I Heart Macro

For this week's I heart macro I thought I would share the fruits of my labor (pun intended)

If you remember this post you'll remember I planted some pots of strawberries right near my steps so that all summer long we hopefully will be able to just pick strawberries as we walk by.

Well, yesterday the first one ripened and before we ceremoniously cut it in half to share the sweetness, I took out my camera for today's i heart macro post.

Some we planted are june bearing and the rest are everbearing meaning we should have strawberries most of the summer. Yum!

Hop on over to Studio Waterstone to join in the macro fun!

*** I have been caught in the blogger glitch this week, unable to use my blogger account to sign in and leave comments but I just found that i can sign in with name and URL if you have it enabled on your site, otherwise, know that I keep looking at all the pix and would comment if I could***

Showers Of Flowers

Sitting on our front porch, it almost seems as if it's snowing outside.

Our lawn and part of the street is covered with the flowers of our majestic Catalpa tree.

This tree gives wonderful shade to our front lawn for most of the hot afternoons of summer and is a home to many happy birds.

You can see by it's irregular shape that it's had many trimmings by the state to uncover the wires.

A lot of bird families have been raised in all the nooks and crannies

The fragrant flowers are profuse and look like miniature orchids 

The seed pods look like long string beans which land and take root fairly easily. We have given away many of the saplings over the years and fearing the eventual demise of our tree, have even planted another one in our backyard which is already over 20 feet tall and flowering. 

A faerie's eye view

Hope you enjoy the outdoors this spectacular weekend



This Week In History

25 Years ago this week we did a crazy thing. 

We opened a restaurant.

Now, what makes this a crazy thing is that neither one of us knew the first thing about running a restaurant.

 It was just a dream.

I was an R.N. and my husband was a commercial fisherman, a lifelong waterman as it's known around here.

What we did know is that we liked to cook for people.  See what I mean? Crazy!

We opened it in an area that everyone told us no one would come to, off the beaten path, out of the way in an old building that we spent the better part of a year renovating before opening.

Sitting here writing this,  it feels like a lifetime ago.

 Or even someone elses life.

 Like a story that's been told so many times you start to feel like it's real and that you were a part of it but it's somewhat fuzzy.

I don't know where 25 years has gone but I do know this-

People did come find us-

We are blessed to have some of the best and most faithful customers on the planet-

People come from several states away to eat with us-

We have watched our children, our employees, our employees' children and now our grandchildren grow up as part of this business-

We have shared in our employees and customer's lives and the lives of their families, we don't take a single thing for granted and appreciate every day we are given and every customer that continues to grace our threshold-

Thank you and God Bless everyone who has helped to make the dream come true.

Crazy as it is

BTW

This is the state of my bead table today. I have been in production mode, getting some pieces ready to restock the display case at the restaurant, for the past few days.

In the tray you can see the jump rings from the last post, I made some more yesterday, getting the hang of it, not bad.

I have been making the components, partial necklaces and hope to have them finished by the weekend. I have done 16 so far and hope to get a few more done today since the weather is going to be rainy AGAIN!

The table has so much on it right now, I hesitated taking a pix but this is real life right? I sit and work mostly in my lap, set everything up in the tray and then put the tools in my lap and work. 

I realized  that i used to work in clay the same way, everything would be on the table but I would turn sideways to the table and work in my lap., especially when doing sgraffito and painting, can't work at table height for some reason.

The rest of the time I would stand to work and still do. I gather the beads and lay them out while standing and looking at them from a distance to see if it works, then sit down and put it all together, in my lap.

I would glaze standing as well. It's funny, but I didn't put that together until just this moment.

I guess we all find what works best for us.

Come to think of it, when I was at Art and Soul a couple of weeks ago, I remember saying I had to stand to work, couldn't sit and paint.

How do you work and what's on your bead table today?



AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!

This is what the start AND end of a productive, promising day looks like.

