Tuesday morning, it's sunny, and the im-patient is much better

Max is a whole lot better today, definitely much bouncier -- a world of difference even from last night. Still having problems figuring out how to sit down/lie down w/o it hurting, though.

A shred of good news -- the golden's owners showed up last night and have offered to pay part of Max's vet bill. They're genuinely concerned about Mickey's (not Nicky) part in this -- and I assured them that I didn't blame them, and that it wasn't Mickey's fault or anything they could've done/foreseen, just doggie jealousy. I didn't say anything, but I think I'm also dead on that Mickey is far too much dog for retired people, having way too much energy, I've never seen anyone out playing with her and maybe they think that just leaving her outside by herself so she can watch the world go by is sufficient. They have an electronic collar/perimeter to keep her in the yard. She is never taken for a walk that I know of. Of course not. This is the country. Nothing dumber/funnier than seeing all those city transplants walking their dogs along country roads! And picking up poop! Uhhh... that would be me and Max.

Now that I've heard the whole story, what I think Mickey was really jealous of with the granddaughter patting Max is that it turns out that the granddaughter doesn't like Mickey and never has. She's probably scared to death of her size and strength, goldens being huge on the body slams. The granddaughter looks to be late teens/early college age, but quite tiny. They probably weigh about the same and the golden is all muscle.

Max has discovered the nasty-tasting-pill-in-the-banana trick. He ate one, but spat out the other. Toast and jam? Ran outside and spat it out. Tried the remaining pill in his liver-flavoured-but-carob-smelling arthritis chewie chunk and he ate that right away. This morning. Dunno what I'm going to do tonight. He's suspicious of everything I offer him now.

Sunny this morning, so my own mood is a lot lighter. Today I have to deal with the truck as the engine light came on yesterday on the way back from the vet, and I have to have it sorted by Friday so I can go get gas to get to the market on Saturday, and we're almost out of dog food, too. I have to get back to making jewellery. The Oxford Country Spinners and Weavers craft show is coming up on the 14th, and I still have to get stuff up to The Bead Boutique in Kitchener.

Given the circumstances, I gave myself yesterday off, spending all day -- a singularly cold, gloomy and rainy day -- in a depressed state, watching old Last 10 Pounds Bootcamp and Bulging Brides shows on Slice.ca and thinking long and hard about all the exercises Tommy Europe was forcing his bootcampers to do. My favourite part of Bulging Brides is the table shot of all the junk food that that episode's bootcamper has eaten in the previous week/month. I try to do that here -- I have a corner of the counter where I put all my groceries that I buy for the week, boxed/packaged goods, apples, most root vegetables -- it's cold enough that the food stays fairly fresh. Any treats from Saturday's market that sneak in are usually gone by Monday, and then that's it. If only Tommy Europe would do a show called Last 80 Pounds Trashed Knees & Lower Back Bootcamp, I'd happily humiliate myself on it. In the meantime, cue the laugh track: Max and I are off on our poop-bag-carrying walk along the highway.

Other shoe dropping department

In the interest of fitness and weight loss for both of us, Max and I went out for our daily long walk late yesterday afternoon. Also as usual, we stopped by a neighbour's house so Max could hang with his buddy Nicky, a female golden who is twice his size and weight. They've been playing together almost every day for over two years. Unfortunately, the dog got jealous when the visiting teenage granddaughter of the owners patted Max, and before anyone could react Nicky leapt on Max and pretty much tore him a new a... -- literally -- and just missing his spine. Max is coming up to 13, with arthritis, so isn't moving very fast these days, and he couldn't get away. You could have stuck a couple of fingers into one of the gouges in him. I rushed him to the vet, getting there just before 5 pm, afraid they would be closed, but found out they're open until 6:30. They took him into surgery right away, and I picked him up an hour or so later.

After a really rough night, his pain seems to have dropped to a tolerable level -- I know this, given his interest in food today -- which is good. In fact, he's waiting in the kitchen for lunch as I write and it's only 11:15. Last night just about broke my heart. Despite the painkillers and antibiotics, he trembled and whimpered until 4 or 5 a.m. and I could only hold his paw and stroke his head. In all the hubbub, they forgot to take out the catheter in his arm, so we went in this morning to have that done. They said he was doing fine, all the stitches are holding.

FYI, if you ever have to give a dog pills, stuff them into chunks of banana (which Max loves). Down the hatch without a problem.

