the doctor in Shreveport. The drive was nerve-wracking! It rained all the way there and back, but when we got there it was STORMING! There were tornado warnings and it was bad! We had to park in the paid parking lot and walk a long way to the office. A very nice man drove by us and handed us his umbrella! I could have kissed him! It was a thoughtful and sweet thing to do. :) My son had given his umbrella to another student at college because his was stolen while they were in class, so maybe it was "pay it forward" for that.
They saw her this time and we have to go back next week for simple surgery so they can look inside with a scope. At least something is finally being done!

I have a few orders to work on today, and I need to be in the shop, so I'll make this short.

Here's my newest weird bug
I think it's a type of Sphinx moth but I'm not real sure. It looks like a jet plane to me! It was really neat, and weird!

I'm Having A sale!

I decided to have my own little Weekend Deals sale! It's a BOGO sale. Buy one item at regular price and get one of equal or lesser value at 50% off!


Maybe it will generate a sale or 2.

In other news: My DIL's mother finally got her birth certificate, after we've been trying to get her to for 2 years. Now I'm taking her to the DMV on Monday to get a photo ID then we go back to Shreveport on the 22nd. Maybe this time they'll see her!

A Vent on Healthcare

or the lack of it!

This is a rant because I'm so mad and frustrated I want to cry.

My daughter in law has a mass in her lower abdomen. I sent her to a doctor here in Columbia, with a blank, signed check on me, to pay for whatever they had to do, and they wouldn't see her because she doesn't have insurance. What kind of crap is that! Is insurance better than cash? Well, we finally got a doctor here at home to see her, and they did x-rays and ultrasound, but can't tell what it is. They set up an appointment at LSU Medical Center in Shreveport, 3 hours from here. I took her over there today, because her mother said she couldn't take off work. The poor child is terrified that she has cancer, and needed her Mom, not her mother in law. But, I'm all she had so... We get there and drive around for 30minutes trying to figure out how to park. All the lots were gated and required an access code. We did NOT have an access code, and have no idea where you would get one, so we finally found a pay by the hour lot about a 1/4 mile from the clinic. It was over 90 degrees today, but we walked over there, sat for an hour, only to have them tell her, no, they won't see her because she doesn't have a photo ID.
She doesn't have one, because her mother left her birth certificate AND her social security card in her purse, in an unlocked car, and guess what! Her purse was stolen! This was over a year ago and she hasn't gotten a copy yet! The hospital where she was born says her BC was never signed, so they won't give out a copy without proof of parenthood. She was adopted, and doesn't even know her real mother. Her adoptive Father lost the adoption papers! I swear to you, I want to choke the living shit out of her family, if you can call them that.
This afternoon, after the day from Hell, her mother calls to say she did get a copy of the adoption papers and will TRY to get her birth cert.
But get this, we walk ALL the way back to the truck, pay to leave the parking lot, and WHAM! I'm rear-ended! AGAIN! It's not a really hard hit and I pull up to exit the lot and stop to check my truck, and the poor woman hits a pole. Her brakes had failed, so when I pulled up her car took off again, and to keep from hitting me again, she hits a fence post! I was so hot, tired, and aggravated by the health care crap, that I just told her not to worry about it. We managed to get her car out of the way of traffic in the lot, and I left. My brakes have failed before, so I know it happens, and it's scary. Now I get to buy a new rollpan(specialized bumper that tucks under the tailgate, for you non-car people!:) and get it painted, again.
I feel like crying!

Stones

I don't have anything new, but I did start something this afternoon, after I finished up my orders. I'm making a setting for the half cylinder Rosettea Picture Rock. It's so gorgeous! I thought I would show you all some of my latest obsession. I am completely addicted to stones! I have quite a stash now.

I bought this gorgeous Pinolith Jasper from Stone Clouds on Etsy

These awesome Rosetta Picture Rocks




and this gorgeous Bird's Eye Rhyolite from Hans Westermark Stones

A Bug That Isn't

I don't have any new jewelry today, but I have been in the shop working! I actually got a few sales. YAY!

So I'll just show you a stange little "bug" that probably we all know and grew up with.
The Pill Bug but known around here as the Roly Poly!

