Random Facts for a Rainy Saturday Night

• I always eat my french fries with mayonnaise.
• I have never been able to do cartwheels.
• I like dogs, but I LOVE cats.
• When I was in elementary school, I was obsessed with anything involving Egypt or Michael Jackson.
• I bite my nails.
• As a natural blonde, I REALLY don't like blonde jokes.
• I still feel sad about Mitch Hedberg's death.
• I've never seen "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" or "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (but I did read that book).
• I'm skinny, but somehow, I still have fat ankles.
• Right now, I have a headache.
• My goal for the summer is to learn how to solder (for jewelry).
• In high school, I hated math and science and loved English.
• I don't like insult comedy. And Sarah Silverman is not funny, either.
• If I could have any talent, it would be the ability to sing really well.
• I wish I could play tennis better.
• Someday I want to travel to New York City. Also Europe.

That's probably enough for now. Do you know me?

The Great White Hunter Strikes Again

If you've been following my blog (as much as it's possible to follow something that doesn't move around very much), then you might remember that one of my earliest posts involved my senior-citizen cat, Cooties. About this time last year, he suddenly decided to start hunting and bringing in his catches. What's weird about that was that he is somewhere around 14 years old and had never, EVER done that before.

Well, it must be time for the bunnies to be born, because it's happened again. Last Friday night, around 3 AM or so, I woke up to the horrible, nightmarish sound of a rabbit screaming. I made it out to the living room in time to see my husband trying to catch the bunny. Thinking he had it under control, I went back to bed. The next morning, Brett told me that he actually had NOT been able to find the bunny after the cat spit him out. We looked around for a while, poking under furniture and behind things, but didn't see him. We weren't too worried about it, thinking that he must have gotten out, because certainly 3 cats and a dog would be going crazy if there were a bunny anywhere inside. Right??? :-)

Fast-forward to Monday evening. After supper, I decided that Hope (my 4-yr. old daughter) and I needed to go clean up her disaster of a room. Lo and behold, I pushed her door open, and what did I see sitting in the middle of her bedroom floor? That sweet little bunny! Hope and her brothers and I did a bit of chasing and digging through the closet where he tried to hide once we found him, but we finally caught him and set him free, hopefully far away from Master Hunter Cooties. Here's the one picture we managed to catch - isn't he the cutest thing???

He did seem to be all right - no blood or wounds that I know of, although I'm sure he was really hungry and thirsty. Hopefully, we won't have to see him this close again!

A New Technique

You know, ten years ago, if you had told me that I would one day be excited about buying tools (a saw in particular), I would have thought you were crazy. But at the ripe old age of almost-37, life has taken a lot of interesting twists and turns and my obsession with creating jewelry has made it necessary for me to learn to use different sorts of tools. Along the way, I've gotten pretty adept at using hammers (well, except for last week, but hopefully that was a lesson learned) and drills. And now my latest tool/toy is a jeweler's saw. Here it is:

You can adjust the frame to accomodate different blade lengths, and there are different sizes of blades. The ones I have are size 2/0, which is pretty tiny. They are about the size of a piece of floss:

I have a lot of practicing and experimenting to do! There are different blade sizes to try, as well as testing it out on different gauges of metal. Here's my first attempt:

It's not the worst thing I ever saw, but I can tell that I need a lot of work and fine-tuning. This copper is pretty thick, so next, I'm going to try using a thinner gauge. I'll let you know how it goes!

Today's Chuckle

I teach first grade, and now that the end of the year is so close, we are doing a lot of review, especially in math. I was working with a group on subtraction, and one of the kids really likes to be right all the time and get finished first. So, he was really proud of himself when he had the problem "20-10" and came up with 9 for an answer. I told him it wasn't the right answer and he scowled at me and said, "Well, it SHOULD be!!"

Suffering For My Art

We've all heard the old cliche about someone "suffering for their art". I think I experienced that this weekend when I was working on these earrings, my "I Heart Silver" sterling silver earrings. It's been pretty recently that I started using a disc cutter, and I love it, because instead of paying for silver or copper blanks, I can buy sheet (and get more material for less money). It's so much more convenient, as well as being more economical. I've noticed, though, that I tend to get a little "lip" or a burred edge on most of the discs I'm cutting. Not a huge problem, since I can file it smooth, but I want to learn how to do it perfectly the first time! I had been making LOTS of medium-force taps, so I though maybe I would get a smoother edge if I hit the hammer LESS times, but HARDER. On my 3rd hard swing, I missed the steel die completely and hammered my thumb instead. Oh, did it hurt; it was the kind of pain that makes you feel nauseous for a while. I just sort of sat there and let the pain wash over me in waves. When I felt like I could breathe again, I looked at my poor little digit and discovered it was bleeding quite a bit. I got a Band-aid on it, and it was ok, although I still wonder if I should have gone for stitches. There's a cut on the side of my thumb in the perfect shape of an "L". It's swollen and tender, but I think I will survive. So much for LESS, HARDER hits. :-)

So if anyone out there reads this post and knows how to cut discs from silver or copper, and knows how to NOT get that little edge along the side, please comment. I'd love to hear your advice!!

If You Are Looking For a Great Read...

I haven't been by the library lately because, like most things in my life, some of my books were overdue and now I owe a fine. I can afford to pay it, but I'm a little bit embarassed about it, so I just haven't been going in. (I try to think of it as my own personal donation to the library system, but that's another story...) So anyway, the last time I went by Goodwill, I picked up a couple of books that looked like they might be ok, and BOY! am I glad I did. One of them is called "Those Who Save Us" (I KNOW book titles should be underlined, but I don't have the option here), by Jenna Blum. This is the story of how a young single German mother survived during WW II. The point of view alternates between Anna (the German) and Trudy, her grown daughter, who is trying to piece the her mother's story together. If you like realistic fiction, I highly recommend this book. It is wonderful!!

Reasons to buy an "f" monogrammed necklace:

What else can you think of?