In the meantime, some jewelry

Life has been pretty busy, so I haven't had much time for blogging.

I've mostly finished planting my vegetable garden.

This year I planted all kinds of seeds, instead of starting indoors. 

It seems to be sprouting well.

It's hard to keep it watered, especially since we haven't had any rain this year.

Cold and windy, but little rain.

Also last week I rearranged furniture in my bedroom so I could do a thorough cleaning. 

It was very satisfying, but not much to blog about.

This storage bench is supposed to be the cat's bed, to keep her off of my clean sheets.

Before I tidied up, it was full of books and junk. Now that it's clean, she won't leave the room! It's nice when the pets are happy.

At work we are still visited by Big Red almost every day, and everyone loves to watch him sleep.

He needs a bigger box, but since he doesn't belong to me, I'm hesitant to get a fancy bed or basket.

About two weeks ago, I made a lot of jewelry and forgot to post the pictures. 

This is much more interesting to show:

I got the idea for these earrings from the latest Sundance catalog:

I also got the idea for this bracelet from the Sundace catalog:

It was OK, but I liked some parts better than others.

I took it all apart, and made three different bracelets:

That same day I was looking at the Anthropologie catalog, and I got the idea for this necklace:

It's not really my style, but I enjoyed making it.

(I think the plastic heart pendant is vintage 70's and belonged to my sister)

I also put together a group of stretch bracelets inspired by my trips to the beach.

I've been working on making things less symmetrical and less matchy, so I was happy with these.

I don't know when I will have time to visit the beach again!

Here are a few other jewelry things I made:

These stones are mostly from Fire Mountain, they are relatively inexpensive. About $2 a string.

I strung these quartz stones with black elastic cord on purpose, so you can see their translucency.

I think I will be making another order from Fire Mountain soon.

It's hard to decide whether or not to get a lot of cheaper stone beads like these (and be inspired by the variety) or a smaller amount of fancier "real" cut stones...