Poor little doggie!

Our poor little doggie, Zorro, has been diagnosed with Glaucoma. He has had cataracts for some time now, with very limited vision. We are now faced with the awful decision of what to do next. After rushing him down to a specialist eye vet yesterday, he is now on medication which will give us some breathing space to decide whether to have his eyes removed and just sewn up, or to have artificial eyes put in instead (the more expensive option). I am feeling very sad. He does seem to get on OK even though we have know that his vision was very limited. The vet has now confirmed that he is pretty much totally blind though. And the glaucoma will recur. What to do, what to do?

Treasury

It's been quite a while since anything from my etsy shop has appeared in a Treasury, so I was thrilled to find that Mel from mnhince had included me in her lovely PhD Thesis Blues treasury today. Thanks Mel, it was a nice surprise.

Made-It

Have just discovered a website for AUSTRALIAN crafters and have listed a couple of items to see how it goes. It does not accept items from makers outside of Australia and this seems simpler than listing on etsy where there is an international market.
Will see how it goes over the next few weeks.

I have so much stock on hand that I think I could list every day for a month and still have some to spare.

Viking Weave

Finally finished the Viking Weave earrings which I learned from Kay (Kay's Artycles) at the Bead Retreat. I really enjoyed Kay's class and the earrings were fun to make.

BSV Bead Retreat 2010

Last weekend I spent three full days at the Bead Society of Victoria's annual Bead Retreat at Mt Eliza. This is the first time I have been able to stay for the whole weekend and what an action packed time was had by all. The Retreat is held at the Toorak College campus and some 60 odd women spent some, or all of the weekend in beading related pursuits. Whether it was teaching a class, or taking a class, buying beads or just spending time in beady chat with like minded people, the whole event was just fantastic.


On the Friday morning I taught a class how to make my frog design and by the end of the weekend there were quite a few frogs hopping by.

In the afternoon, I tackled a class in Viking Knit which was taught by Kay Lancashire of Kay's Articles. Her kit contained all the tools needed to complete the earrings and whilst I haven't quite finished them, they turned out better than I expected.

My next class was "Circle of Wonder" with Melita Gillett and whilst I almost completed the pendant in class, it was much more difficult to make it look good than I had hoped. Instead of being symmetrical it is a little lop sided. Better keep practising.

Polymer Clay beads with Dani Rapinett from Whimsical Bead was probably more up my alley. I hadn't made any sort of cane before and the snail cane resulted in some terrific beads.

Another froggy!

A while back I made a brooch in the shape of a frog on a lilypad. Recently, I needed a scarf ring and decided the frog would look good in that form. Here he is, and the ring also fits on my finger so he is getting some wear that way too.

As some of you will know, I attended a class with Laura McCabe recently. I really liked the UBB class and made a necklace for my Mum's birthday yesterday using just the central beaded bead from that class. Since I could not get some of the components that Laura uses, I made it a bit bigger and the bicones on the corners are not flush with the work, but everyone who has seen it says it looks good, so I am pretty happy with the result. I think Mum liked it too. The bead is strung on a herringbone twist rope in size 15 beads.