An early spring garden

We (Tina & I) spent a lovely day on Sunday with a friend in Waynesboro, PA on Sunday. Our excuse for going to visit was to attend the Carroll County Spring Flower Show just outside Hagerstown, MD.

The flower show was a bust, but the visit was great! Sharon had a wonderful variety of delicacies prepared for our visit and we seemed to be eating a good part of the day!

It had been raining for a few days, but the weather held for us most of the day. We went out and explored her gardens, finding a number of brave little plants starting to poke through the newly defrosted ground.

This was the scene that greeted us as we approached her door:
Snowdrops! These are so often the very first flowers to pop open in the early spring, sometimes even through the lingering snow. They always make me happy knowing that spring is really on the way.

We turned a corner, and:
A sink was tucked into an out-of-the-way corner... Her house and gardens are all full of wonderful little surprises like this.

As we toured the gardens, Sharon kept noticing many things, especially birdhouses, that were the worse for the rough treatment they had received in this snowy winter and the last few very windy days before we arrived. She spent a lot of time finding things and putting them aright. One of the things was this:
A butterfly house...

So many treasures. I think we need to return a bit later to see everything after it has greened up a bit. Her garden was a much better vision of spring than anything we saw at the show and the trip and visit were a delight!

Torch Time

I got some torch time in yesterday and these were some of the best results:

I've been seeing "baleen" beads and reading people referring to "the cuts" - and "the tool", so I decided to experiment just from what I could gather instead of purchasing a tutorial. It didn't turnout too bad for a first try.

Then I thought, while I'm in the zone, why not do a moon vessel. These are always popular and sell quickly, so here's the latest:

It's better than it looks here - really a graceful shape. I should have waited to get a better picture, but just didn't have the patience today.

Resin addiction!

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm addicted to resin!

Here are the latest:
A little closer up view of the three larger charms. I tried a number of different techniques.
And the smaller ones... The top two are an experiment with trying to use tiny shells we picked up on the beach in Bermuda many years ago. I think they turned out pretty well and plan to make a pair of earrings out of them.
The Queen of Hearts was cut from a tiny deck of cards - a little glitter paste and a red jewel..

Then two "M" charms. Might as well play with my own initial for now!

What did you do in the snow, Mommy?

Resin! I've been wanting to do this for so long... I took a class a couple of years ago and fooled around with what I learned. Then, one day, while sorting through a bag of dried roses, and found a bottle cap. An article in this month's Wire Jewelry magazine gave me the impetus to make this....I pasted a tiny picture of a rose on the bottom and filled in with beads and wires, covering it all with resin. I had always imagined filling it with rose petals, but i think I like this better. I caught a couple of tiny bubbles in the resin, not good thing, but I got rid of most of them. For a first try, this turned out pretty well!

Here is the original bottle cap:
If you look at the bottom left of the cap, you will see that it is from Pakistan, the same place my roses came from! And interesting to note, the ingredients list says nothing at all about either high fructose corn syrup or aspartame... only in America!

Okay, off the soapbox. While I had the resin mixed up, I made a couple more little charms with some of the bezels I just got from Rings 'n Things:These tiny pictures were cut from scrapbooking paper & coated with Elmer's glue. I added just one tiny matching bead to each one and then filled with resin. I think they'd make a great addition to a charm bracelet or a cute little necklace charm.

So, that's what I did in the snow... Now, to the torch!

Leaf Earrings

I had a request for some new "leaf earrings", so during the snow, I made a few pairs:

Bronze:
Turquoise:

Lily of the Valley:

Lilac Ice:

Hematite:

& Dark Teal:

These are fun to put together. I make such a mess as I paw through all my beads, finding combinations that I can't wait to put together!

After the storm

I can't resist. There are just so many gorgeous pictures from the snow!

The one on the left is my favorite. Icicles hanging on the shop. They look almost magical as the sun turns them into prisms! I love icicles even though they can sometimes seem to be daggers ready to fall.

Below, the picture on the right is a scene Tina pointed out to me... our wisteria vine, so gnarled and twisted, covered with snow and icicles hanging above.. The contrasts in this one reminded me of some kind of modern painting. Nature is amazing!

