Yuk! Hospital Stay

I've been out of the loop for a few days. Unfortunately, I was in the hospital. Nothing serious, I hope. I had 3 siezures over a period of two days so they admitted me. I think they took half of the blood out of my body doing blood tests. One day they took so much blood in such a short period of time that I actually got nauseous from it.

They did tons of tests on my heart and my brain, and everything came back normal, so nobody knows why I had the siezures. I had just started taking Medrol (a steroid) for some pain I was having in my shoulder, so I don't know if it was related to that or not. I've taken Medrol before with no ill effects, but now I'm afraid to ever take it again.

Anyway, it hasn't happened again, so I'm hoping it was just a flukey thing and that was the end of it.

I just got home yesterday and I've been resting, but I'm feeling like beading again now, so I think I'll work on my wine bottle today. It's about time I got that thing finished up! I am also eager to try some more designs with beads and chain. I'm having a hard time trying to get the finished work to look like the ideas in my head though.

Hope all of you are in good health!

Cat

Woohoo!

I told you I would have some news to share this week.  Here it is.  Look what I received today!

Yay!  Woohoo!  Yippee!

Cat

Earwires

I’m really having fun playing around with my wire.  I’m pretty slow at it though, I have to work on that.  I made a pair of earwires with little crystals on them.  But, oops, I made the little loops backwards!

Does it really matter which direction the loops face?  Does the dangle part hang differently if the loop is faced around backwards?  I guess I’ll find out.  I’ll make something and hang it on there.

I can’t wait to get good at this.  I really want to work with silver, but I don’t want to make any mistakes, it’s too expensive.  I’ll just keep practicing with copper for awhile.

Cat

Another Addiction

I’ve had some (well, a lot of) wire stashed in my beading supplies since years ago, when I thought I would do something with it and then never did.  I’ve made a few simple loops and wrapped loops here and there when I needed to, but never took it much further.

I finally got out all my wire today and went looking for tutorials. I found plenty of them at Jewelry Lessons.   After I finished drooling over all the pretty things, I picked a tutorial marked ‘beginner’ by Pat Capo, called Single Spiral Ring.  Her directions were fantastic, and I managed to make this:

One thing I definitely learned – It’s important to file the cut ends of your wire!  I tried to put the ring on before I filed it and I cut my finger.  Ouch!  But now that I’ve filed it properly, it fits well and it’s very comfortable.

And I think I have a new addiction.  I downloaded a bunch of tutorials in my thirst for wire knowledge.  I think I grabbed every free one they had, and once I pick up some basic skills I can go on to the more advanced paid tutorials.  Jewelry Lessons is a great site!  Many experienced teachers with lots of knowledge to share.

On another note, I think I might have some exciting (to me, at least) news to report at the beginning of this coming week!  Stay tuned.

Cat

My Crazy Heart

I had to take a break from working on the wine bottle for a while. I have taken it apart so many times it isn't funny. I thought decreasing in less spots would make it look rounder, but it made it look like a triangle, lol. So I will undo the top of it again, and hopefully this will be the last time I reconstruct it.

Meantime, I made a quick project today. I wish I could link to where I got the instuctions, but I can't find the blog now. Cute little heart, only took me about an hour. I think I'll make a few more of them, try some different variations.

But as I was adding the jump ring, I realized that not all the jump rings in this package of closed rings that I have are soldered properly. Darn! Now I'm going to have to inspect every jump ring in the package before I buy them in the future? I'm a perfectionist, I can't help it.

Cat

A New Look?

I've had this green blog for years, and I'm starting to get a little tired of it. I think I'm going to play around with some of the templates here on Blogger, and maybe change my blog to a brighter color.

Knowing me, I'll push a wrong button somewhere, though, and wipe out my blog. Well, we will see what happens.

Cat