The End of May

Kimi's Bracelet

Okay, this is the one I finished for Kimi today. I'm kind of unhappy about the fact that I ran out of 10 mm jumprings to attach the charms. I had to use 12 mm ones. I have 8 mm jumprings, too, but they are too small. They will slide over the ball chain by themselves, but not when attached to a charm...they are just a hair too small. Drat.

The Center of the Universe as We Know It

You probably weren't aware of this, but the very center of the universe is in Trstenik, Croatia. Seriously.

Losing It

I used to have a really bad habit of losing things like keys, wallets, purses, jewelry, gloves and so on. I developed kind of a weird sense about whether something was lost to me forever. I got to where I wouldn't really get upset if I "felt" that I would get it back. Things found their way back to me in strange ways sometimes.
One time I drove to a town that was just a little bit bigger than the one I lived in because it had a better grocery store. I got almost all the way back home when I realized I had left my purse at the store. Because The Husby had paid for the groceries I didn't notice. This was in the days before cell phones so what to do but turn around and drive back. I walked back into the store and there was my purse in the bell peppers right where I had left it.
Stuff like that happened all the time. Another time I was on a drive on National Forest land and alongside the road was a yellow piece of fabric or something. For some reason it looked really familiar. I stopped, backed up and it was one of my daughter's baby quilts that her great grandmother had made. I never did find out how it got way out in the woods so many miles from our home. But I was glad I found it. I never even knew it was missing until I found it.
The best story doesn't really involve anything I lost. The Husby lost his wedding ring one day a couple of days before Christmas years and years ago. Because it had snowed he thought he must have lost it when he was shoveling snow in our driveway. A day or so later all the snow melted and we looked but we couldn't find the ring. He turned his gloves and pockets inside out and we searched the house, but we could not find that ring.
Fast forward almost six months later. It was one of the last days of the school year and my daughter was sitting in her English class when she glanced at the boy across the aisle from her. He was wearing a ring that looked exactly like my husband's wedding ring. She mentioned it that night and The Husby called this boy the next day and met with him and sure enough, it was his ring! He asked how he got it and he said his brother worked as a waiter at a place where my husband had attended a meeting the night before the snowstorm. Turns out he lost it there and didn't notice until the next day. The waiter/brother hadn't bothered to turn in it at the restaurant where he worked and eventually gave it to my daughter's classmate. The Husby gave the boy $20 for being honest with him and got his ring back.

Trivia You Can Live Without

No one has ever tagged me to share unimportant snippets of information about myself so I'm doing it on my own. Here, in no particular order of relevance, are some basic truths about me.

I was born in Texas. I only went to school there until 2nd grade. I remember that the class had to sing "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You" right after we recited the Pledge of Allegiance. Texans are very big on Texas.

Then my family moved to North Dakota. Trust me on this: it is America's counterpart to Siberia. The kids made fun of me because of my funny accent and my new teacher informed me that the word aunt was pronounced awnt. She told me that an ant crawls on the ground. I'm terribly conflicted to this day about how to pronounce that word. Especially since my mother always called her aunts aint so and so.

I have lived in 9 different states in my life. California was the best. By far.

I lived in Kosovo for almost two years.

I used to be really, really afraid of spiders. I would kill them with oven cleaner (which works really well, by the way) or a Dallas telephone directory. I got over it when one crawled into my shoe. When I put it on I was sure I felt something wiggle. I was sure it had to be a spider. I threw off the shoe, took several deep breaths, retrieved the shoe and tried to shake it out. I wouldn't look because I was positive that if there was a spider in there, it would jump out on my face. So I put the shoe back on and felt the same thing. This time the spider came out when I shook the shoe. After that I realized that feeling a spider on me wasn't the absolute worst thing that could ever happen in life. I almost reversed myself on that, however, years later when I saw something out of the corner of my eye in my long hair and sure enough, it was a spider....a black widow!!!
I still hate tarantulas. They are in a class by themselves.

I am not afraid of snakes. I don't like them, mind you, but I don't jump out of my skin at the sight of one. I have even picked up little ones and let them slither around on my arm.

I also used to be wildly afraid of flying. I would hardly sleep for days before I had to take a trip on a plane. Then I discovered the great benefit of Valium. Ah, better living with modern pharmaceuticals! I have flown so much over the past 10 years that I can sometimes forego the Valium. I still get nervous when there is a lot of turbulence, but I'm not gripping the arm of the seat. Or calling out, "Mommy!"

I was a librarian once for about three years.

I was a deputy sheriff for about six years.

I was a 911 dispatcher for 14 years. A little unsolicited advice here on this one, just in case you, the reader, might be contemplating going to work as a 911 dispatcher...this job is terribly unhealthy. I went into this job kinda skinny and naive, I came out on the other end with enormously high blood pressure, I was overweight, and had a bona fide sleep disorder. My sleeping was so out of whack I figured it would take two years to sleep normally after I finally resigned. The good news is, it only took about a month.

My favorite place to eat in the US is Aqui in Willow Glen, a wonderful neighborhood in San Jose, California. I have eaten in restaurants from The Four Seasons in San Francisco to some little cafe in Joseph, Oregon where the waitress made a case for Elvis being alive. So I think I am qualified to make a good assessment of where to eat. Aqui is it.
As for my favorite place to eat in the world....that one is a lot more difficult. It probably has to be this great restaurant in Nis, Serbia that is so out of the way you can walk by it and not realize it is there. And I don't remember the name of it. But I know how to find it again. Runners up would be Marshall Tito's in Skopje, Macedonia, Ciao in Caglavica, Kosovo, and....oh, the list is too long.

