Week 30 - Catch the Sun

Focus on life... Sunshine  (what is that?)

If I wasn't currently sitting at 29/29 for these posts... I wouldn't be posting this week!

I have been away for the last 8 days got home late yesterday after flying over night in the middle seat of the plane... Today we got over 3 inches of rain.... We dont' need it, so no liquid sunshine images will be shown on this blog.  I apologize to everyone for not commenting last week but I couldn't get any of the macs in residence at my sisters house to recognize me....

This is a new gallery artist, Natasha Miller... the 'art' is an original charcoal sketch... I took pictures of a few of them to add to my 'real' blog.  I noticed when I was editing them that this one acquired a sun that isn't actually in the drawing!  A very appropriate reflection!

My sisters lavatera... My lavatera is all wild and the flowers are much smaller!

This really has nothing to do with sunshine.... My parents moved into a retirement condo almost 3 years ago... My mother got tired of dads change sitting on the dresser so she started sweeping it into this garbage can.  It was almost 1/3 full Wednesday when I took it the coin counter in the bank.  I  left the bank with $380!  (the wine bottle is for scale)

This may be the only picture that has anything to do with the prompt!

I've always wanted a yellow vehicle... they seem so bright and cheerful!

My son... yellow shirt and yellow flowers!... That's sunshine isn't it?

My parents... the purpose of the trip was my mothers 90th birthday.  
( dad will be 90 in February)

Flowers we bought for the party 
(the picture is their 60th wedding anniversary, their 65th was May 2011)

I'm not sure what this blog really has to do with sunshine.. I certainly didn't see the sun today.. I was wading through water in our basement...

To see how other people interpreted sunshine follow the links on  Sally's blog!


or click on the pictures below!

Better Late than Never!

OK ... Deer proofing my Magnolia worked!  I have flowers!  My car had it's battery replaced yesterday... It's been a bit flaky for the last couple of years...  When we took it out we noticed it was the original battery... Don't think car batteries are suppose to las for 17 years!

My magnolia may have flowers but the deer took out their frustrations on my lily's instead this year.. they are all chewed off at ground level!

Where have I been....  Edmonton....  There should have been a post before this as I've been home for over a week however Air Canada borrowed our luggage for awhile...., this after deliverying us home a day late...  then I misplaced my camera cable...

Yesterday I spent trying to find the living room floor.....  Summer stock for the gallery has been arriving for the last month.... I've been unpacking in the living room and then leaving the pottery there hoping some good fairy would find room in the gallery for it and put it into the computer... no such luck, still have one artist to go ..... then  wait for the elusive customer.....

Here's the finished afgan....  Forgot to take it's picture at Christmas!

Garbage and more garbage....

Well I'm home from operation clean sweep... think I wore the whorls off of my fingers packing and pitching... I found cupboards in that house I didn't know existed! You would not believe all the treasures that can be accumualted in 60 years... I have very good intentions to do some purging here after that trip... Will I ...Stay tuned, but don't hold your breath!


Pretty bad when the only pictures I took of the house were the piles of garbage the last day I was there. (that's 5 days of garbage and recycle) Actually the nearly empty house was too depressing.... AND that snow was totally unnecessary!

Mom & Dad have moved into a Seniors condo complex in Edmonton close to where my sister lives. Even with the piles of 'treasures' left behind they moved for too many things for the 980 sq ft space they now inhabit... but by the time I left you could actually see the floor in all the rooms!

ABS Carnival Bloggers Remembrance

Remembrance is the act of remembering, the ability to remember or a memorial. I’ve been a full time glass artist for over 20 years… DO I remember cutting my first piece of glass… Actually yes, I was 12, living in Switzerland… attending a British school. My teacher had turned the bomb shelter in the building our school was in; into a craft room for his students! I was lucky enough to be one of them. Jump forward almost 20 years to my life as a glass artist…. Working in glass was actually very much a fluke… I took over some ones spot in a class so that she wouldn’t loose her money…. I was a committed fibre artist…

Do I remember making my first glass bead sort of… What I do remember is lighting my minor for the first time… I kept turning the gas up and up and up so when it did finally light I had a flame that was probably 8 or 9 feet long! Luckily my torch in those days was in the middle of the studio! My son was really impressed with Mommy’s latest ‘TOY’!

But I didn’t start on a minor I started on a hot head about 16 years ago, I got it in the fall of ’94 then about the time I wanted to really start trying to teach myself how to make beads, I broke a bone in my left hand… so I stuck the glass down inside the cast… I still work left handed! Most of my early beads were made out of strips of window glass..



This is my first necklace made from moretti... probably made out of the first moretti beads that I made on my hot head that didn't crack... circa fall of 95... I'd got my first moretti that summer...


I also remember the first year I lived in NB in 2001 I worked in an unheated uninsulated garage… I had a garbage bag stuffed in between the window and the wall so that the flame didn’t get blown around. I had to dip my mandrels in the house otherwise the bead release froze and or the mandrels were to cold to touch… I didn’t even have a kiln then, I batch annealed in a fusing kiln that was kept in the dungeon.

My bead studio now is lovely … I can sit and watch the fishing boats come and go and it has heat… and lots of glass! What more could I want!



The closed cabinet is FULL of 13 inch rods of glass... THis is an old picture the boxes have been recycled... and replaced with a hydrolic press!



This is a current necklace....

I actually wrote this almost two months ago… as soon as I finished the blog on Exploration… in the last two months my parents have decided to sell the house that they have been living in for 57 years so I will be going home to help clean it out in two weeks… I’m sure that will bring back all sorts of memories….



This is actually a picture of the back of the house...
I always came and went through the back door so saw this view far more often than then front view, also all the large trees have been removed from the front yard so it no longer looks the way I REMEMBER it!

Another week later... the house is sold (this house picture actually came off of the Remax listing) so I will just be boxing, shoveling, packing, pitching and helping pick what is being moved... and yes moving day is while I'm there... Sounds like I will be alone in the house for 5 days... probably with no internet or TV....

Think I'll post this... or it could get very long!