While waiting to pick up Max yesterday, I got an email telling me that the new art gallery shop applications are being shelved (possibly permanently) because, after a year and a half of renovations to a turn of the century heritage building on the downtown main street, the city council announced at their meeting last Tuesday night, with zero notice or consultation, that they have decided they are now giving the building to a local community college for a satellite campus. However, the gallery director did tell me she really likes my silver leaves. That was shoe number two.

Shoe number three is my truck engine light came on again on the way back from the vet this morning. It appears I now have serious radiator/coolant problems. I'm getting really, reeeeally sick and tired of all of this. Minus Max, last week was equally fraught what with a computer virus on Wednesday, a day and a half without power all day Thursday and Friday morning, with work coming in, and ditto with the engine coolant which I had topped up figuring that was going to resolve the problem.

When I got back from dropping Max off yesterday for his surgery, I told the landlord I wouldn't be able to pay the rent for longer than I'd expected this month (I'm still waiting to be paid for work done in early March and there's not a thing I can do about it) and he laughed. Told me his girlfriend had just phoned to tell him that their basement tenant had just given his notice, so there wasn't going to be a May rent cheque from him, either.

I'm at the point now where I'm just shaking my head, although I guess bin Laden had a worse day than I did. That's pretty wild that they nailed the guy, eh? Even more wild is the book I'm currently reading -- Dead Zero by Stephen Hunter. Around the same time the raid was going down, I was reading about exactly that: taking out bin Laden.

That's my news for this week and it's only Tuesday morning.

Spot the mistake




Easy to see the mistake. Very comfortable to wear, though. 17.5" long.
Hubei turquoise, matte lapis lazuli, amethyst, with copper findings.



Ack... without checking, I hurriedly crimped both ends, et voila. Dumb-de-dumb-dumb. I have enough beads to remake this, or I could take this one apart... or I could keep it to wear myself -- people are always nagging me about wearing my own jewellery but I never remember to, and find most jewellery to be irritating, which is why I don't. On the other hand, this is very comfortable even if I do say so myself.

I'm pursuing my goal of eventually moving to a smaller place, if not an RV, by -- ta da! -- getting rid of stuff. I burned a great many papers yesterday that were stuffed and stacked everywhere and swept puppy fluff off the floors. I even found some more receipts from last year. But too late -- taxes are done and gone. It's still cold here, snow this morning of all things, and damp in the house from the rains so I had to have another fire anyway yesterday and this morning, but it's supposed to get quite warm over the weekend, albeit with accompanying monsoons. Good for the trees and farmers.

I've had no transcription work to speak of for two months now. It's heart-feeling-like-a-bag-of-broken-glass scary, but it always is: every year it's like this, slow from mid-February until mid-August. Every day these past two weeks in particular has been feeling like a lazy Sunday, with an emphasis on lazy. I need to get out of this mindset. Hence picking up papers. I also dusted off and set up two grid panels to help in sorting the stones that I have and want to sell.

I had a 50 gram package of PMC3 left from last fall and made up new slip. These two weeks I've been hard at work coating new bacopa leaves, for which I have an order to make earrings, sage leaves which I've run out of, and carrying on coating lily leaves and maple keys left over from last year, all of which will be fired on Tuesday after spending the next two or three days cleaning off blobs of clay and drilling the jump ring holes.

Talk about sticker shock, though. I just priced a 50 gram package of PMC3: it's now $129 plus tax. Last spring it was under $90. The last package I bought in the fall was about $96. This is madness.


Clockwise from lower left, maple keys, sage leaves, chinese lily leaves, house plant(?), bleeding heart(?), more Chinese lily and bacopa. Interestingly, everything except the bacopa were started last summer.



Closeup of sage leaves, Chinese lily, bacopa and a few maple keys



I guess I'd better leave this alone. I appear to have turned this whole post into a giant caption, and cannot turn off the background colour and text colour effects. 



Good taste -- and tastes good

Under usual circumstances, most art is appreciated through just a few of the senses: vision, perhaps touch when you're talking sculpture, memories invoking place and time. But it's almost never, ever edible.  Except...

On display and available at the Woodstock Farmers Market on Nellis Street every Saturday morning and for pickup through the week, Rene Hoelscher's Let's Eat Cake cakes and cookies are funny, whimsical, not to mention incredibly beautiful, hand-sculpted stand-alone works of art. And they taste sooooooooooooo good, made as they are with pure, fresh ingredients.


