Not Quite Dead Yet...

It seems like the only thing I've had time to do lately is spend money, which is something that I happen to be good at doing. Not that I regret any of the beautiful shiny things that have been gracing my mailbox - I just wish my paycheck had been substantial enough to support my habit.

Right now, Jonah and I are living with one of our friends in Franklin... her mother got married, and she can't drive, so the three of us are staying in her house until she finishes the semester out. If she decides she wants to stay and can negotiate it with her mother, we might rent here next semester. Right now, we're living this sort of dual-life between my parents' house and this house, though... we haven't fully "moved," since we're only going to be here for about three more weeks. A lot of things that we need are still at home, waiting for us to say, "Oh, hey, we need that, let's stop in and get it." My beading items have no home here, since there's no room, so they're at home as well, and it's making me antsy.

I do have some photos of the few things I managed in my spare time.

Dyed green turquoise, copper, and dyed purple snow quartz.

Sterling silver, poppy jasper, and some lovely "free gift" clay beads from Humblebeads. I'm not entirely sure what the smallest bead on top is - it was part of a stone assortment. This is probably one of my favorite pairs of earrings that I've made, so far.

Giveaway, giveaway, giveaway... dingdingding?

Kelley Wenzel is having a bead giveaway - you win if you come up with the new name for her latest beads. I entered, because I love giveaways. And I also love Stephen King... so "Redrum" was really the only thing I could think when I looked at the pictures and read her description of them.

Kelley's Bead Studio: I Need a Name!


I've been enjoying some pretty intense vertigo since Sunday night - if I move my head or upper body so much as 40 degrees in any direction other than the "default position," the room starts spinning like crazy... and if I close my eyes, I still feel it. I'm probably heading to the doctor next week if I'm not over it by then. I've had some "severe dizziness" once before, and I wasn't sick at all, but I don't know if I can take the medication he gave me for that with my current regular medications... and I can't bring myself to go see him just for him to tell me it's okay to take it. While I've been spending gratuitous amounts of time in bed complaining, Jo has been making rings for people... he made a pink one for my little sister and has made two others for some mutual friends of ours. I'll try to shoot some pictures of them next time I get the opportunity. I never ceased to be amazed by how he can just pick up something and make it work. He made my ring in... less than an hour, I'd say. Being a dexterity-challenged crafter, I'm incredibly jealous of him. ;P

This Saturday, we'll be off to see the Scottish Games down in Charlotte (my favorite former teacher/dear friend is volunteering with the museum that is holding the event), and after that, maybe I'll have something shiny to post to show that I'm making progress as a jewelry-maker. Maybe. I hope.

Ba-zinga!

Jonah has spent the entire week bedridden because of a gout attack. I'm just about ready to cut off his foot and call it good!



I am generally not an emotional eater, but being equipped with a vagina, there are some days that just require chocolate medication, and today was one of those days. My mother's alarm didn't go off, and ours was either insignificant or also silent... so I was two hours later to work than I intended to be. Work study allows me a flexible schedule, but even on a flex schedule, it's a job, and I'm treating it as real world-training, so I would have been totally buggered if it were a "real job".

So I get there, pop my lunch in the microwave, run up to the second floor to get a coke from the machine. But I don't hear my first quarter clink! I figure it's stuck. I push in two more to move it. Still no clink. Coin return does nothing. Hitting the machine does nothing. So I'm like, "AUUGH. Fine." I go over to the food/drink machine and try to get a juice out of there.. but it won't acknowledge my dimes! So I eject the coins and it gives me some different change. AMONG these different coins is a CANADIAN EFFING QUARTER. But I don't realize that until I try to use it and it's rejected. I go to the third floor coke machine. I have 75 cents, plus the canadian quarter. The canadian quarter is not accepted by the machine, despite the fact that I got it from another one which also wouldn't accept it. BECAUSE I can't use the Canadian quarter, I am exactly five cents short instead of being able to purchase my drink. There are no students on campus on Fridays. Today is the ONE day where there isn't any change under or on top of the machine. Okay. Fine. I eject my change and am shorted another nickle. I go into the bookstore. Cokes are 1.40 in there, so I don't bother. I ask if I can exchange the canadian quarter. She says, "Yeah, uh, no, that's not technically money." But I GOT IT FROM A MACHINE! It SHOULD have value because it COST ME 25 CENTS! I finally had to go down to the cash office, tattle on the second floor machine that ate my 75 cents, and get our cashier to pay me that back so I could go get a drink from the third floor machine. Twenty. minutes. wasted. all for a Dr. Pepper.

