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My hair right now is looking very similar to those feathers! Time to move away from the computer...
Sunday, May 16th, 2010 - THANK YOU to everyone who came to the show and bought my beads. Considering how slow it was, and what seemed to be the lowest attendence I've ever seen there...I did better than I thought I would! It means a lot to me that people are still appreciating and buying my beads in these difficult economic times.
May 8th,2010 - I took a trip recntly down the coast to my old favorite Moss Beach, Fitzgerald Marine Reserve. What a beautiful place!
April 24th, 2010 - Less than a month to go until the Oakland Bead Bazaar! Hope to see all my much appreciated customers there for great bead specials. Going through the bead trays I found these beauties...
These were my published beads in the 1000 Glass Beads book. These beads won't be for sale :), but many other similar ones.
Lots of hiking/walking lately and too many photos to post. But hopefully once the show is finished I'll get back to regular updates.
February 11th, 2010 - Well I just heard that this weekend could be sunny and warm! With so many cold and rainy days, I'll believe it when I see it. A few days ago we had a great day down the coast to Half Moon Bay and hiked out on the beach at Pillar Pt. Actually three sections of beach, including one that we had only seens from the bluffs above on a previous hike.
Searching in the tide pools I saw some strange little fish that we think might be sculpins, and lots of sea stars.
We had a nice lunch where both of us enjoyed fresh crab, and then walked out on the pier thinking we would take some home.
But in the end decided to let the live ones go to someone else. A nearby walk a couple of days ago was crowded with birds including this cormorant and these pretty avocets.
February 4th, 2010 - So, still raining. Raining right now and more days ahead. However, we did make it out last weekend on two days that amounted to 8 miles of walking. Revisited our nearby baytrail again and saw the most shorebirds in one place ever. Actually, it is a park next to the worst freeway in the bay area and called "Shorebird Park"! In one area we saw long billed curlews, dowitchers, godwits by the hundreds...
A lot of washed in garbage. I heard recently that there are estimates it will take another seventy years to clean up the bay from past pollution, including mercury. Sadly there was so much plastic! But even still, there were some pretty sites.
My favorites little hummies, and lots of these interesting looking surf scoters.
There is beauty everywhere if you take the time to look.
I did get into that cold studio and made some brilliant turquoise beads. So while my eyes can appreciate the silver gray of the last few months here in CA, my dream/bead life is remembering the warmth and ocean of my old home in Kailua HI...
January 29th, 2010 - When the rain stopped for a couple of hours last weekend we took the opportunity to get out and hike at a nearby park. It was cold and very muddy but also beautiful with the creek running and lots of green. The redwood trees are second and third generation. During the gold rush years this area was cleared for 5 square miles in order to get the lumber for all the new dwellings in San Francisco.
good deal of fallen trees and branches along the way showed how strong the winds were during the storms. You can see where this one broke off high up and the results below.
We heard hawks calling during the hike, and one came by and landed right at the end.
I did my inventory check list for all the beads I'll need to make for the next show (thankfully months away) and I made some lovely ivory beads yesterday. It was cold and damp in there...and with more rain expected today, tommorrow and Monday, the real test will be if I go back in any time soon!
January 14th, 2010 - Very pretty walk along a section of the Bay Trail last weekend. It will be nice to go back when the weather is a little warmer.
January 5th, 2010 - Ringing in the New Year! This bell pic was taken at the Stenzel-Muir house in Martinez on a recent visit. It was a gray and rainy day that made a short walk around the house and grounds about all we could take. Of course everyone has heard of John Muir, but I came away from the day wanting to know more about his wife Louisa (Louie Stenzel) Muir. She seemed to be an amazing woman for anytime but especially the mid to late 1800s. Now there is a biography I'd like to read! I searched and read a number of Muirs letters to his wife and family but it was difficult to find much that Louie wrote...Some facts on her here. Maybe the version of the happy helpmate in the background is true, yet I read some interesting items that suggest things may have been more complex. For instance when Louie agreed to marry John, she came home and asked her father for a Steinway which he bought her (and unless entertaining would not play if John was home) ~ that she ran the ranch while he was away and handled the finances...including paying his hotel bills ~ The Stenzel-Muir house in which both she and John lived was her inheritance, and upon her death she left the house to her daughter Helen, not her husband John...hmmmmm.
 Muir spent the last twenty four years of his life living in the Martinez house when he was not traveling ~ or writing in SF when the noise of the family got to him.
What about beads??? It's too cold to work in an unheated studio (even in CA), so I'm thinking about what to make when it warms up. I'm hoping it's soon!
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