Cake piggy that I am (I've been cut off from the free samples), I'm not the only one who thinks so: check out what the Ontario Wedding Blog has to say.

I've begun providing cake jewellery at Rene's behest, so if you're planning a wedding or require dazzle-your-guests'-socks-off cakes or cookies with bonus off-the-charts "Oh, wow! Is that ever cool!" you can contact either of us at the market or via the usual virtual multitude of means.

Stay tuned: for those firmly grounded in physical reality who believe cake in hand is worth 478 gazillion hits online, Rene's bricks and mortar bakery will be opening later this spring in downtown Woodstock.



Dilemma: I hate stuff, but I make stuff

I need to find a new place to live, and I am dithering as I always do about the when, where and how to accomplish this. I have a dog, which complicates matters intensely. Despite it being illegal to prohibit pets in this province, if not the country, it is almost impossible to find rental accommodation allowing a dog, and we both need ground floor access due to disability.

I have accumulated a sickening amount of crap since I returned from Italy in 1998, and I've found that in order to maintain even a semblance of order a junk room is essential. But in the end it means I'm paying double or triple in rent to store boxes of stuff that I never use, look at or read, stuff too good or cost me too much to throw out, give away or try to sell for a penny on the dollar at a lawn sale to become someone else's problem. But, ashes to ashes -- 90% of my stuff came from those same lawn sales, thrift stores and friends' cast-offs, and back it's all gonna go.

A few moves ago I counted 78 boxes of books alone. I'm one person: I moved here with a mountain of garbage bags stuffed with mostly unwearable fat, skinny and interim, winter, summer and interim, office, dress and hangout clothes, towels and bedding; bins of computer paraphernalia and art stuff (piles of framed drawings and empty frames, boxes of sketchbooks, portfolios containing drawings of all sizes, boxes and bins of drawing materials, paints, brushes, inks and tools); grocery bags containing freezer, fridge and cupboard contents. Then there are the various lamps, tables and chairs, the bed, couch, shelving... I'm only ONE person! Although I have to say, most of the furniture does fold or come apart for easier moving: my computer station consists of two doors 30x78 and 16x78 on glass block risers, set on two two-drawer filing cabinets, cables neatly fished through the door knob holes in the back. These came from the local Habitat for Humanity store, which, if we really must accumulate stuff, is a great place in which to find amazing and useful things for super-cheap, but a place I now force myself to drive on by, hands firmly on the wheel, finger well away from the turn indicator -- or even better, go nowhere near at all.

Some people are right brained or left brained. My heart still rules my head, where inner minimalist jostles for space with inner packrat. Right ventricle, left ventricle: my heart ebbs and flows, beats and soars with paper love, the smell, the texture, but I've come to love my dog and the thunder of silence and emptiness even more. I remember a handmade paper store in Paris in the Marais near the Seine in 1990, where I bought nothing, too intimidated to venture a few words in my execrable French. I have boxes of Italian rag paper sketchbooks sitting unused in the back room, and folders of pristine bristol finish rag printmaking paper. Always I am on the hunt for the perfect pencil.

My whole life I could not bring myself to throw out paper. Remember the '90s 5-Minute Manager, with its mantra of handle paper once? Now there was an epiphany. For almost 20 years I have been able to throw away the ripped envelopes and extra pages accompanying utility bills and bank statements, while reusing return envelopes. I was given a shredder for Christmas a few years ago which I used enthusiastically for several years. It's been sitting covered in dust for the three years I've lived here because I have a fireplace in which I burn all that paper now. Envision an ever-growing heap of paper and cracker box-filled garbage bags in the corner of the living room starting in May and running through to October. Yep. Fire starter. Not hoarding! Honest!

Parallelling, preceding and/or necessitating my present, if only mental, and future minimalist lifestyle comes a minimalist earning capacity. My ancient Blazer is on its last legs... wheels. With the jewellery-making (more mountains of stuff) comes the need to drive to markets and venues a considerable distance from where I currently live, which also means I'm away from this blasted computer and any work still trickling over the virtual transom. With the advent of portable high speed Internet connection, my problem may have been solved and I recently learned Paypal can be utilised via cell phones, so I may not require a POP/Interac machine.

