Beaded Forest

What Harry's doing today...

...and what I get to do is stay home from work!  A foot of snow is expected today, and our driveway hasn't been plowed, so I'm not going anywhere.  Whoo-hoo!!!!

Makin' some jewelry

I've spent the weekend doing all sorts of non-craft stuff...spending time with friends, doing housework, taxes (oh boy!), etc.  I put a few household items up on eBay, since they've been sitting around way too long.  As soon as I finished posting them, David tells me there's a big eBay boycott week starting today!  I had no idea. Well, too late to do anything about it now.
Finally I got around to doing some beading this afternoon.  One of my co-workers wants to buy some gift jewelry from me, so I made a couple of pairs of earrings for him to check out.  And the necklace is for me!  I love this ceramic focal bead from ArtBeads, and had to put it to use.  I combined it with faceted glass, jade, pearls, and hessonite garnet.   It'll go with a lot of my outfits. 
I've been experiencing something of a creative slump, but hopefully getting my hands wet with the beading will get me back on track. 

My dish is done!

I'm so pleased!  Here's my first-ever pottery project, glazed and fired.  It's not fancy, and it definitely has flaws, but I love the way the glaze turned out and I'm very satisfied with my first attempt.  I might have to go back and do more! 

Here's Harry, looking pensive after watching the Westminster Dog Show.  You see, Wirehaired Vizslas are still not recognized by the American Kennel Club, and he's disappointed.  Poor Harry.

Experiments...

This is the general state of my work area.  Chaos.  I've been experimenting with various things, and haven't come up with too many finished projects to show off.  Some of my experiments are paying off, though, so I'll hopefully have some fun stuff posted soon!

In the meantime, I just found out yesterday that Rockland Center for the Arts wants teachers to display/sell some items in their new display cabinets, so I came up with a couple of new things to put in there:

A couple pairs of earrings, and...

...a Spring scarf.  Guess I'm into the blues, pinks, and purples right now!

Pottery Party!

I was thinking of titling this post "Pot Party", but people might get the wrong idea!  The most serious substance there was my tin of homemade oatmeal-raisin cookies, although things got a bit crazy when the power went out for a while!  I know nothing about pottery, but my neighbor Paula has her own pottery shop here at the Co-op, and invited members to come over and throw a pot or two.  Given the freezing rain and other wintry nastiness falling from the sky, only a few of us showed up (and I nearly fell over more than once on my way), but we had a great time...and I learned a lot!  Here's Paula at her wheel:

And here's my first-ever plate!  The feel of the clay and the wheel are so wonderful, it was really a pleasure.

So later it'll get fired, and then I can play around with glazes.  I hope I get invited back soon!