Back in December, when I thought I would be doing a chainmaille project for a gift, I looked into and decided to buy one of these all-the-bells-and-whistles jump ring makers. After all, I do use a lot of jump rings anyway and this would be oh-so-nice!

Then, I opened the box, saw all the pieces and the instructions and promptly closed the box....until today.

I have to be in the right frame of mind to tackle big new things.

 Yes, this is big new for me.

But I was ready. Calmly get the box from under the workbench, unwrap each piece, hey this doesn't look as bad as I thought. Attach the winder, get all the mandrels in their respective slots, 2 blades, cut lube, check.

Read the instructions, not bad, I can do this.  Grab the wire, attach the size mandrel I need and wind. Cool. Nice coil. Place the coil in the holder, lube it up, close it down all level, get the blade all set, centered with the line, ready to go. On goes the flex-shaft, zip, all done.  How exciting, at this rate I can make like  a bajillion jump rings. Open the holder, what the???

I had about a dozen usable jump rings and the rest of the coil wasn't cut all the way through.

Ok, first try, must have done something wrong ( ya think?) make another coil, lube a little more, tighten in holder a little more, let er rip. NO usable jump rings this time, just a tangled coil.

Ok let's see if there's a you tube for this. Yup, right here.

Alright, I did all of that. Hey I got 2 blades, maybe I should use the 1 1/2 instead of the 1 1/4. Maybe it's not cutting all the way through because it isn't reaching, after all these are somewhat small.

Ready , set, go!

It's amazing how quickly one can ruin a perfectly good flex shaft.  BLINK.  Yup, just that quick.

The 1 1/2 blade didn't want to slide along the nice little groove thingy there and jammed and the torque went back up the flexshaft. As soon as I realized what was happening, which was a millionth of a second TOO LATE, I stopped.

Now the handpiece won't turn, the motor runs but that's it.

The picture above shows how I left it as I walked away in disgust.

So if any of you out there in blogland have tackled this beast, please let me know what the secret is.

****UPDATE****

Not one to quit, I decided to just use the coiler, which by the way is very easy to make perfect coils, and cut them by hand.   one.by.one.    BUT I did get 94 perfect jump rings cutting them by hand and it really didn't take long, just a few minutes . Lesson learned, easy isn't always better!

A Hug For You

From the minute I looked at this shot, all I can see is the closed eyelids and long green nose of the flower on the left hugging the bud on the right. See it?  Like something out of the movie Avatar.

Fanning the flames

I have to say that having my new camera and getting back into photography, I have a newfound appreciation for everything that is growing in my garden

The colors, lines, shapes and patterns

Light and Shadow

Simply amazing

Enjoy this day

Come and see all the other wonders at I heart macro



Mothers Day Flowers ~ I Heart Macro

I don't think it's any small coincidence that the most beautiful of flowers bloom around Mother's Day.

As I walked around the yard taking pictures for I heart macro, focusing on the smallest of details, I was reminded of just how much beauty there is in every thing in nature.

How the simplest of things can make us pause and reflect on what is most important to us.

How in the busiest hours of our day we might walk right past and miss so much beauty and elegance.

Miss the peace and stillness.

Miss the miracles. 

Miss a whole world

It slowed me down

Helped me to really see

And appreciate

And drink in all the beauty

And warmth

All of God's gifts

Each one individual

And spectacular

Happy Mother's Day

With much Love and Appreciation

Home Again Home Again

Jiggedy Jig

For those of you who have been following or know me, you'll remember that my sweetheart always has a bouquet and a glass of wine waiting for me when I arrive home from being away.

This is what greeted me last night as i arrived in from Art and Soul.

  drank the wine, sorry nothing left to photograph ;)

There is so much to show and tell but for today, I will leave you with this as I try to unpack, do laundry, catch up on mail, upload pix and in general crash as soon as I can! I am moving rather slowly today as we had too much fun to get much sleep!

See you soon