Saturday's Treats

The fruits of my Saturday, newly available at Jellybug Artworks!

Turquoise, Tigereye and Pearl Rope

Three thick strands of green apple turquoise, tigereye, and creamy cultured pearls studded with pewter. Matching earrings mirror the rich stones and renaissance-style pewter. Wear the necklace in a twist, or in graceful parallel strands to show off the luscious gemstones.

Byzantine Turquoise Bracelet

Renaissance beauty! Three strands of hand-woven byzantine chain fasten with a sterling clasp featuring an imitation turquoise cabochon. Each strand of chain takes an hour to weave.

Rock Garden Symphony

Striped agate in black, gray and cream is spiced up with fire-crackled red agate on hand-wrapped wire links. A crackly stone pendant on a sterling bail provides a lovely centerpiece. Matching earrings complete your look!

Nectarines and Cream Necklace

Tubes of striped agate and cultured pearls on hand-wrapped wire links pair with a deep red fused glass pendant. Don't miss the matching earrings and bracelet!

Wild Rice Salad

Every Sunday, a small group of friends coalesces for a potluck dinner. According to my mother, when I moved out on my own, I insisted that two pots was too many, but the high cooking standards of my foodie potlucking friends have led me from barely able to make pasta to loving to cook.



This week's recipe was Wild Rice Salad from Elise at Simply Recipes. It is a scrumptious blend of crunchy rice, crispy veggies, toasted pine nuts, and dried cranberries with an olive oil and red wine vinegar dressing.

Elise's salad is cold. I prefer such concoctions hot, and the groups prefers brown rice over white, so I've made modifications. This one's a keeper!

Flurry of Inspiration

Having passed the week tired, grumpy, and spending all of my time doing things for other people, I went crazy on Saturday. I've got a ton of photos to process, but here's a preview of pieces which will become available soon!

First, we have a lovely red stone on a sterling bail on a necklace of hand-wrapped striped agate balls and fire-roasted agate wavy coins. (They're really fire-crackled agate, but it tickles me to call them fire-roasted -- like peppers!)



Next, a rope of tigereye, cultured pearls, and green apple turquoise studded with pewter accents, pewter cones and an ornate floral toggle clasp.

the Purpose of Beaches

I've never been a beach person. I don't swim or sunbathe. But I figured I'd go across the street and walk along the beach since it's right there.

Crescent Beach is your average beach.



I watched people poking in the rocks for sea glass and shells. I meandered down to the water and a shell caught my eye, and I realized what a beach is for: jewelry! These people are going to take their shells home, put them in a box, and ignore them. People are going to wear mine.

I left with nought but a camera, and I came home with a double handful of sea treasure.



This particular beach also contains Mammoth Seaweed. Probably sabertoothed seaweed from some prehistoric undersea forest. I have included my foot for scale.



The fruits of my labors, having sat in a dishpan of soapy water overnight, are now drying on the back porch.

Can't Keep a Good Grass Down

The gutter outside my house was recently re-paved.  A fresh new black swath of asphalt over everything.  Now, I'm not complaining -- it needed it!  The concrete gutter hadn't been tended to in .. well, decades, from the look of it.



This isn't your normal street-height gutter -- it's a paved channel, nominally a few inches lower than the road.  Big chunks of the bottom were missing, creating 10-inch-deep chasms which swallowed the ankles and tires of the unwary.  Parallel parkers frequently ended up with a wheel in the gutter.  A friend came to visit once, pulled too close to a particularly deep portion of the Grand Canyon, and couldn't get back out.  We tried to build a ramp, but I didn't have enough miscellaneous timber in my shed.  A passerby volunteered to help, and returned with lumber that he'd borrowed from a neighbor.  My favorite incident involved a tow truck which got stuck there for days after accidentally backing into the chasm.



So, at long last, a new gutter.  A wide, smooth dip at the side of the road, easy to walk through and to park next to without fear of maroonment.  Amusingly, though, only a cursory attempt to clear the area to be paved was made, and small clumps of grass were left.  Small clumps of grass tend to become large clumps of grass.  It is their wont.  As I walked home today, I noticed this idyllic urban watering hole.  I imagine weed whackers and skateboards congregating for a drink from the coursing water during a light rain.

The iMac Returns .. Sort of

The folks at the Apple Store apparently weren't able to rescue anything off of my old hard drive (despite the fact that they successfully accessed it while I was at the store dropping it off). I hadn't checked on my backup program in a while, and unfortunately, it appears that it hadn't been working. Most of the full size photos of my recent work ... gone. Many I can retrieve from Etsy, fortunately. I'm not sure when the backup stopped working. I'm afraid to open my mail program and to plug in my phone, which syncs with data that might not be there anymore. New daily task:  glare at the backup logs. Sigh. Maybe I should bite the Leopard bullet and hope Time Machine works better than this other apparently-questionable thing I was using.

New Show!

I've just received my confirmation for a show in September. I'm trying a new venue, going relatively far afield, and a new market -- this will be the most expensive show I've done to date.

Third Annual Harford County Wine Festival



I'm very excited about the show: it's a combination wine tasting and craft exhibition at a historic manor house north of Baltimore. Tickets are $25, and that gets you a number of wine tastings. There's also food and live music. You can buy tickets online now to secure your entry!

The festival is held outdoors, rain or shine, at Rockfield Manor on Churchville Road in Bel Air.

I'll be bringing plenty of wine bottle serving trays -- they'll make great gifts in combination with the wine available for purchase at the festival! I'll also have a selection of my fancier jewelry.