This past week, I encountered the 100 Thing Challenge, The Moneyless Man, Twelve x Twelve, and others. My percolating 30 or 40 year dream, fueled by the books of Least Heat Moon, John Steinbeck, et al., has been to drive around North America. Not an original idea at all. I've taken the train across Canada several times, driven through BC and the Yukon umpteen times, I noodled around the US by bus back in the '70s when I was 20 and incredibly naive, in my late 30s and 40s I travelled across Europe and lived and worked, albeit illegally, in Italy for three years. Never should have left Italy, but that's another story. Now that that the freight train of old(er) age has barrelled into the station, and waaaaay far too early, it's get-off-the-pot time.

In the interest of less stuff and the obligatory even higher postage, Judy, my best pal in Vancouver of over 30 years, and I allow ourselves only gifts that fit into an envelope. My birthday gift this year was a newspaper clipping -- does this prove my friend truly knows me well or not? Paper, check; subject matter, double-check -- about Rae Crothers, self-confessed hoarder, who downsized and now lives in and works from an RV... somewhere. All I can say is wow. I've been watching videos on YouTube for a  month now on the ins and outs of RV living, who's doing it and where, and I'm hooked.

It's all coming together. Yesterday, I filled half a garbage bag with dead clothes, found the remaining pages of my tax papers buried in the back room, and started pricing the jewellery pictured in the last post.

Beadzbeadzbeadz




New jewellery pieces to get a final polishing, labelling and packaging before they go into the
Brantford Arts Block gallery shop.

 Do I like beads because stones are beautiful in and of themselves and I'm fascinated by the colours, the science, history and cultural aspects, or because I like to make jewellery? I favour blue beads. Way back when I first starting buying turquoise, I found a website where the jewellery-maker uses/sells only blue beads. What a neat concept I thought, and it really focused me in my own direction. I have to find that site again.

As far as making jewellery, well... that's a hard one. In my whole life I've rarely bought jewellery let alone worn what I've bought, partially because it gets in my way and partially because I rarely see something I like that I can also afford: Champagne tastes on a beer budget, c'est moi. I've talked to several people in the past year or two who simply collect jewellery. One guy told me he had a wall in his house that was covered in jewellery he had collected on his travels. He took me on a journey around the world up his arm: "I bought that bracelet in a market in Morocco, bought that in England, bought that in India..."

What constantly amazes me is how each person who wears jewellery completely transforms its appearance to the point I pretty much don't recognise my own jewellery once someone else is wearing it. It truly is wearable sculpture, and that in the end is how I approach making jewellery. It's my goal that my work will be that compelling an object of desire for someone that it's not merely thought of as something to be bought and worn to match an outfit for a season and discarded, but something that will be kept and worn for life around which to acquire and shed the garments.

I'm slowly building my own collection of blue beads. Amazing the range and variety of blues there are out there, opaque, translucent, rough, smooth, high polish, matte -- and I mean naturally blue, not dyed or enhanced in some way. Of course, various other colours are needed in order to make the blue even more blue (same for any colour), but I've noticed I need more of those stones than blue ones. Funny how that works: great for all the bead merchants out there. Is this a conspiracy?

It's also weird how I've never able to draw or paint in colour, but through contemplating the way the colours and textures go together or not, I'm gaining insight into how I might move on to painting in colour. The art schools teach you to lay out an entire palette of colours in advance. I was always puzzled by this insistence, because how could I -- and why would I -- do that when I didn't know what colours I would need, let alone what I was going to paint? In my logic, it was quite simply backwards.

But when I see I need a particular colour or size, then comes the long and often frustrating search for that one perfect, necessary and complementary shape and colour, always getting side-tracked at this point because I'm roaming outside of my normal buying paths where I end up acquiring all kinds of must-have things I never knew existed, let alone had any intention of buying... and I've probably still not found that elusive perfect bead. Yep, it's definitely a conspiracy and, yep, that was probably not a sentence.

Although I have to say, now that I'm a little more experienced, having been making jewellery for only three years, I actually walked out of a big big show a couple of weeks ago with $60 in my pocket. Not that I saw nothing more I wanted or needed, just that it had become an all-or-nothing situation. I saw a lust-worthy string of lumpy, nuggety silver spacers for $120 wholesale, I saw a stunning string of turquoise for -- $100? Or was it $200? I can't remember now -- retail. At that point it didn't even matter. I couldn't afford it. Yet.

