New Vessel... and What Does "Service" Mean To You?

This has been an extremely busy week for me in the teaching department! I taught a class on Tuesday evening, provided a "bead making experience" for a group of about 40 women on Wednesday morning and afternoon, taught a class that same evening, then taught a class again last night. During my "down time" between those classes, I managed to finish this vessel. It's a small one - I don't make small stuff very often - but it turned out very nice. Better pix are on the way...

Regarding "service", I'm a bit irritated (understatement) with my web hosting service. I guess you could say they provide a service. I mean, hey - there's good service and then there's bad service. In which category do you think my recent experience belongs? Here's what happened:

My web hosting service "upgraded" me. This past Wednesday evening, after I got home from a very long day of teaching (started at 10 a.m., finished at 10 p.m.), I went to check my email. I couldn't log in to my web hosting account. I checked my Yahoo email account, and there was an email that I had received at 9:59 pm welcoming me to my new upgraded account. Using the new login information, I got into the new interface and found my email. OK, so I can still receive email - great! There was also information in the welcome email that talked about this upgrade. Isn't this wonderful - they migrated all my email to the new email system, but not my address book. What???!!! So... my email address book is gone. Just flat gone. The upgrade email does tell me, "You will however, have the ability to create a new Address book once the move to our Advanced Email Platform has been completed.". Well isn't that nice?! I mean, gosh, how many email systems are there that DON'T let you create an address book?

So then I go to my website and see this lovely message rather than my splash page:

I thought, "OK, tomorrow this message will be gone and my website will be back up.". HA! - Not. So around 3 p.m. on Thursday I called tech support. I told the guy about this message and asked him how to get my site back up. He started looking at my website (he's tech support, he's got access) and then he started reading the content of the splash page to me. Then he told me to wait a few hours, that my site would be back up. I told him that it had been down since the prior evening and he rudely started reprimanding me, saying, "We upgraded 9,000 sites, what do you expect?!". Huh? Then he said, "Do you want me to read more on your website to prove that it's still there?". OMGosh, this is tech support?

Fast forward to Friday (a couple of hours ago). I go to my site, still not up. I call tech support again and ask them what's going on. This time I talk to "Steven". He tells me that the guy I talked to yesterday didn't know the answer to my questions. Yeah, no kidding! So "Steven" tells me that in order to get my site back up, I have to contact the company with whom my domain name is registered and have them change my primary and secondary name servers. I asked "Steven" why this information wasn't in the welcome email. Response: "Because they didn't put it in the email". (GROAN.....)

I'm hoping that my site will be back up some time in the next few days. In the mean time, perhaps it's time to start looking for a new web hosting service. Although these days, the "service" portion of that expression is questionable, regardless of who the host is.

I'm off to the torch now - go have yourselves a happy and creative day!

A Little Fiber, A Little Glass

Today I finished a sample piece for a "Join in and Make Challenge" that's part of the online felting community to which I belong. It was interesting and fun, and I learned quite a bit about this technique. I'll be incorporating my sample into a larger felted piece. I wanted to use it on a vessel but it's just too heavy. I may try this again with some refinements. Here's a lousy picture (my own picture... bad lighting) of my sample. Does it make you think of anything in particular?

Later, I'll be working on more of my embellished felt pieces for possible necklaces/pins.

Regarding glass... I got into a discussion with someone last week about flame annealing soft glass beads. I've been making beads for over 9 years and I've been a member of the International Society of Glass Beadmakers for 9 years. All the information I've read and heard on this topic is that so-called flame annealing does NOT properly anneal your beads. If you anneal them this way, they are more likely to break some time down the road than if you anneal them in a kiln. Why? Because flame annealing does not eliminate the stress that is created in the glass when parts of the bead (outside) cool at a different rate than other parts of the bead (inside). The person with whom I was having this conversation insisted that when she took a bead making class many years ago, they did not put their beads into a kiln. They flame annealed their beads, and she still has these beads many years later and they never broke.

So I ask all of you folks out there who are glass bead makers: What is your take on this subject? Is flame annealing sufficient? Would you ever sell beads that you only flame anneal? Would you even bother flame annealing?

And now I'm off for a Starbucks treat. Go have yourselves a happy and creative day!

Minimal Embellishments

When I make felted vessels, I'm so tempted to deck them out with all sorts of embellishments. But sometimes less is a good thing. This is one of my recent vessels that I planned on embellishing. I even had the seed beads all picked out for the rim. After I added my lampwork disk beads to the vessel I decided to stop. It took a bit to hold me back - the seed beads were the perfect color for the vessel - but after a lengthy conversation with myself, I handed the vessel over to be photographed. It's now in my Etsy shop - no turning back! :-)

Today I was going to spend the whole day on the torch, but I decided to do some felting instead. It's the last day of the "Shibori Autumn" challenge on the Working With Felt online community, so shibori felt is it. I've never done this before so who knows what will come out of my machine. I'm just hoping that it will be suitable for the project I have in mind. Stay tuned...

Now go have yourselves a happy and creative day!

More Wooly Mixed Media Wearables

Continuing on in my exploration of work with fiber, I created another mixed media piece. I still haven't decided how I will complete these pieces - pin, necklace, or attachment to some other felted work. This piece has a split personality. The face is a raku bead that has two sides - one side is glazed, the other black. Day and Night? Happy and Sad? You decide! I've assembled this piece so that you can turn the face to whichever side suits your mood.

