Summer Fun: More days at home please?

The last couple of months have been kinda crazy.  My days fill up with various things that I don't want to give as much attention as they demand, but they all have their reasons so I just sort of grit my teeth and deal with it.  Taking care of Mom's house really took a lot out of me and I'm still recovering from that, but next week I'll have to do it again, this time without Dad to help with the kitties.  They're going to a kubelwagen convention in Ohio and although Mom isn't thrilled to be going, she's not insisting on staying either.  They'll be gone for a week or so while I'm trying to prepare an audition and get the house (and myself) ready for my boyfriend to be here from Alabama for a week or so.  I have 3 days at home this weekend so I'm pushing myself pretty hard to get as much done as I can before my parents leave so I don't go crazy before my man gets here.  Last week I was home all day Sunday only, and the week or two before that I hadn't had any full days at home so my poor house was rather neglected.  On top of that, it makes me crazy when I can't have a day or two at home, I need the time to myself to fill with projects as I see fit.  Having 3 days this weekend is a wonderful thing and I wish it would happen more often like it was in the spring.

Quick rundown of what I did on Saturday:  Got up later than usual but still kinda early for yoga with my friends.  It's been at least 2 months since we were all 3 able to be together, the way our schedules have been.  The yoga was good, the girl talk was great, and I'm sure we all needed it.  We're hoping to meet on Monday too.  When I got home and before it got too hot out, I cleaned out my car, wiped down the dash, washed the inside of the windshield and windows, sprayed down the floormats, and vacuumed.  It needed to be done... badly... and that's one thing I wanted to cross off the list before he gets here. 

Next I worked on my poor little garden that has been as neglected as my house.  I've been able to water it enough and we do get occasional rainstorms that help with that, but something has been eating some of my plants and I hadn't had a chance to pull out the dead stuff and find more chicken wire to put up.  The first thing to go was my beans.  I'm still rather unhappy about that... the plants were doing so well and they had lots of flowers, in a few more days I would've had a good handful of beans to harvest, and overnight they were eaten down to the dirt.  That made me so mad.  I got some wire and put it up to keep the deer out, but since then something smaller has been getting in and nipping off my garlic.  That makes me suspect it's not a rabbit, since theoretically they don't like garlic, but I don't know that for sure either.  We've seen a couple squirrels out here, which is very unusual, and yesterday Mom had a skunk look in the back door at her, so who knows what's gnawing on my garden!

The lettuce and one tomato plant and all of the petunias have been nibbled down too, but that's probably from the grasshoppers.  Not much I can do about them, except I did have a lovely black and yellow garden spider that I had to move to work in the garden today.  She's not as big as the one down at Mom's house, but I'm glad to have her around.  I hope she finds her way back up into the plants and sets up camp again, she eats all kinds of bugs that we have too many of, like mosquitos and mud wasps and grasshoppers.  I was sad to move her, but I had to.  See that very sad cherry tomato plant behind her?  Yeah... Also, the fabric pot on the left used to have my beans in it.

I planted more beans in that pot, more carrots in another pot, Italian salad greens, and sugar snap peas and transplanted a couple petunias.  I found some more chicken wire to put up, so hopefully that keeps whatever it is out.  My cucumber plant is doing really well so I moved it so it has more room to do its thing.  I got 3 nice sized cucs off of it today and there are plenty of little ones there now.

I pulled a bunch of weeds out of my flowerbed and along the "walkway" to my front door, gathered rocks from my "yard" (if you can call it that lol) to put up against the skirting to keep the weeds down and help keep the weather out from under my house, and got another section of deck railing stained before it got dark.  The rock project will take a while to get all the way around, but there are plenty of rocks to do it with and when I get to actually moving dirt to fill the gaps there will be rocks in that too so it will kinda do itself once I get that far.  These red bricks will be replaced with limestone slabs like my little steps but for now, they'll do.  They're basically useless in the summer but in the winter they shovel easily, melt snow quickly, and the ice forms around them instead of on them.  They were a quick fix when the mud was horrible so they're not ideal by any stretch, but they work.  At any rate, I need to continue the gravel edging partly for aesthetics and partly to help with insulation and make upkeep easier.  It's gonna take forever to pick up all the rocks...there may come a point where I just buy several bags of pea gravel and use that instead.  We'll see.