I walked out to see that the winds we thought might undo all Bob's work yesterday had hardly made a difference in our driveway.

The shop is almost hidden behind all the piles of snow. The cars, which were completely dug out only a day or so ago are back to being buried under the new snow.

You can see Tina's house up on the hill to the right. It looks pretty close, right? Well, apparently when one is basically "swimming" through the snow with no gloves, hat or suitable shoes it is miles and miles and very frightening - especially as the snow is still swirling!

The sky has become so blue after days of heavy gray. It looks warm and comforting, but I suspect if we went out on the roads right now, it would still seem a bit threatening.
As I got closer, I saw all the icicles hanging from the eaves...
Now that I'm out here, I have some work to do. So off I go to mix lye for soap to be made later in the week and to light the torch for another day of bead making, but first, I had to share some of the beauty of this most recent storm.

Da Beads

So, after all that absence, now I post twice in one day.

Yesterday, as I waited for the kiln to ramp up, I decided to make a few murini. I have done this before, but I got some pretty good results yesterday.

This brown flower murini seemed to work perfectly on this bead - I think It's my favorite of the day:This one got a little smeared. I wasn't totally prepared to make the bead and that may account for the messiness of it. I kinda went with the flow instead of having everything I needed at the ready!
I was thinking of adding a murini to this one, but I had grabbed an unknown stringer to play around in the background. I think it turned out to be a stringer of a glass called "magic" and it seemed to be coming out so beautifully that I decided not to mess it up!
Finally, I had actually made this bead toward the end of last year with a dusting of enamel and another of the murinis I made before and don't think I ever showed it before.
I sure hope I can get back to the torc regularly now... just as soon as we get caught up with the soap!

Life Goes On

It'a been so long since I've posted, but January slipped past in a blur of hospitals and sorrow. We lost our brother John on February 2, after a 4-year fight with liver disease.

The weather held mostly clear for us as we traveled back and forth from home to hospital and back, finally bringing him home for a few precious days before we could no longer care for him at home and he was taken to Hospice.

The day he died, we walked out of Hospice into a light dusting of snow. My sister and I looked at each other realizing how lucky we were that we had not had to deal with weather during this and all the other times we have had to take him in for standard or emergency treatment. Even when we were traveling back and forth to Philly, the bad weather always seemed to dance around us, but never gave us a problem.

Friday night, it began to snow in earnest and we woke to 20" on the ground with more to come. This is the scene from our garage door:
It was such a relief to know that there was nothing to worry about and that we could just watch it and enjoy the beauty.

After it stopped snowing, my personal hero, my husband Bob plowed us out and opened the way to the shop.I cleared the snow away from the air vent and made my first beads of the new year.

They should be annealed by now and when I clean them, good or bad, they'll be posted here.

I am the oldest and John was the second oldest in our band of 5 kids. I remember the day he was born. It is hard to believe, after all this time that we never got the happy ending we were hoping for, but life goes on and I know that John would want us to live our lives to the fullest.

One last little surprise!

On waking this morning, I looked out the window to see that 2009 wasn't quite finished with us yet. Apparently there was some hushed mention of snow, but I never heard it.

These are the scenes we see this morning from our front porch - the driveway:
The steps down to the front deck:
And the woods and pond. The road is that shallow diagonal line in the middle right of the picture:
No longer feeling the need to participate in any of the rowdy traditions of our youth, I will be happy to sit here in the warm and watch the delicate traceries of snow on the trees and the poor folks who still feel they must try to travel on this night as they struggle up the hill and around the corner...

After the Storm

The winds have been howling around here for a few days. They followed closely on the heels of an early snow and were joined with a nasty rain storm that seemed to freeze on the roads in the evenings.

As we were driving home from the bank/post office run on Monday, we saw this sight up ahead:
The pole had been hit and a guy wire has been stretched across to the right on a diagonal to hold it in place.

As we got closer, we saw this makeshift "bandage":
I'm not sure why this struck us as so funny that we felt the need to document it. At first, the guy wire was not visible and the ridiculousness of the flimsy plastic bandage trying to hold it all together was probably the reason. We thought it might belong in the Fail Blog.

Last day at Frog Hollow - Happy Solstice!

