Saturday shows begin!

This Saturday 4/2 Mom and I will have a display of jewelry (and some electronics and stuff we'd like to get rid of) at The White Elephant, 107 S River St in Hot Springs, SD!  Come by to see my pieces in person! :)  Remember, my favorite projects are custom ones, so if you want to pick up your own custom piece this weekend let me know what you need now and I'll get it done for you.  Thanks!

Spring Fever: More garden planning!

Mom and I and a few of her friends went up to Hill City today for a seminar on container gardening sponsored by the Hill City Garden Club.  It was only an hour long, but it was nice to get out of the house and change pace a little bit.  Not that I needed to get out of my house, I've barely been in it for weeks, but Mom's been cooped up with her cold/flu for far too long so we made a field trip day of it.  We all ate at the Alpine Inn (their tomato basil soup is fabulous!), went over to the seminar, then stopped at The Farmer's Daughter to browse antiques.  Mom got a nice ceramic planter and I got an adorable 3-bottle wine rack.  On our way back we stopped in Custer at the sister's house of Mom's friends for some goat's milk and fresh eggs.  We'll be getting some yogurt and goat cheese from her when she has some made, haven't tried it before but I figure why not?  All kinds of healthy benefits there.  Now I'm at home sipping some amazing tea I ordered from Tea For All Reasons on Etsy.  I considered it a little splurge for myself and I've gotten more than enough enjoyment from the 3 cups I've had to justify the cost...wow.  Just...yum.  Yes.

So, on to the garden seminar.  Mom started container gardening last summer because in the spring she had broken one ankle and the other leg.  Yes, she had two broken legs.  At the same time.  Blame the deep mud puddles that formed in the driveway after a very wet winter and spring (and the fact that we had hired at least two people/crews to fix them who never showed up to do the work).  At any rate, she couldn't till or work the soil in the regular garden or do lots of bending/squatting and I was so busy working at the store that I wasn't home enough to do it all either.  She found out about Smart Pots from a friend of hers and ordered a few for herself and it ended up being the easiest and best gardening she'd done for years.  This year I'll be doing some of the same since I'm sure my dirt work won't be done in time to get a full garden in.  Today's seminar was more about how to pair flowers in a container for the greatest effect, so here's a list of the general concepts to keep in mind:

• Get a color wheel and use it.  (I need to get one for jewelry anyway, so it's definitely on my list.) Consider the color of the pot as well as the foliage and flowers of the plants to complement it.
• Once you have ideas for good color combinations, look for plants of differing heights, leaf textures, and spreading tendencies for the greatest visual impact.  Mix a spreading shiny vine with a velvety mounding flower and a spiky grass, for example.  The max height of the plants should be about 1 1/2-2 times the height of the pot itself.
• Consider water/light needs and group plants accordingly.  Read the labels for this info as well as the full size height of the grown plants.
• Be sure to fertilize regularly.  Potting soil often says that it includes fertilizer but it's often not enough for the plants to thrive in a self-contained environment.
• Don't be afraid to mix vegetables with flowers.  They use and contribute different nutrients to and from the soil, not to mention it's unique, fun, functional, and many vegetables have beautiful foliage.  We'll be trying that with some side-planting baskets Mom got this year, she has a book on combining vegetables and flowers and the pots in there are just gorgeous!
• Group plants into odd-numbered groupings.  The eye somehow prefers odd-numbered groupings.  Same goes for pots.  And jewelry.  And art groupings on walls.  And just about anything visual, for some reason.  Not sure why, but it's true!

I've decided to not really fight the native prairie when I start with my flower gardens.  I picked up a booklet on what plants are native to the area and how to create a garden with them in our semi-arid climate, since I know I'd be battling with the native plants anyway.  Might as well make them work for me!  I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would buy yucca when we have *so much* on the property out here!  I may as well make a native rock garden out back by the deck for minimum maintenance/weeding.  The front where I'll have my terrace can be a little fussier, but it gets very hot on that side in the afternoons so I need to be careful to pick full-sun plants that will stand up to the wind.  I want daylilies for sure because they do very well at Mom's house, and I'll probably grow a bunch of ornamental grasses, maybe some succulents, but definitely stuff that won't curl up and die in full-sun.  The stuff on the deck and the back hill needs to be part-shade probably, but I'll need to watch and pay attention to what the sun does exactly.  I know it beats down on the west wall quite a bit in the late afternoon and that's the terrace side.

Last summer we planted two ash trees down the hill from where the terrace will be, and when those grow they'll cast shade on the office and living room windows to help keep the house cooler.  It was late in the season when we put those in, so I hope they survived the winter.  Time will tell.  Below the tree line I put down some grass seed so hopefully some of that took, but that's mostly native prairie down there too so I don't want to fight with that too much either.  It's too much of a slope to have a nice lounging lawn and no natural boundaries between that ground and the field, so my nice gardens will be on my terrace and on the hill behind my deck, plus whatever containers I end up doing on the deck itself.