From Wikipedia:
Armadillidiidae is a family of woodlice, a terrestrial crustacean group in the order Isopoda. Unlike members of the family Porcellionidae, members of this family can roll into a ball, giving them their common name of "pill bug", or the more recent and increasingly popular terms, "doodlebug" or "roly poly" which have been used regionally as early as 1968.
The best known species in the family is Armadillidium vulgare, the common pill bug. These arthropods commonly feed on decaying vegetation and are found under logs, under animal excrement, garbage pails or any other place where moisture can be found. Moisture is essential to pill bugs due to their breathing organs, which are like gills. Although they often thrive in damp areas, pill bugs have often been known to live in dry beds. Their defensive posture is curling up into a ball to present their armored exterior. They are the unique prey of the woodlouse spider and play host to specialized parasitoids in the fly family Rhinophoridae.

It is only about 1.4cm long and is most closely related to crustations like crawfish and brine shrimp, so it's not really a bug at all!

Finally..

I had one sale today. It's the first one in a week! I sure do wish it would pick up again. I have college to pay for and things to buy! :)

I did manage to make a few things today. I finally made another Poppy necklace, and I intend to make a ring to match.

and this Relic necklace from the book "Wrap, Stitch, Fold and Rivet"

A pair of Picasso finish Czech glass earrings in crimson red

and this pair of Blue Crystal Luster fire polished czech glass earrings

That's about it for my day. Real exciting huh?

Attention Gail...

This is just for Gail at 13 Flowers Journal. I can't comment on your blog! There is no comment button. I wanted to tell you your rings from yesterday are awesome and I love the copper etching!

WOOHOO

I actually accomplished something today. I took pics of my 2 new rings and got them listed in my shop, finished a necklace that I had laying around for over a week, got pics and listed it, AND made a pair of earrings and got them listed too! I'm on a roll! LOL

Here's a Morrisonite Jasper ring

A Mexican Crazy Lace Agate ring

Volcano Cherry Quartz necklace

and last but not least, fire opal Czech glass earrings

Now if i can just figure out how to get folks to buy the stuff...

WOW

It's been almost a month since my last post! My husband has been home for 3 weeks, so I haven't gotten much done.

My Etsy shop is DEAD right now, and 1000Markets isn't any better. You'd think I'd have tons of new stuff to show, but no, I don't! I did make 3 new rings, and have some more stones almost ready to set. I only got pics of one ring though. I'll take the other's tomorrow.

Here's one ring

It's Baltic Amber and I really like it.

And here's a weird bug for you!
The Cotton Boll Weevil


The boll weevil (Anthonomus grandis) is a beetle measuring an average length of six millimeters, which feeds on cotton buds and flowers. Thought to be native to Central America, it migrated into the US from Mexico in the late 19th century and had infested all US cotton-growing areas by the 1920s, devastating the industry and the people working in the American south. During the late 20th century it became a serious pest in South America as well. Since 1978, the Boll Weevil Eradication Program in the US has allowed full-scale cultivation to resume in many regions.

It is much smaller than it looks in these pics. 6 millimeters is TINY! I have no idea why he was on the side of my house that night, but he was, so I took his photo!

Oops! Almost forgot my new favorite pair of earrings! These leaves reminded me of Elephant Ear plants, so I added a "drop of water" and the stems.




Maybe now that I have the whole house to myself I'll get a lot more done!

Weird Bug

I found this moth on the porch of my shop, (which seems to attract a lot of weird bugs for some unknown reason!)
I have no idea what kind he is, and I didn't find it online. Maybe one of you can tell me!
It's about an inch long with those very weird hairy legs. When I touched it, it flew away, and it's wings were a gorgeous reddish-brown when open.



I worked a little bit in the shop today. Not on orders, unfortunately, but on some things I've put off for a long time!
I found these awesome little intarsia globe beads on Etsy, and since my boys always tell me that I live in my own little world, I had to have them so I could make my little world real! :)

LABOR DAY WEEKEND SALE!!!

I'm not in the gift guide, but I am having a 15% off sale through the 7th.
Come by and check it out!

Almost Autumn!

Fall is in the air, and I'm so glad! I LOVE Autumn!

The trees are much prettier in their colorful clothes, the air is crisp and clean. It's just wonderful!

These are some leaves I found in my yard, and the last thing is a Persimmon that fell from the tree by my house.





I was in the shop all day, working on orders, and when I finally finished, I realized I had made a stupid mistake! I had 4 stamped stacking rings, with names on the front and dates on the back. All of the dates are off center! So tomorrow I'll make them all again. (Sigh) Never work when you're really tired! :)

Oh, here are my new favorite earrings! I made them a couple of days ago. I can't decide which ones I like the best.