I have a thing about paper. The way it feels, the way it smells and I have this other whole thing about pens and pencils. When there is just the right drag of ink or graphite over the right kind of paper....oh, it's just so...what's the word? Heaven, I guess.

New Charm Bracelet

I am making another bracelet like this for my great-niece Kimi who just graduated from nursing school.
Why, what a coincidence, I just happened to place this one on a map of my favorite places in the whole wide world.

My latest mini obsession

My daughter warned me that Copic Sketch markers can be very addictive and sure enough, they are. I baked up another bunch of Sculpey and Fimo charms a few days ago and have been happily coloring them ever since. I have to tell you that the Sculpey charms have a little more dull finish than the ones shown here, which are Fimo. The ones shown in a previous post are the Sculpey ones. I already mentioned it, but I ordered a few more colors from Chris at Scrap Lovers in San Jose and I can hardly wait to get them so I can experiment even more. It occurred to me today that these remind me a little of scrimshaw.
On a related note, I have to confess that the Sculpey and Fimo are from a stash that I have had for over a decade. What is this stuff made from anyway? Neither one is even remotely dried out. The Fimo has always been difficult to get pliable enough to roll out but a passing decade plus has not made it any worse. And the Sculpey package had been previously opened, was not been sealed up in any way and it is just like brand new. I think it is weird on one level but on another I am happy so I didn't have to go rushing around trying to find some new. Finding anything in the realm of arts or crafts supplies around here in the area where I live. sigh
God, I miss California.

Yard Sale Find

The Husby and I went to a huge yard sale last weekend and I had just about given up finding anything good when I came across a big box of jewelry findings. A lot of it was not so hot, but there was a little package of these great vintage looking beadcaps that I just knew would be perfect with some little glass marbles I've had for several years. I thought they worked so well that now I am on a quest to find more bead caps like these. If you look closely you can see that these have the little bale(?) attached to the top which makes them perfect for the little marbles, given that they don't have a hole drilled through them.
I found the glass marbles at Smith & Hawken in Los Gatos, California a number of years ago and bought a big scoop of them. They had a big bin of these for awhile then I never saw them again. They kind of have a silver finish to them but you can still see through them. These two have tarnished but they look kind of old this way so I didn't try to clean them up.

I Heart Copic Pens

I've been fiddling around with an ancient package of Fimo that I had stashed away and came up with these. The best part of making these, however, was discovering ways to use my new Copic sketch pens. Now that they're pretty much my favorite pens I ordered some new ones from Chris at Scraplovers A Work of Heart in beautiful Willow Glen, in San Jose, California. If you are EVER in the Bay area, it is definitely worth the time to go to this fabulous store. It isn't a big store but it is packed with just the best and the newest paper art supplies you could ever wish for under one roof. Not only is Chris super nice, but she really has a vast knowledge of how to use all the products she stocks. And there are always classes, swaps, events and the like there all the time. Can't get to California? See her website http://store.scraplovers.com/.
Seriously, it is "A Thousand Times Better" than any other store I've ever been to. As Kenny Bania used to always say on Seinfeld, "It's the best, Jerry!"

Tiny Bubbles

I'm back to making charm bracelets again so I've been putting together these little glass bubbles to attach. They're a bit of work but fun to make, anyway. I need to get these out to the Flower House (the name of my outside studio) and solder them.

Grandma Olive's lilac

Even though I have a beautiful lilac in my yard that sports the biggest clusters of dark purple florettes you've ever seen, this diminuative white lilac is my favorite. It not only has the most heavenly smell, I think it is just beautiful. The Husby and I dug this out of his grandmother's yard about 25 years ago. It didn't do much for years. Oh, it grew but never put on a lot of flowers. Last year I trimmed it way back and this year I have many more flowers on it than I remember ever seeing.
I think that another reason I love this one so much is just knowing that someone else cared for it once. Since I won't always live here I think I am going to devise some type of little metal box to attach to it so someone else can open it up years from now and maybe read about its origins. Maybe they won't care at all, but you never know. I will enclose a little slip of paper to say that this came from a little house in Deary, Idaho and was attended by Olive Wilson Thomas, daughter of Scot and Canadian immigrants.
Genealogy is another one of my loves. Years ago I worked in a library where the local genealogy society met once a month. At the time I thought I would go crazy if one more person regaled me with a story about his great great uncle Phineas who had run a still in the mountains of Tennessee. Now it is I who will go on and on about ancient relatives to anyone who will listen. sigh

Just a little something I made

This was fun to put together. Just your average memory wire strung with beads, then wrapped with fine gold wire, add a few other little beads on that wire, attach two charms and a clasp. This helped pass a very rainy afternoon so it qualifies as "a thousand times better" than just lying around watching soap operas or something.
Which brings me to confess a secret guilty pleasure. It's kind of akin to having a box of Godiva chocolates stashed away to be indulged in when you're home alone. I told my daughter this a few months ago and she groaned, "Aaaahhh." This is my big secret: I have been a HUGE fan of "The Young and the Restless" since the very first day it started, back in 1973. I was home from work that week because my daughter had the chicken pox and couldn't be in day care. So while she slept I took in this new soap opera that had been hyped for weeks. One character, Katherine Chancellor, has been there since the first year and she is now 80 years old. She has been played by Jeanne Cooper for the entire 36 years. A normal person would never have lived to be 80 if they had endured everything she has over the years. This "daytime drama" as they are called now, has been the BEST blend of sex, alcoholism, murders, love-hate relationships, power, amnesia (which seems to be a common theme in soap operas)etc., etc.
So the secret is out. I don't care. I love it.
And I'm naming this bracelet "Katherine" in honor of dear "Mrs. C" as she is sometimes called on the show.