After lunch (the best microwavable pasta meal I have ever eaten, might I add) the day begins going normally... or so I think. I print out some letters for admissions. On the last two letters, our hefty printer jams. It is not as small or as simple as my little home printer. I drag it away from the wall, pull out the back panel after some searching, and tug. Usually, my little home printer releases paper when I do this. Not Hefty. Hefty gives me the bottom half of the sheet. Okay, that's progress. I make little tears along the way and finally cannot tear any more paper out. It is still jammed. I ask our admissions officer if she has tweezers or could help me find a simpler way to un-jam it. Our ruckus brings the dean out of his office. We three stand over this thing for THIRTY MINUTES trying to yank paper out of it, because we got a top half out, but there was still some non-visible paper jammed in there that the printer just wouldn't get over. Everyone who passes us says, "Did you try turning it off and back on, and opening and closing the lid?" Yes, yes, yes, yes. Admissions officer gets out a TOOL KIT from my supervisor's office and the dean starts trying to unscrew things to take the printer apart. This does not work - Hefty apparently doesn't like being dismantled. We finally give up and decide we're going to call IT, but five minutes later, Admissions Officer (in an amazing feat, because I would have hit the thing with a hammer and called it a day) works the last bit of jammed paper out with a tweezer. Thirty-five minutes wasted because of Hefty.

Later, I got a cut from the bottom side of a manila folder. I didn't even think that was possible, but my folder cut spans my middle finger between the two mid-joints. I spent five minutes hunting for a band-aid. An HOUR of my day was wasted on a Dr. Pepper, a printer, and a folder cut. Baffling!

Fortunately, our career counselor has a very loving husband who made a big ol' chocolate cheesecake for her, which she brought in to share with us. It took all of my power not to shove my entire face in it. Unsurprisingly, after I had a slice, the day got a lot better.

Anniversary

Today is Jonah and I's four year anniversary! We made each other rings - his is quite stunning, considering that it's the first ring he's ever made.

Jo's ring for me - tall, because every woman wants a big rock. :P
(Mine just happens to be a fiberoptic bead.)

The ring I made for him - a whopping size 16 with tigerseye, malachite, and copper

Must Be Funny In A Rich Man's World

This week's productivity has been completely disproportionate.

• Didn't make anything. At all. All week. I've either been too busy, too stressed because I was busy, or sleeping. This bothers me, because if I'd been able to sit down and do my own thing, I probably would have been a lot more relaxed. On Wednesday, I had a fleeting idea for a necklace, but I lost it.
• I bought some chain, lots of copper findings, thicker wire, some mandrels (hello, custom-sized rings), a hammer, a cup burr, and some sterling silver earwires. I was a little shell-shocked because of the amount of money (I'm still not to the point where I can shake off spending more than $60 at one time).
• I got paid for a pair of earrings.
• And I just spent that plus a bit extra to buy some beads from the Humblebeads Etsy. I admit, I was definitely swayed into spending that amount because there's a weekend sale going on where you can get a snow owl bead for spending over $20... but I had my eye on a few things, and I finally had to pick and choose, then cut my final choices in half so that I didn't spend another $100. What I did pick, I bought for obvious reasons:

You can't tell me that bead doesn't speak to you on some level. I could just eat it up.

Now I just have to finalize more sales so that I can buy more beads. Maybe I'll have time for that this week. I've also been going crazy trying to find a plentiful lot of watch parts, but I can't find many good deals on Etsy... and while I can find large quantities on eBay, I hate auctions. I don't have time to babysit an item just to have it snatched out from under my nose at the last minute. I'll find a solution someday.

Swamped

You know, between the flux of people coming in and out of my home, doing homework, working with the chorale, going to school, and working at school, I suddenly don't have time for anything, and I haven't even been employed for a full week yet! I am incredibly prone to being stressed-out by just about anything and everything, and I just want everything to PLEASE STOP FOR FIVE MINUTES so I can do something I enjoy and stop feeling like my head is going to explode.

