Brian is in Dallas working on a business project, so I’m holding court here at the palace…Who knows what mayhem I’ll cause?  I plan on taking some items to the local thrift store today…and even picking up some meds for my upcoming gum surgery next month…How exciting do those plans sound?  I’m tellin’ ya, party party party all night long…Its gonna be 70 today, so I’ll take the Vampyr out for a spin, but tomorrow its gonna be 57 and I’m going to work in the yard, taking down the dead brush, getting geared up for March…I wasn to see bluebonnets this year! I see some of the green foliage popping up thru the ground, which is normal for about now…the flowers will start in March and run through April.  I hope we’ve had enough rain to give us some pretty colors this year. Last year, we had nothing…

Finished a pair of socks yesterday and am working on finishing two other pairs…am spying my next project to start. I have an entire skirt ready to start, but after making 4 (or was it 5?) of them recently, I am waiting to begin another.  I nearly always have a pair of socks working at any given time…great quick and portable project, never be without socks on the needles…I have some really really cool new skeins of fingering weight yarn just sitting here staring at me. I am not sure what I’m going to make with them, but I’m hunting Ravelry to find the right thing. I should contemplate a larger project, like a sweater, but I think I’m going to go the route of ‘tank top’ instead. I can wear tank tops more than sweaters, and I think they’d be a bit easier and quicker to complete.  Maybe…

Brian found the second season of Sherlock (BBC) and we watched an episode last night.  LOVE that show SO MUCH! They only shoot 3 episodes per season, which is a travesty – I want at least 6 episodes (they are 90 min long).  I have two more episodes to watch over the weekend…And then I have to wait for Season 3, which wont air until 2013…Gah. I will have all six of these episodes memorized by the time that happens.  Benedict Cumberbatch is amazing as Sherlock.  He’s becoming a big deal in Hollywood, appearing in War Horse and having just signed on for the next Star Trek movie w/ J.J. Abrams.  Perhaps as the villain, but no one has official said what his role is…More Cumberbatch, please!

I love rain, thunderstorms, lightening and the whole shebang. I don’t like the damage left behind, the idiots who drive through low-water crossings, or stranded animals that need to be rescued…We had a massive storm blow thru about 3:30am and things are askew…thankfully, not for us, but all around us…I saw that someone had 5″ of rainfall in their rain gauge.  The geese are out with the ducks, waddling up and down the road, heading to the standing water for a bit of a float.  I’m hiding out in the house unless I absolutely have to leave, which I don’t think I have to…Wednesdays are happy days for me, since I don’t have to clean the cats at Petco, and don’t have to head to Austin…I might just get on the torch…after finishing some chores…yeehaw!

would YOU try to cross this?  Video shot about 11:00am today…

Dude! Get us outta here!

My friend Dodie invited me to a glassblowing session yesterday.  A large group got together at a local hot shop in Austin and we all had a great time blowing and casting. Granted, we weren’t allowed to do anything other than blow in the blow pipe, and create a sand cast for a molding – we couldn’t gather the glass on the pipe, marver, or shape it, but you know, that’s probably for the best when you have a group of people who have no idea what they are doing. Can you imagine the damage that could happen?  So, we all were safe and sound, no major or minor injuries and it was a lot of fun.

Don’t blow too hard, or you’ll pop the glass bubble!

I was hoping to get to do the shaping, but the girls there were so great, I still had fun.

once the ornament is done, its clipped from the pipe.  Here, she’s using jacks to pinch the glass so there’s a very small hole left…

a new gather of glass is added to the piece, and a new set of jacks is used to pinch the gather off.  a very small amt of glass is left…

…which is then turned into a loop w/ a pair of pliers.  Its then picked up w/ a carrying tool and put into the annealer to cool down overnight.

This is the glass casting portion. You build a small design in about a 5″x5″ square, about 1″ thick…that’s sand mixed with a clay and water…After this mold was cast, the girl who poured the glass messed it up, so I had to rebuild a new mold…but the new one turned out even better…

The sand mold is then heated and a layer of carbon is created to keep the glass from sticking to the sand too much.

Our molds, waiting to be cast…

That is a big bowl full of molten glass, coming our way…

…and here she is, pouring the glass…

using a trowel to spread the glass into the corners…making a 5×5 square

glowing red-hot glass, looking almost like a pizza, eh?  You can see the round dots circle in the mold – Dodie found a neat shape that I used to create a halo for the deer head…I really like it…

cooling down to a red color…love the shot of the stainless tools and table…

it was quite warm standing over the piece to take this shot…but it gives you a great look at the details…

Once the glow has worn off, the piece is flipped out of the mold, and rested in the shovel tool, then walked to the annealer to cool down over night.

I’ll swing by Tuesday and pick up the pieces when I’m in town again…

I’m jealous of the snow that’s falling in other parts of the country. It was 80 here yesterday and should be close to that today. But I want to wear winter clothes! My winter clothes will never be worn out because I never get a chance to wear them. I’ll have the same boots for the next 40 years. And yet – I do love buying boots! Not gonna stop me…

Busily working on a pair of socks, trying to get them off the needles before starting another pair (never mind that there are two others being knit right now, I’ll get to those when this pair is finished)…At least I haven’t started another skirt yet, although….there is a pile of yarn sitting next to the sofa, all of it is waiting to be a new skirt. I’ll get to it eventually. I might just wear my new knitted skirt today. At least its cotton and not wool.

Took the scissors to my hair the other day and lopped 3″ off the bottom. It has made a huge difference in how it feels. It doesn’t look all that different as far as length, its still long, but it bounces and feels healthy again. I am impatient about my hair and always have been…I’ve always done things to my hair, even back when I was in middle school and would use ‘Sun-In’ to get it blonde. Granted, I just turned it orange and it wasn’t the best, but I was never fearful. I’ve been straightening it since I was 18, cutting it since I was 14 and had plenty of disasters…but I’ve had some real disasters when I’ve gone to professionals and had them turn my hair orange (unintentionally, of course), so I would rather screw it up myself than pay someone else to do it. Ironically, it looks pretty good right now…

Well, as you can probably tell, I’ve wrapped my website in a new skin and I like how it looks. I hope you do too. Its brighter, its less confusing, there’s open space, large images and simple navigation. Many months ago (years?) a very nice person told me they liked my work but couldn’t read my blog because the font was too small and too dark. I heard them and wanted to do something about it, but it would have required an entire re-work of my site. Now that I’m on WordPress, I can make changes like that much easier. Instead of worrying about how many pixels to make a banner, or how wide a column needs to be, I can just worry about the content and let the program do the heavy lifting. I like that.

I’m still working on changes and updates, so you’ll continue to see things happening as I figure out how to implement them. I’ve got a whole list of stuff to do – some things you’ll see, others you wont, but I’ll know they are there.

That’s all I have to say…time to get to work…