The Brantford Arts Block

One of the venues that carries my jewellery is the Brantford Arts Block in the heart of downtown -- where else? -- Brantford, Ontario. The BAB is an active, stimulating and fun place to peruse, listen, think, study, watch, think some more... yes, shop too! -- and most of all participate for all ages and all backgrounds. http://www.brantfordartsblock.ca/

I mentioned my drawing/painting background. I'm a figurative artist. I was blown away by the current show on at the BAB which I saw on Saturday. Check out the raw and harrowing paintings by R. Gary Miller, in his show Mush Hole Remembered, up until April 9, 2011. Words fail.

Testing this new format

It's 8:56 on Sunday 27 March. The other entries I've made have no date or time stamps, like they're supposed to. Sheesh.

This is Max, the Johnny Depp of Dogdom. Border Collie/Bouvier cross. All the girl dogs are in love with him and all the boy dogs hate his guts.
He'll be 13 at the end of June.

I just spent 13 straight hours on this computer, updating blogs, websites, etc. I'm whupped. Off to read my book. I'm currently ploughing through all the books I can find by Andrew Vachss.

Well, that's it. I'm outta here. Hope tomorrow spring finally shows up.

Check out Magpie Gemstones

This is what I've been working on lately, trying to break up -- gasp! -- half a century's ingrained, matchy-matchy draftsmanlike precision and loosen up a little.

Stylised silver-plated pewter raven skull choker

Carved bone and pewter skull chokers with copper washer spacers

Silver-plated pewter raven skull

Silver-plated pewter raven skull earrings; copper skull earrings with copper washer dangles

Along with all the "normal" stuff of superb quality, Szarka manages to find the weirdest things. The raven skulls, bone carvings and copper washers are all from Magpie. Advice? If you like what you see, don't hesitate to order. Fast. Oh, and do yourself an even bigger favour and buy double or triple what you think you'll need because you may never see it again. Lesson learned the hard way. I reeeeeally want more of those bright and pretty washers. They are the handiest things ever! Lots of good information on Magpie Gemstones' website, tutorials, videos... I have to say it's become my virtual home away from home these days, great for poking around and learning nifty skills. Thanks, Szarka! http://www.magpiegemstones.com

uh, oh...... several years have gone by

I can't believe that almost two years has gone by since I started this blog. I had resolved to post something new every day. But I didn't. I'm a procrastinator par excellence. The good news is, in the meantime the economy finally hit bottom but, if impulse jewellery buys are any indication, things seem to be turning around. And this awful, awful winter is finally drawing to a close. I'm well into the third year selling jewellery every Saturday at the Woodstock Farmer's Market. My jewellery can be found in two retail stores, Rekindled in Woodstock and Studio Works, Paris, Ontario, as well as the Brantford Arts Block gallery shop. Two new bead stores are carrying my silver leaves and flowers, Crafter's Cupboard, Guelph, which has just had their grand opening, and The Bead Boutique, Kitchener, which will be opening in April. I don't normally do craft shows, but I have been invited to participate in the 2nd Annual Spinners & Weavers Guild Open House in Woodstock, Ontario, on May 14th. This year they are including different crafts, including jewellery and pottery. Apologies as to the appearance of this page. As usual, I have zero understanding how the blogpost format works. Designers: pay attention. The original Pagemaker was the greatest layout program ever invented. Twenty-five years later, I have zero control over line spacing, and I found out the hard way that cutting and pasting text DOES NOT WORK. Moving pictures around and adding captions? Text wrapping? Oh, please. We shall see how it looks when I post it.

time's a'tickin'

I can't believe how quickly time is flying. Fall is... falling, and the vast shelves of the Free Store (aka the outdoor store) are empty, brown, withered.

My webmistress in Germany turned me onto Deviantart.com and it's a great forum for posting new art/jewellery and getting responses, sometimes within seconds of posting, from all over the world.

Pounding away on coating silver leaves for the two big shows in October. I have another 80 almost ready to fire, just waiting for a new silver shipment to arrive so I can finish them. Will fire them I guess next week, then comes the brute labour of cleaning off the firescale and weighing, pricing and bagging each leaf, and making jewellery out of some of them. I will offer plain leaves to people to buy for their own jewellery, and I hope this proves popular.

Meanwhile, I'm playing with store-bought silliness.