I'll never get these custom orders done on time if it doesn't. D<

Maybe if I can kick everyone out of my house for just one solid weekend, I can get things cleared up and find some focus. Jo and I are fighting right now because overnight company always overwhelms me (additionally, we have no free couches, clean floors, or extra beds) and he keeps inviting overnight company BACK - we had two totally separate overnight visitors last weekend, and one was unplanned... the other, I didn't want to turn away, because she didn't want to be stuck in Georgia and miss our game on Sunday. The first slept in a computer chair and the second slept shoved at the foot of our bed. Why would someone even WANT to sleep there? I get most of the bed because I sleep the right way on it, and -I- don't even think it's comfortable with someone lurking at the bottom of it. I tried to tell him that we need a simple, nonverbal way for me to communicate when I'm not feeling up to visitors (and that I don't like overnighters out or in my house, ever, anywhere, unless we're over two hours from home), because I hate that he tells everyone, "Ask Amanda," and then I look like the big bad wolf because I say, "No, not today/tomorrow/this week." And then I also have to deal with people trying to convince me, because some people can't take no for an answer. I like our friends a lot, and I don't mind having them over for a while, just as long as they GO HOME when I'm ready for bed. There has been, without fail, at least one person in our car getting a ride home/hitching a ride to our place every day this past week. It's getting overwhelming. I can't afford the gas or the stress anymore.

Fun and pretty posts in store when I've got time, I hope.

A Lesson In Overenthusiasm

Jo's Mom: "i don't like jump rings for that reason - i prefer endless loops. you could always solder them together ;-)"
Me: "I do have a small electrical soldering iron that's waiting to be used... but I don't have any solder yet! And I'm kind of intimidated by the idea of using it. I'm sure that once I do I'll get carried away and want to solder everything."
Jo's Mom: "and that's a problem because..."
Me: "Because my parents would be very angry when I soldered the doors shut."
Jo's Mom: "that would take a very long time."
Me: "It's a safer bet than trying to solder the dog."

Bracelet made with the jump rings I was complaining about. I cut the rings from a 20g copper wire coil I made.

Button, Button, Who's Got the Button?

The answer to that question is: me.
In fact, I have quite a few buttons lying around. At Christmas, Jo's aunt Heidi was kind enough to gift me with all the orphaned buttons from the dry cleaner she works at. Some of them had been there since before she worked, so she checked with her boss and cleaned out the drawer, which resulted in us coming home with a nice stash.



There are lots of possibilities in all of these buttons! Jo has already made a very cool rotating thing (to go on a ring, if I'm not mistaken) with a compass button that he rigged to the top of a gold button he flattened the edges of.



I haven't gone through all of them, although Jo (silly magpie man) has already picked out many of his favorites, and I've got a few that I liked (and that he pulled out for me) sitting on my desk now.



Eee, buttons!

Back In The Saddle

Ah yes. I am indeed back in the saddle. I'd be blasting AC/DC right now, if my head didn't ache like crazy. (It seems like I'm most productive in life in between bouts of migraines and nausea.)

We've finally gotten our lives in order enough for me to return to Life As I Know It, as far as this blog is concerned. My spring semester and summer were effectively hectic enough to keep me from getting anything done except passing my classes and keeping my head bolted to my body.

In the past two weeks, though, Jo has moved my crappy old desk out of my room, we cleaned its former home, and we erected his desk, which is a handy corner module from IKEA. It is the perfect workspace. Yesterday after my nap, I moved the shelves and jester dolls out of the way and set up my space, and I've been in a joyous, bead-loving frenzy ever since.

It looks terribly cluttered in this picture, but that's because I had just gotten some things out after Jo had been fiddling around over there. The wires are always all over the place, but I've usually got more workable surface area.

My ribbon finally has a home! And my beading board! (Which I still almost never use... it's not that it isn't a good idea, it's just that I never get around to that in the creative process.)

All my enameled and generic craft wire has its own fishing-supply box to live in. I also keep my clasps in the spare compartment of that.

My re-organized base bead box.

My favorite corner of it... from the top right, clockwise: identified gemstones, fun swirly beads, various briolette/dangly bits, and lampworked shapes... notice Cindy G's wonderful skull sitting in there! (I'm still trying to figure out how I want to use it.)

My big ol' Compartment 'O Focals... pretty stones, plus a few of Lynn Davis' lovely beads hiding in there. :P

A few of the "new" beads (which are really from the middle of my dry spell last spring) that Lacey purchased for me... she has such a great eye for interesting things! She's got a custom order with me that includes some of these beads.

