Red Hat Beads

I had a request - or a suggestion - that I should have some Red Hat items for an upcoming event. For the past few days, I've been spending a lot of time at the torch working on that little project.

This was one of the large focal beads I came up with. I liked it a lot and thought it looked sort of "folk arty". It was a way of working my way into the red/purple combo that just doesn't come naturally to me. Adding the ivory and creamy greens made it easy to work with.

As I worked my way into the solid red/purple combo, I eventually wound up with this:
I like the free form, organic nature of it and then I started with the dots...
So, all in all, I like these and think they'll be fun to finish into some nice pieces.

When I get some good pictures, I will post some of the other things I did as I worked through the colors and then wound up with some new techniques that turned out well. Unfortunately the pictures I have taken so far have not!

Barn Bloggin'

There's something I've been wanting to do for a long time.

In Lancaster County and our surrounding farm lands, we have some of the most interesting barns. I suppose they are intersting in other areas, but in our travels around here, I often say, "I'm going to start blogging some of these interesting barns." Well, I finally got started on it.
This is a beautiful stone barn I've passed a number of times. It is on Rt. 422, on my way to Palmyra. The feature I love about this barn is the semi-circular window at the peak of the roof, but you can also see the slits in the walls for air flow.

More barns will follow... there are so many and they all have interesting features I'd love to document and share.