Our final official day at Frog Hollow, we think! Somebody said Dec. 21 was the last day and due to some language difficulties around here, we aren;t sure if we're still open or not!

The trees still look great, even if they are in "disguise."
The shop looks cozy with its blanket of snow....
And the road is mostly open and clear.
So, it looks like we can finish up the preparations for the celebrations to come.

If the guys will just get the decrations out of the attic, I can decorate the tree! A chicken in the oven for today... Some soup tomorrow.

Sorry - just a stream of conciousness today.

Molded Soaps

From time to time, when we have extra soap in the pan, or when there is just some there that we don't want to scrape out, we will pour it into a small mold.

Often these molds are used for what we call melt & pour soap because that soap is easily released from them.

Cold process (the soap we make) seems sometimes to become a PART of them and may never come out.

We wait and wait, and finally they pop out - sometimes in one piece, sometimes in a strange smeared parody of the original intent!

One night, not too long ago, we decided to make some molded soaps on purpose! We decided to make essential oil blends for them and the Green Man, above, was made with a nice blend including fir, vetiver and some other woodsy oils.

First, we used less water than usual so the soaps would firm up more quickly and we made sure to add plenty of clay, which would absorb some of the water.

When they still gave us a hard time, we mentioned it to a soapmaking friend who simply said, "Put them in the freezer." So we did - and when we took them out - lo and behold, we had lovely molded soaps.

Then we decided to play with some micas. They were especially beautiful on this sun soap (to the right.) The essential oils in this one are bright and shiny, including some citrus oils.

We touched them all with mica to bring out their details.

The Celtic cube is probably one of the molds we have had around the longest. It is always a nice pattern and the fragrance used in this one was something like patchouli and grapefruit.

Tina took some plain goat milk soap home last night to try rebatching for molding. Her little experiment turned out beautifully and I wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't do a blog entry about it soon.

She did post a picture today on her facebook page.

As the days grow short...

November is here and it means many things... In Lancaster County, one of the things it means is the Amish wedding season.

Yesterday, while we were making deliveries in "Amish Country", we passed a farm that usually has a unique Homemade Root Beer sign out at the end of their driveway and noticed that it was covered with a cardboard sign that said "Closed until Weds." We looked down the lane at the farm and saw this:All those little grey boxes on the left of the buildings are buggies. I cut off a few other vehicles. There were also some vans, called "Amish Taxis", driven by "English" drivers that apparently brought some of the guests from farther away.

This was a HUGE gathering. The 3 wagons I have marked are called bench wagons. For Sunday church services, these bench wagons carry a number of benches - seating - to whatever home is hosting church that week, but church normally only requires one wagon. This was a number of congregations combined.

I worried that it might have been a funeral, but Tina remembered that this is Wedding Season and that the Amish weddings usually take place on Tuesdays or Wednesdays, so it was most likely a joyous occasion for this large gathering.

Another thing that often happens is that we do some experimentation with various products. Usually this is done after the Christmas season here at Frog Hollow is over, but, last night, I decided it was time to try once again to try make liquid soap. I have a couple of projects that this was needed for, so I gave it another shot before I broke down and just bought some ready-made. It seems to have worked out pretty well. I read (and followed) the recipe better than the last time. I saw the reasons for some of the things that were changed from making regular cold process soap and decided to try to go against some hard and fast rules we have always followed.
I poured off some of the finished soap and tried it out. It is NOT finished soap and feels pretty harsh at this point, but give it a couple of weeks and it'll be fine. The stuff in the crock pot is the left over paste which has not melted this morning. I added some more boiling water and will now let it sit, covered so that it will dissolve and become a nice amber liquid...

I'm actually pretty proud of this batch. Apparently I superfatted the previous batch I made and it never was completely clear and separated almost immediately. We'll see how this goes.

Finally, as I walked out to the shop this morning, I noticed we had a frost last night and it was just beginning to melt. These are the fairy soap balls I have stuck in the planter outside the shop..
These always look magical to me, but the frost adds another dimension!

Cemetery Tales

As we near All Hallows' Eve...

The past two days, instead of getting some of the things done that we should, we've been out enjoying crystal clear days and fall leaves. It's been fun, especially since our brother, who until recently has shown little interest in the outside world, was with us.