So here's number 2 in my latest collection...

Once I determine a permanent use for them, I'll have some "real" pictures taken. The colors are much nicer up close and personal.

Now go have yourselves a happy and creative day! I'm off to the torch...

Wooly Wearables

Not too long ago I blogged that I had "Made Something On a Whim". I got a bit wild with that piece of felt and it's now a cuff that I call Sprout. I adorned it with a button by Lisa Peters, then added some organic-feeling froufrou. Here are a few pix of the almost-finished piece. I say "almost" because I still have to put a lining on it and then add the closure. I planned on waiting until someone wanted to purchase it before I put the closure on so that I could make it a customized length. It seems that before I could even put it into my Etsy shop, a Facebook friend claimed it for her own. I guess I'd better hurry up and line this piece - yikes!

A couple of nights ago I took a book to bed with me that I hadn't looked at in awhile. I usually do a bit of reading before I turn out my light for the night and this particular night I just wanted to look at inspiring pictures. As I paged through the book, which has nothing to do with felt, some ideas popped into my head and I was off in dream land. Yesterday I created the felt piece and last night I started to embellish it. Here's the piece in its current state.

I just need to turn it into whatever it's going to end up being. An embellishment for a bag? A pin? A necklace? Not sure yet, but I think I'll be creating more of these. I already have the fibers and embellishments picked out for the next one. And there will definitely be wearables in this collection!

But now I have to get ready to go teach my bead making class. So go have yourselves a happy and creative day!

Glass Blowing Demo, Quilt Show, And Another Vessel

I've been busy in the wet lab lately, preparing for the upcoming holiday show/sale at Olive Hyde Art Gallery in Fremont, CA. Here's the latest vessel that I finished - I just put the collar and faceted lemon quartz on it the night before last. The collar is a spiral rope, and the vessel is also adorned with peridot chips.

I have three more vessels that are ready for embellishments - all I need is time, yep. But alas, tonight and tomorrow night I'm teaching bead making classes so my vessels will have to wait until Friday night.

Over the last two weekends I've hauled mom along with me to a couple of events - here are some pictures that I took.

The first event we attended was a glass blowing demo at BAGI, where I teach glass bead making classes. I had the pleasure of watching Marc Petrovic create a blown glass fish, with assistance from Treg Silkwood, who teaches glass blowing classes at BAGI. I was sitting a bit far from the action, so my pix aren't the best - but you'll get the idea.

When Marc initially blew the piece, the mouth end of the fish was attached to the blow pipe. After Marc shaped the tail, he attached a punty to the rear side of the fish and removed the fish from the blow pipe. In this picture, Treg is holding the punty steady while Marc shapes the mouth of the fish.

Here's Marc giving the fish a good heating with the torch.

After Marc has applied some fins, he uses the torch to heat the fish while he does more shaping.

And here, Marc is applying hot glass to make another fin, with assists from Treg and Jon Scally.

And now for something completely different...

The second event was the annual Pacific International Quilt Festival. I think that show gets bigger and bigger every year! We were there for 6 hours on Saturday and didn't get to see any of the wearable art or vendors. I was going to go back on Sunday, but there's just too much to do here in my "labs". I'm glad I didn't wait until Sunday to take pix of some of my faves. Unfortunately, I didn't get the artists' names who made them. Here are pix of my absolute favorites in the show. And go figure... most of them involve trees and/or leaves. :-)

These are definitely not your grandma's "just throw it on the bed" quilts...

And now I have to get ready to go teach my bead making class. It's a special topic class - we're going to be making hearts! I'll be bringing some of my own purple glass so I can donate purple hearts to the Beads of Courage program. Each child receives a purple heart bead at the end of his or her treatment.

Now go have yourselves a happy and creative day!

One More Finished Vessel

Last night I finished embellishing one of my vessels, and I decided to keep it simple. I adorned the vessel with one of my leaf beads and not much else. I used two different colors of pineapple fiber to attach the leaf to the vessel. Here's my "Valley" vessel - both the "A" side and the "B" side.

When I was up in Chinook, Washington over Labor Day weekend I conducted 2 felting workshops in which we made small wall hangings. Each session had 4 people in it, and I made a felted piece along with each group to show them each step in the process. Some of the folks in the second session wanted to add pre-felted objects to their pieces, so I demonstrated how to make a pre-felt, then cut objects out of it to use on the main felted piece. I didn't quite finish that piece when I was up there. After I got home I rolled it a few hundred more times to really compact the fibers and a few nights ago I finished needle felting some additional "stuff" onto it. The bird is the object that I cut out of the pre-felt, I added the tree by needle felting it on, and I enhanced the sun with some needle felting. This piece is about 10 inches wide by 13 inches tall, and was great fun to make!

And now I'm off to work on embellishing another one of those vessels that I showed you in my prior post. Rather than giving it one of my glass beads, I'm going to put some stones on it. In fact, I made the vessel to go with the stones - some peridot chips and a nice big faceted lemon quartz bead. I'm hoping to have it finished and photographed in the next few days - stay tuned!

Now go have yourselves a happy and creative day!