So now that I've rambled on and on, how does that sound?  Any pointers on semi-arid plants or perennials that would withstand hot sun and wind?

Spring Fever: Literally.

Not quite a fever yet but my head is threatening to explode from allergies-verging-on-a-cold.  My existence is a rather miserable one at the moment, regardless of the medications I've used today.  My parents have both had a nasty flu, Mom for almost 2 weeks now so I've had to pick up a little of her slack too and pray I don't get actually sick from it.

So that said, hello!  The last few weeks have been, at the very least, hectic.  A roller coaster of mundane and emotional ups and downs, new opportunities, and an utter lack of housework.  I've had a couple new side jobs come up that I can't turn down because I simply need more money to live on than I make.  I'm getting a few extra hours at a different agency up in Rapid City on Mondays helping with their marketing calls, so that takes a larger chunk out of my Mondays than Symphony normally would but it's not hard to deal with.  I interviewed last Tuesday for a new merchandising job that would be part-time some weekends, and since I haven't heard back from that I suspect it won't come through.  Judging by the amount of "free time" I've had lately, I would have trouble keeping it up anyway.  This weekend I've been helping my chiropractor's family clean their newly purchased house before they move in. I'll be going back this afternoon to shampoo the carpets, then next week they want to paint the entire house, basically.  I won't be around for that because of my regular job, but I think it will take longer than they think it will, based on my own recent experience with house-painting.  At any rate, I've barely been home enough to sleep lately and the sudden onslaught of allergies with the coming of spring is about to knock me on my butt for a while just to make me relax a bit.

I have some interesting jewelry retail opportunities coming up.  The White Elephant flea market in town will be opening its doors to community vendor tables starting the first weekend in May, so Mom and I will take some household stuff down there we need to sell and I'm thinking I should set up a jewelry display as well.  Certainly can't hurt.  Also, my first merchandising job at the VA Canteen (the job itself is almost more of a pain than it's worth) may prove to be a good jewelry outlet.  The canteen chief there is always looking for vendors, she says, so she'd like it if I set up a display there sometime before Mother's Day.  Both of these are exciting, since I wouldn't have to pay for a table or anything, but that means I need to scour my calendar for a good VA day plus make sure I have a decent amount of inventory for both of them.  Enter my frustration at not having been at home for long enough to even get all my laundry done in one day.  Tonight after shampooing carpets I'll try to relax, maybe make a necklace, and take a look at my calendar so I can get this all figured out.  I have a concert on April 9th and need to make a visit to Cody, WY after that to see two of my best friends once before their baby comes and maybe get a glimpse of Yellowstone while the parks are free, April 16th-24th.  The more I list the things I have to do the more intimidated I feel...yeek!

Anyway, I need to get some lunch before cleaning.  Must calm down and get my head on straight or I'll never get everything taken care of.

Fresh from the desk: Soapstone heart necklace

Okay, so this isn't a brand new design, you caught me.  But, it is part of my Spring/Summer 2011 line and it's available on Etsy for $15 so I thought it should get a little plug.  I made it just before the show we went to before Valentine's Day and it got a lot of attention at the booth, but no takers for whatever reason.  It's a soapstone heart on an 18" beaded chain.  It's metal-free like many of my necklace designs so the clasp is a ball-loop closure with a leopard jasper bead in the same color scheme.

I've had the purple and teal seed beads for a while and have wanted desperately to use them, and I am working on a little square-stitch bracelet, but that will take far too long to finish to make it worth selling for what I'd have to charge for it.  I happened across this lovely heart and had to use it somewhere, and luckily when I got it home I realized that those purple beads were exactly the right color.  I used pale pink (almost white) bugle beads and bone-white seed beads as the centerpieces for the daisy-chain stitch.  I brought in the teal beads because it was a little too monochromatic with just the purple/pink/white.

The transition from purple to teal was an experiment really, to see how it looked if I changed every other bead for a couple of "daisies" before changing completely to the other color.  It's a unique look, though I keep going back and forth about whether I really like it or not.  It looks better when worn than laid out, I think.

I'm generally not a fan of hearts in designs.  I can't really explain why, except that there are so many used in so many designs everywhere and my natural instinct is to avoid things that are ordinary, overdone, or cliche.  I don't like words in wall art either, which is getting increasingly prevalent.

Not sure what that had to do with anything, but there it is.  I just hope that this doesn't fall into the "generic heart necklace" category and that someone will take it home and love it the way it deserves.

Spring Fever: The Great Thaw.

