Update on koi fish, Starting on a pair of earrings

This morning before work, I was determined to make some artwork.



First, I checked on my koi fish.



The two remaining koi fish were enjoying the air bubbles and seemed out of danger.

The ones that are left are this black and orange one, which is the most inquisitive of the bunch.

and this orange one with a fishnet pattern, which is the most shy of them all.

They are 1 year younger than the ones that died.

The fishnet pattern all came from the same breeder.



I also still have about 10 regular goldfish.



The ones I lost were the prettiest:

The largest, all white one with the fishnet pattern (that  I tried to revive)

Its same-age, same-litter sibling which had fishnet and red patches, and the longest fins,

And the yellowy-orange one in the same picture, which was 2 years younger.

(These greenish pictures were the latest ones I took, back in July.)



I'm still trying to get over it.

While I'm not quite sure what happened, it was a basic thing, that could have been prevented.


Although the survivors seem to be OK, there is still the problem with the water leak.

Eventually the pond will have to be drained and the cracks be patched.

The fish would be fine, they can rest in a kiddie pool while we do the repairs.


Ideally I would like to re-do the whole pond, and make it deeper!

But, even draining the pond is too much work to comprehend right now.





I started a collage page in my journal, but I really didn't get anywhere.

While I was looking for paper to add to the collage, I found some ideas for jewelry.




For awhile I had been thinking of making these earrings I saw in a magazine.

The picture resurfaced again today.

The collage wasn't working so I tried to assemble these earrings.



I made them with turquoise colored beads instead of wood.




I ran into a few issues about figuring out how far to space the beads.

Here, a little farther along, I spaced them out a little better:

This was about where I got after 2 hours.




The things at the very end will be feathers, which have been trimmed.

They seem to be inserted into the beads, somehow. Maybe with glue.



I got out my container of craft feathers.

Luckily, or not surprisingly, I was able to find exactly 10 white feathers.




I had to go to work, but I trimmed a feather and tried to think about how it will fit into a bead.