A New Adventure

     

  As many of you know, I have been down ill for a month and a half. One afternoon feeling a tickle in my nose blossomed into a full fledged bronchial attack with all it's complications. After three (really four)antibiotic treatments, allergic reactions to two and many side effects I am slowly coming back to myself. It's amazing the difference you can feel in such a short period of time. I spent weeks in a brain fog where i couldn't even put 2 and 2 together! I am working hard on regaining my health and getting back on track.

The Dreaded Scourge

Last time I talked to you I was happily plugging away, making all kinds of pretties and just generally being happy. Setting up my studio, unpacking boxes I haven't opened in a year and really enjoying seeing my studio come together.
Since then it has been anything but! I have been down now for over two weeks with a terrible nose running, throat burning, lung congesting, head pounding, stomach plummeting flu. UGH!
But...I am recovering, hooray!
The last few days I have been waking up with less and less congestion and not as many head spinning headaches. I may survive after all :)

More bracelets

I have been busy making more bracelets. I ordered a lot more beads and many new charms to add to them and went to work as soon as they arrived.

Bracelet Blast

Awhile back I wove up a lot of bracelets, I tried several different styles and found many that I liked.

I never finished the ends on most of them though. I told myself I would sit down some quiet week and work on them but then the house happened and the trip to the US, etc. Life has a way of getting in the way huh?

         So this last week seeing as i was working on my jewelry I dug them out and started finishing them. I am quite pleased with the results so far and love these little tierracast charms that I bought so much that I ordered some more.
They are a really nice quality charm without all the rough edges you often see on charms. So here are a few examples of the ones I finished:

I can't wait to get my charms I just ordered and do some more. These will definitely be going in my cymberrain shop!

Photo Mishap

Yesterday I finished packaging all the new silk ribbons and embroidery floss in their little plastic sleeves. I need to get these listed right away. They have been sitting here forever waiting patiently. I went to sort the photos and add names to them and lo and behold...no pictures. I looked everywhere but they are gone. All those photos I took right before we left for the US are gone. The only ones left are the few I posted here. So today I spent taking ribbons out of sleeves and reshooting pictures. This batch will have to be put up with the one photo of them on their cards. I just can't see myself unwinding one of every size and color, then ironing them all just to get that second shot.So these are the ones I took. Good enough I think.

I am still making jewelry too....here is a pretty pair of earring I made this week :) I have a few more pieces I will be posting later,

Last but not least...they are putting in the floor of the living room YAYAYA

 Hopefully I will have a completed room y next week some time "crosses fingers"

I have wandered far from home...

and finally returned!

It's been a long month and a half away and we have traveled near and far. Deep into southern France, across the ocean, from the eastern shore of the USA, up into Canada to Montreal and then on down to the heartland and over to the western shore of the US. It was a wonderful trip full of many beautiful sights, including my wonderful newborn grandson! The sight of my own bed when finally returning was a wondrous sight all of it's own!

So I am finally recuperated and now I am onto making lots and lots of jewelry this week. Keep your eyes open and i will be sharing them with you :)

BEFORE:

And AFTER!

Been busy this week trying to get this done. I am very happy with how these look!

Busy Bee

New Ribbon Cards

I've been working on redesigning how I wrap and store the ribbons and floss for my shop. I have been using the little floss spindles and they made the threads so bulky in packages i just hated it but I didn't want to go back to plain old card stock like I was using before. I decided instead to use business cards. I designed a new card and ordered a pile of them and then went in search of a nice paper punch for the end. After receiving one that just wouldn't work because of the size I finally found one that looks good and isn't too large for the card. I think they turned out splendidly and with the added bonus of the buyer having a nice business card there when they finish their ribbon or floss to help them remember who they purchased it from. I hate when I run out of a supply and can't remember what shop I bought it at. What do you think of them?

Improvements

Amazing how much can change in a day!

Fairyland~Bourgogne

Sail Away

Another Goody in the Mail

This arrived this week finally. Of course now I have no time to sit and weave rugs...but it is here for when I do have time. Trying to spend as much time as I can with the gardening when my energy allows it. I am going to try to get that material dyed for the rug though and my plan for a loom is already in my head so it is coming together!

Goodies in the mail

Weekend Drafting

This weekend I got to do something a little different. Something I used to love doing and just realized...I still love it...

We had to submit some blueprints and facade drawings for a small addition we are planning and so I pulled out my pencils and sketched away. I am way too rusty but I enjoyed the challenge!