So.  It's been a long week, and I'm worn out and not feeling the greatest, on the verge of a sore throat that I must've picked up from Mom's flu that she picked up at the concert last weekend.  I did manage to get some Pilates in this morning and a short (but not easy) hike this afternoon so at least I didn't stay in bed all day like I wanted to.

Our snow was deep.  It still is deep in spots, on my little hike there were spots deep in the trees where it was still up to my knees even after 3 good days of melting.  There's a little dip in the neighbor's field that will run a little river when we get melting like this, which has only happened a few times in my life.  Luckily it's not flowing across my driveway because we were smart enough to put a culvert there, but there's a puddle higher up that is draining across so my driveway is a disaster.  Today I decided to follow the river to our back acres to see the waterfall.  I knew there was a little ravine back there but hadn't seen the waterfall before.  It was a short walk but hard to do in knee-deep snow lol.

Knee-deep snow still!

Ravine

Waterfall, but with too much glare

Waterfall (see it? on the left...ittybitty little stream...)

Top side of the waterfall

River in my parents' drainage field...it almost looks like a moat here lol

Neighbor's land, start of the river from the roadside ditch

So, with that said, I'm going to take it easy tonight and try to kick this bug before it kicks me. Hugs!

Fresh from the desk: Wooden flower necklace

This design is a bit of an experiment. But, really, aren't they all? I came across the large wooden flower in a clearance bin and just had to have it. It came with two matching leaves, which I'll probably make into a pair of matching earrings.

The main issue I had with this was the fact that the flower has no drilled hole like most pendants do, and I wasn't about to try and drill one myself. It's light and fairly thin and I probably could have, but I wanted the challenge of trying to make it work without drilling. I started with a daisy-chain stitch with very pale pink bugle beads with a lovely pearly finish. They're so pale I've had trouble using them before without them ending up looking white. I framed them with opaque bone-white seed beads which helps differentiate the colors a little bit, but subtly. The flower is enough of a statement that it didn't need wilder colors than that. I had some wooden beads on hand I used for the metal-free loop-ball clasp and above the flower on each side. The tassels have copper-colored Swarovski crystal pearls to add one more texture while staying within the color scheme. Noticing a trend with my texture obsession? lol.

The first idea I had for this wasn't quite like it ended up. The package had 2 flowers in it so I may try that later with blues instead and see how it turns out. The flower ended up being more of a stabilizing structural element than it looked at first glance in the package, but really, I'm okay with that. It gave me a chance to work with a different approach to a Y-shape necklace and to make another subtle statement piece. Is that a contradiction in terms? A subtle statement? Maybe not. I see a lot of people wearing large brightly-colored necklace and wonder what they're thinking...some of those things are sooooo ugly. There's nothing wrong with making a statement with some class, right? Right.

Spring Fever: Garden planning begins

Today, I slept in. It was glorious and I'm sure I'll be wishing I could for the next few days with all the driving I'll be doing, but that's okay. I need to keep playing in the Symphony just to keep music a part of my life, otherwise it's too easy to just let it slide.

It's a beautiful day, considering it's winter in South Dakota. It's a nice 40 degrees and sunny, so we should melt off a bunch of the snow we got last week. We got lots. It was ridiculous. This is my new deck, which was dry the previous day, and there's a 6-inch flowerpot on one of the steps (with a winterizing clove of garlic in it). Kudos if you can find it. :P More snow fell after this, for a total of 10-11 inches or so at my house.

To say we have some spring fever around here would be an understatement. The cats are nutty, Mom has a bad case of SAD (as do the rest of us, I'm sure), and every time more snow falls I get a little more stabby. I made peace with the first snowfall last week because I had just put down some grass seed on my bare hill and was glad to see it covered up so it would get a good root system started and so the birds wouldn't eat it all, but now I'm over it. The snow is still deep and my car is short.

Our first attempt at making spring happen was to start planning the gardens today. I live in my own place but I'm on the family property in the country, so Mom and I can pool our resources for gardening and such. We started by taking stock of what seeds we had and making a list of what we wanted to do and what containers we'd need. I don't have the dirt work done at my house well enough for garden beds yet and Mom can't handle the tilling anymore, so we're gardening in containers this year. She did it last year and loved it and I may as well do that while I have a nice deck and dirt work to be done. I'm only feeding me, so I don't need a huge vegetable garden.

My plan: salad greens, herbs, garlic, mint (to dehydrate for tea), cherry/grape tomatoes, strawberries, beans, and probably peas. I have a general idea for some flowers too but I need to get some measurements and planning done for the terrace and mudroom first. My little trailer house is much nicer on the inside than it used to be, but the outside still needs a lot of help so that's probably the main focus for the summer.

We got some stuff planted and into the greenhouse, so now we wait. And plan some more.