Sunday's plan:  First thing, stain the rest of the deck railing.  The top part at least, since the slats take a while to do, but the top really needs to get sealed before the weather beats up the wood too much more.  It's already warped and splitting from the extremes, so that needs to stop.  Staining when it's too hot out does strange things when it dries, but doing it in the evenings means it gets dark before I can get very far and the water rinse to get the dust off doesn't dry quickly enough.  It's supposed to get into the high 90s again tomorrow so I'll get as much of that done first thing as I can before the heat kicks in.  After that, laundry needs to happen (which of course will heat up the house...but I can't put it off for too much longer), and if I'm lucky Dad and I might work on the terrace a little.  Maybe that's just wishful thinking... but the Deere has the front shovel on it now, and I'd like to see what it can do so I can maybe get some shrubs and fall bulbs planted before winter hits and I have to deal with the incessant mud for another 6 months.  If that doesn't happen, or if it's too hot to do it for long, I'll probably spend the rest of the day working inside. 

My office needs rearranging or something, the office closet needs painting and shelves put up, and there are a couple piles in the living room/kitchen that need to be gone through and dealt with before I'm comfortable having company.  The office closet is a big project that I can't get done in one day, so I may not attempt it just yet.  It took a day to do the front closet and that one's much smaller, although some of that included putting linoleum down and I don't have to do that in here.  I need to decide what I want to do about my desk too...hrm.  Well, for now it's time to get my horn out and practice, then bedtime.

Fresh from the desk: Biker chic

The hills are rumbling with the sound of Harleys.  It's that time of year again and for the next few weeks all the little towns throughout the Hills will be swarming with bikers on their vacations.  Of course, I hope to get in on the action a little. ;)  However, that means I need to gear a few pieces towards them, without looking like everything else they can find at any gift shop anywhere in the area.  Behind the leather and spikes they're all just normal people, dentists and such, so maybe I shouldn't worry about it too much, but there are specific styles and motifs that biker style tends to gravitate to.  Namely, chunky silver chains and skulls (the more skulls the better lol) mostly in black, silver, gunmetal, red, orange.  A lot of them go for the more tribal look with leather, bone beads, feathers, teeth, claws, etc.  Problem is, all of those things are all over every store in the area, so how to make mine different?

My plan, if you can call it a plan, is to stay with the same style sensibility I am used to working in but use the darker colors and keep everything on the masculine side with just a touch of femininity.  The fire agate hemp necklace I made last week should do well.  Last night I made this one, with a carved bone pendant, leopard jasper, rose quartz, and hematite strung with black seed beads and gunmetal silver bugle beads, with the metal-free closure I had basically abandoned for too long just for the ease of using a toggle clasp.  It's strong, a little tough, a little frilly, hypoallergenic, and I hope it bridges the gap a little bit.  If nothing else, I like it a lot!

 This one was simple enough.  Carved bone pendant in the shape of an acorn, hematite beads, red horn beads, black and white bone beads, and glass  beads with a slightly greenish mottled finish on sterling silver memory wire.  The acorn came in the same package as the other black bone pendant above, so I guess we'll see if anyone is interested in that one at the show.  I have other pendants I can switch out, or just leave the pendant out entirely.  We'll see how it goes.  As the evening goes on, I'm toying with the idea of switching it out for the other that was in that package, which is carved to look sort of like a claw.  Maybe I should do that, it would probably appeal to more people than the acorn does.

One more on memory wire.  I'm not sure what the stones are exactly, but the large center stone is dyed turquoise with goldish veins throughout.  The silver spacers jangle a little on the sterling silver memory wire and the white stone chips have grey veins throughout.  This one is definitely something I'd wear regularly, but it's not overly girly.  It's a simple but slightly chunky light statement piece that should make people take notice without being too loud.  I just wish I knew what the stones were... people do ask about that.

I'll make more tonight to get ready for another Saturday sale tomorrow.  Have a great weekend everyone, and enjoy the Rally if you're headed North!

*UPDATE*  I did end up reworking the acorn necklace with the carved bone claw and replaced the seed beads with all hematite beads.  Much better, yes?

Fresh from the desk: Pink camo purse

Yes, that's what it is!  The button is mother-of-pearl, hand-crocheted in 100% US-grown cotton yarn.  I wasn't expecting the color to turn out like this, since I'm new to crocheting and hadn't worked with anything variegated, so I didn't think the color would be so blocky, but the purse pattern was cute and I wanted to try it and by the time I realized that it looked like pink camo I wanted to just finish the thing.  When I was picking out the yarn, I had been browsing Fall runway fashion and was looking for something slightly more interesting than khaki (which is EVERYWHERE on the runways... seriously...) but was still basically neutral.  Oh well.

So, here we are!  It is a cute pattern, and as much as people love camo out here I'm sure it's perfect for someone.  The next one I make will have a longer strap but otherwise I like the pattern a lot.  And maybe some fringe or beads or something...hmmmmm...