A Return

I know my posts here have been few and far between for a long time. I have neglected this blog as Facebook was so much easier for me. I loved the communication there and really enjoyed my page for a long time but Facebook has killed the business pages there. Few people even see my posts and I became quite frustrated with it months ago. I hope to put my efforts somewhere where it is not quashed and I feel I can reach people who care about what I want to show them. Right now any post I put up on Facebook has the potential to reach less than 10% of my followers and in most cases lately it has been less than 1%. Why go to the bother if no one even gets to see it. At least here I know if you want to see my things you can and no big brother is restricting your access!

Now That the Boxes Are Finally Unpacked

..not really. That was just wishful thinking. Though yes, the house is beginning to come into some kind of order. The rooms are different and full of lots of furniture from the previous owners. We have been playing a shuffle game that is slowly sending things up into the attic bedroom to be stored in the storage room back behind it eventually. The room that is to be my studio is a fright. Boxes and odd pieces of furniture stacked in piles taking up most of the room....except the small area where the leak was discovered and the wall was torn apart to discover the source. I don't see me getting into that room any time soon.
My hands are full with everything here. Rooms that need to be organized, garden areas that need to be prepared, just the basic everyday tasks are monumental here at times (we still dont have the washer hooked up, no oven or dishwasher) And yet, despite all this. my fingers itch to create again. All my supplies are packed away somewhere in that huge pile in the studio. SO...I have decided to make some rag rugs. My floors are cold. I need rugs and really I WANT rag rugs. I love their look, their cozy feel they put to a room. So I must make a loom. I think it can be relatively easy. I looked at a few in videos on youtube and on websites. I really love the ones that use a nice thin bar along the edge that they wrap the strips of cloth around as they weave so you dont get the hourglass shape when you are finished. How clever! So this is my next task, to convince Frenchie to take me to the hardware store to buy the supplies I need to make a loom and then I will have something to satisfy my creative itch! And if any of you have some good tips to help me along the way i would certainly appreciate it. This will be my first rag rug adventure!

Where the Adventure Starts Getting Real Interesting

I have hinted at big changes for over a year now and I have posted very little about what is going on but I want you to know I am still here, still very happy and have just went through the biggest change of all! We decided to settle down and buy a small chalet up in the mountains of the Vosges!

It is not far from Colmar and the wine road. Very close to Kaysersberg up the mountain side towards the pass. We are within 4 km of a ski station and a few others not much farther. It has a bit of land with it...not much but enough that I can have a garden, maybe some chickens and plenty of space to do dye experiments outside. Something I have wanted to do for a long time but the constraints of apartment living just kept holding me back. Now if I want an indigo vat I can have one! Sun dyeing...no problem. I have a nice big studio with a separate entrance from the house so any smelly experiments are not going to gas us out of the whole house LOL!

I can't begin to tell you how excited I am to be up here in the mountains. It has a different rhythm, a different feel, quiet, calm...tranquil. We also just became the proud owners of this beautiful little girl, Iota

She is a German Shepard and will be my faithful companion and protector when I am here alone. I adore her! She is such a baby still and shows me how much with her clumsy playful antics. She makes me laugh out loud every single day and has already brought such joy to my life. 

Right now we are still in the middle of settling into our little home. We had a long extended move from the apartment, doing it all with our van. The drive was an hour each way and once arriving here at the chalet Frenchie had to bring the 4x4 down from the house to the church parking lot and load it up to bring things back up. It normally took three loads to get the van empty. We did quite a bit during Christmas vacation and then afterwards each weekend we would bring another load up. I am SO glad that is over and I think Frenchie is even more so! 

For now my studio is a scary jumble of boxes and things that had no where else to go right now. It is quite cold up here and the house has no heating system. They had been relying on electric and gas space heaters though I dont think anyone has actually lived here for a long time, it was mainly a vacation chalet.

Anyway I hope to get in there as soon as possible...after the rest of the house gets sorted. Then I can finally satisfy this itch to sew again. I have ideas screaming in my head like you wouldn't believe. In the meantime I will be planning my first real gardening adventure. I hope it isn't a total failure. I did alright with my balcony gardening. Nothing spectacular but I proved I can keep my plants alive. Some of my fall plantings are still plugging away in their planters where they were dumped by the house, even surviving the snow dumped on them. Surely I can keep a few veggies alive in the ground? Who knows? It's another new adventure *grin*