On Sunday, we ventured out enjoying and photographing fall foliage. John and I had been out on Friday and the trees were at their peak. They were still beautiful on Sunday, but heavy rains on Saturday had taken some toll. In our travels, we saw a lot of beautiful vistas. We were looking for drama, I think - pictures that told a story - and as we passed a cemetery, John asked if we had ever been up to Mount Bethel Cemetery in Columbia. Most of our relatives from that area are in another cemetery there, but Mount Bethel holds our great grandparents and some great aunts and uncles we never met. We filed the idea away and decided we'd have to visit - someday.

Well, Monday dawned clear and beautiful and by afternoon we were able to put our work plans aside in favor of another photo day. After running a few errands, we headed to Mount Bethel. We really had no idea where our relatives were, but while we were looking, we found a lot of interesting stones and stories:

First, the requisite angel....This is the marker for Charles F. Sourbeer, aged 19 years, 1 month and 16 days. He died in August of 1885. I guess I feel like the childrens' markers are the most poignant... This one says "Our Son" across the top and it marks the grave of David Smith who was 9. There was another one that said "Our Boy" and I was so touched by that.There were large markers that listed a number of children and babies - Often, before the list, it would begin, "Our Babes". I realized that stillborn and very short lived babies were not at all uncommon.

When we finally found our great grandmother, we noticed that there were apparently two very small babies buried with her as they were marked on the front of her stone. Our grandmother was the youngest of 17 and I'll have to check family record to see if the 17 includes the very young ones or not - I don't think so. In that particular plot were our great grandmother, great grandfather and one great aunt, Harriet or "Hallie" who died as a teenager of heart problems. I remember our grandmother always speaking very fondly of Hallie and suspect everyone knew she would not live long. The other one of the children buried there was George. George was killed when he was a young man, in a railroad accident.

So, while I'm writing about children, these appear to be two sisters, Edith and Eveline. They were 12 and 11 when they died and it appears they died around the same time in October although I can't read the year, I suspect it was the same for both. What a tragedy that must have been. I didn't really look around - I suppose their parents or other siblings must be buried somewhere nearby, but there is no last name anywhere on the stone.
When I saw the lamb on this one, I assumed it would be another child, but no, it is a 58 year old woman, Fannie A Gohn. I wonder if she was never married...
Since it is a derivative of our name, the name on this one attracted me - Samuel Swartz. As I read more, it is the marker of a young man who died in the Battle of the Wilderness, May 6, 1861, during the Civil War. He was 31.
I just liked the carving on this one and took the picture before I had actually read the stone.. She was 30 when she died and is remembered as a wife and as a daughter...
It was interesting to see the stone work and the difference in the wear in the various stones. I guess some were carved from native limestone and they have worn quickly and are hard to read. They were apparently the most interesting to me because I didn't take any pictures of the marble stones that still seem almost new until you read the dates and realize - oh these are from the 1800's too...

Finally, I loved this obelisk with the beautiful wreath carved on it.
All those stories... All those lives...

Goddesses and Teapots

I finally updated the "Focals" Page on my Torchsong website.

I had showed both my goddess beads and my teapots before, but I have a few new ones and finally put them up on my site to sell.

The one on the left is the fire goddess. This is the first one that turned out the way I imagined and I'd like to make more - definitely one for me! I'm a fire sign and love my torch.

Even as I was making them, I envisioned how I would display the beads on these neck pieces. The goddesses are attached to a neckpiece of wound silk. I think it makes a nice presentation. They adjust from about 18-20" by buttoning them in different stretchy links in the back.

They are shown in colors including black, dark green and gold.

I also finally listed my teapots.

Last summer, when we were up at The Rosemary House in Mechanicsburg, PA to help celebrate their 40th anniversary, Nancy Reppert saw the vessels I make and asked if I could do teapots.

I went home and gave it a try. They are wired and I give them little tops and bottoms with bead caps and daisy spacers.

The main problem with making teapots is that they begin with hollows, as do vessels. Hollows are a skill I have mostly mastered, but some days I sit down at the torch and find it completely impossible to make one. I was having a spate of that problem for a while and only recently recovered my abilities and added to the collection of teapots I have to offer.

I am happy to now have them all available for purchase on my updated focals page.