Cuff Me

Here are photos of my latest work. They are prototypes. (Hint: that means that next time, on the first piece, I'll use dark thread when it will lay against dark leather - lol!)









What startles me is not only the work, which still seems to channel through me from another source, but the clarity with which I am now taking pictures. That I take full credit for. The process by which I learned to capture clear and accurate photos was agonizing. I'm proud of myself.

Three's the Charm

Button box finally located yesterday, I easily found closure buttons for all three bracelets that I've been beading. Attached the buttons, beaded loops to go over them, and voila! The bracelets formerly in progress were done!

I was very pleased. After all, these are the first products from my hands since I got sick. Of course, there's the glass half full, glass half empty syndrome which immediately manifested itself in my mind. Glass half full... if I take my time, I can still produce jewelry which is clearly desirable. Glass half empty, only three bracelets are the sum total of my output since last February. FEBRUARY! Not a lot to show for all those months.

But I think I will not think of the glass as either half full or empty. It is simply at the halfway point. It is what it is; I've made three bracelets which, if I had any idea how much time they would take to make in "real time" I would attach a price on them and offer them for sale.

I guess I'm going to have to make another straight through and see what the time commitment really is.

My Days are Blanks

As days are running one into another, at least one member of the household is improving. Sunny's back is sufficiently recovered - thanks to a dose of Rimadyl - for him to sleep on his sofa part time.
Cosmos spends his days mixed between disapproving of things such as the bathtub draining water (that noise is just unacceptable) and sleeping.
Meanwhile, I remain weak and debilitated, but no longer encumbered by a high fever, also bored. I am able to sit up in bed for periods of time now, and when I do, the feeling that I need to be working on something... producing something... is overwhelming.
Knitting is out. Not only do I not have appropriate yarn to work with, but I have gained a bit of weight with this convalescence and I need to figure out whether I am going to lose it again once sufficiently recovered before putting the time and effort into making myself anything. Additionally, I'm not sure I have the mental capacity to follow a pattern right now, and while underneath the surface the creativity is still there, I can't bring it out yet.
So I am making blanks out of #11 Czech seed beads to be embellished later into bracelets. I can write. I can do rote-and-file beading. And I seem to be able to turn out the bases from which bangles will later be finished.
In the meantime, the whole process seems to bore Cosmos.

Beware the Bracelet... a B-B-Q Warning

Given my dessert "transgression" on Saturday night, I felt it was imperative to eat healthy on Sunday evening. But Eric was coming over. That's always cause for a celebration. And so I decided to finally clean out my BBQ of the old ashes and make dinner outside.

First I grilled the vegetables. Fresh tomatoes from the farmers market, topped by salt & pepper, Italian Bread Crumbs, fresh grated parmesan cheese, and fresh chopped green onion.
I decided to make a five-color-vegetable side dish along with the tomatoes for health reasons, but also to add bulk to the meal. Red Peppers (red), corn (yellow), carrots (orange), purple onion (purple or dark), cauliflower (white), Bok Choy (green), and Asparagus (green) were marinated in Moondance Marinade, then cooked in my grill top wok.
Once the vegetables were complete, I took chicken breasts (skinless & boneless) which I had pounded flat earlier (best to do that between two sheets of either waxed paper or Saran Wrap) and marinated in a Citrus marinade. When you pound the breasts flat, they cook faster and more even. Also, they look like bigger portions and I, for one, am likely to eat less.
All of my dogs approved of me cooking chicken.
So did I. But the one thing that I did not approve of in the process, was burning myself. I recently - on doctor's orders - added a Medic Alert bracelet as standard dress. It hadn't occured to me that it would heat up and burn my wrist. It did. And the worst part was that it got so hot that I could not get the clasp undone to take it off. Days later, I am still suffering, even though Sandy & Christiane gave me ointment that does help.

No, in the "heat" of the moment, it did not occur to me to run inside and put the bracelet under a stream of cold water. Don't bother me with the obvious - lol.