My latest and greatest effort from last night... a sterling silver ring. The coil is a bit messy on this one, but it's mine, so I'm not so picky about that. The stones are a piece of carnelian and one of those "Peruvian blue opals" I bought... which I am slightly skeptical about the validity of. I don't care much whether they're really real, but I hate false advertising in my jewelry. /:

Another ring:

Glass moon face, kyanite rounds, and a little red stone.

Next up on my purchase list: a ring mandrel. Sizing to my own finger is messy, and I'm anywhere between an 8 and a 9, so if I want to actually sell some rings, I need to get a mandrel, ASAP!

Finally played with some of the jumprings I've had lying around. I also need to get some of that "Tool Magic" coating, because if I'm not careful, I mar the rings pretty badly. My biggest complaint right now as that these rings are as "closed" as I can get them... and they still don't look 100% closed. More like 98 or 99%.

Playing with the idea of coiling wire. I used my flush cutter handles for these spirals. :P

In other jewelry-related news, I've sold a pretty good portion of last year's jewelry... and I'm working with a friend from high school right now to create custom jewelry for her Halloween-themed wedding. I also have a custom order for a variation on another pair of last year's earrings, but she's looking for "hypo-allergenic 10k or 14k gold kidney ear wires." I've searched and not been able to find any. She doesn't know if she has a nickel allergy, but the only options I've seen are 14k nickel free or 18k+, which is naturally nickel-free, according to what I've been reading. I'll have to go talk to her about her options on Tuesday, when I'm feeling better. The next step in my plan? Actually populating my Etsy shop! Soon, my pretties... soon!

A pretty wrapped box, courtesy of Panda Mae Jewelry. A bomb, or a pair of earrings? You decide.

P.S. I am, in fact, reading everyone's blogs again! Google Reader has made my life 100% easier. I don't miss a thing that anyone posts now! (:

Christmas Plans

I hope everyone is having a lovely holiday season. (:
I've been enjoying all the precious sleep I can get.

My Christmas will consist of:
A lumbar puncture on Monday
A wedding on Tuesday
Traveling to Virginia.. probably on Wednesday
Going to Kentucky for New Years with Jonah's family

So, I figure I'll start "OFFICIAL BLOG HIATUS" today, and then I might post over the weekend if I make more jewelry. And past that, no guarantees on when I will post again up until after New Years.
I hope everyone has a merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, great Kwanzaa, a happy New Year, and a generally prosperous yuletide holiday, regardless of what you're celebrating.

The Cows Came Home.

Mooo. That's the sound of the jewelry cows coming home. They finished their long trek on Sunday, when I spent an entire evening making earrings.

Glass-based pearls and black Swarovskis.


Silver glass-based pearls "caged" in brass... I'm definitely going to use thicker wire next time. What a pain.
Additionally, the cage is also a pain to capture with my camera.



Silver glass-based pearls, non-caged.


Clear seed beads, black Swarovskis, even more silver glass-based pearls, and white Czech flowers.


Vintage garnet saucers separated by small clear seed beads.



And finally, my favorite pair of the lot... a lapis teardrop beneath Czech glass and fiberoptic beads, with a Swarovski on top.

Hat, hat...

I shouldn't be so wild about hats.
I look like crap in hats, as a general rule.
But ever since I really got into Etsy, I've been seeing so many adorable knitted/crocheted things that I just love. I love the big neck cowls I see. I love the cute little shoulder capes with hoods. I love the arm warmers. I love the head wraps. And I love the hats.

And tonight, I'm all about ear flap hats.
And ear hats.

These two adorable crocheted ear flaps are by CrimsonEtClover, and I want
to own them both. I feel like I have to have them. As soon as I sell my two
pre-ordered pairs of the Lady Luck earrings, I may have to buy the black and white pair...
But no! I must save my money!


This beautiful hood is by Pixiebell, and she has it in different colors. I just love
this neutral wrap, and the braided look. And just in general.

On a non-earflap note:

This Jellyfish Tam in Grape Jam (I love the rhyme) by Pixiebell is just fabulous.



This hat got me searching for ear flap hats tonight when I saw a link to this
on Twitter. This is an adorable earflap Knittles hat.

I really need to figure out the intricacies of crochet (so I can do something other than a chain stitch), and learn to knit. I want to make these things. My god.