FRIDAY FENCE POST #1

DH and I went to Mama's on Tuesday, and as we drove through Portland, for some reason or other, my eyes were drawn to the fences we were passing. Wouldn't it be fun, I thought, to take a picture, or several, every week of an interesting fence and post it to my blog? I could call it "Fence Fridays" or "Friday Fences". It could be my version of "Thursday Self Portraits", maybe. (I'm not much into having my picture taken. Pictures of me make me feel ugly, about 90% of the time.)

Anyway, here's my first Friday Fence Post!

This fence runs along Mama's driveway.


Click here to see full-size.




Click here to see full-size.




Click here to see full-size

ORGANIZING PAINT

"A picture's worth a thousand words," but I'll add a few to explain the photo above, even though it says almost everything already.

I keep my paints in an old wicker picnic basket in the kitchen. That keeps them handy, but hides them. Unfortunately, I can't always tell what color is in a bottle, just by looking into the basket. Shadows distort the shade, and many times I've pulled out a bottle of what I thought was, say, brown, only to find it was purple, and so on. So I do what I'm sure many other people do: I put a dab of paint on the lid. Not only does it show me the color of the paint, it shows how it will look when it's dry.

That's my tiny tip for the day. I'm 100% sure that I'm not the first to think of it, and certainly I won't be the last, but on the off chance this would be helpful to someone else, there it is!

"SWAPPIN' LIES" PARTY GIG

A soon to become not unusual event: My band had a gig yesterday! A marvelous time was had by all, I do believe.

The gig was at the Red Lizard Running Team's end-of-summer party, a get-together featuring chit-chat, a roast pig and other yummies (no dessert! How could they?!) and two bands, Brightest Comet (http://www.myspace.com/thebrightestcomet), and us, Swappin' Lies.

We played first, and stayed for Brightest Comet's set, which was woefully short. These kids are good. I wish I had a photo of all three of them, but this is the best I could do, one of their lead, Andi Camp. Their drummer is Martin Castillo, with John Reed adding guitar.

Photo from Red Lizard Running


And this is us:



Photo from Red Lizard Running


Craig is playing conga here, Steve and Lorna are in the middle, and I'm on the right. This is "my" song, "Bedlam Boys". It starts with a slow, soft duet, just Lorna and me, which ends with a fiendish and loud cackle from Steve, and then adds the drum, speeds up, and rocks out. It's a capella all the way, except for that drum, with four-part harmony on the choruses and occasional further fiendishness from Steve. Great fun, and a real wake-up call.

It looks like we'll be landing a regular Friday night gig at a wine bar on Fremont after this. How perfect is that? Music and wine to end the week. Aaaahh.

Oh, you know what? Just for fun, because I can, here's Bedlam Boys as performed by Old Blind Dogs. I won't compare us to them, but this something like what we were going for. (Push the little arrow to 4:44 on the slider, which is when Bedlam Boys actually starts. I'd shorten this if I knew how, but I don't know how. :oP )



For the record, we may not be Old Blind Dogs yet, but we got plenty of kudos on our performance, and proof of it in the form of $65 in tips. Wah-hoo! We'll get the equipment we're yearning for soon!

ME? REALLY? I GOT A "BRILLIANT BLOG AWARD"!

Goodness. I am just dumbstruck and also thrilled to have received the Brilliant Blog Award! Thank you so much, Nora Demirjian, for nominating me!





Nora makes dear little earrings from polymer clay, in a multitude of colors, and winsome greeting cards. Be sure to visit her shop!



Designs By Nora





And now (may I have a drum roll, please?) I'd like to nominate these wonderful blogs for the same award:

A Needle In The Haystack
Eye Pop Art
My Lily Eden
Notes from the VooDoo Cafe
Needle Tatting and Other Nonsense
Scribble Nation
Angry Chicken

Here are the "how to's" for those who were nominated!

1) Add the logo of the award to your blog
2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you
3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs
4) Add links to those blogs on your blog
5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs

NECESSITY BREEDS A NEW WIRE WRAP

This may be new only to me, but I love it anyway.

One of the things I like about a car trip, if I'm not driving, is that bright expanse of free time. Really free. I can't do dishes, or laundry, or weed the flower beds. I have to sit, and if I'm going to do something, the options are limited. Reading, going over my music, crocheting, or what I did yesterday, beading.

I worked on Button Stack Bracelets, finishing three I'd already started, and almost a fourth, brand-new one. On that one, I did all the button stacks first, and then turned my focus to creating the chain to put the stacks on. Now, where was that 20-gauge gold wire...?

Oh, no! I was sure I'd put it in, but it was nowhere to be found! I stared at what I had, a spool of 24-gauge that was much finer than I'd want to use for a bracelet chain. What to do?

Ooooh. The idea was ripe for the plucking, and solved a problem that had nothing to do with the lost wire: I don't like it when the end of a wire can be felt, and when I'm doing a wire wrap on a bead, that happens all too often. Up until yesterday, the only solution was to struggle with the wire until it would properly tuck in, or file the end down if it proved too stubborn.

But what if I worked with a fine wire, doubled?

Here's what I came up with:

Gather your tools and materials--


Two sizes of wire shown for comparison

• 24-guage wire


• Wire snips


• Round nose pliers


• Flat nose pliers


• Bead

Cut a length of wire about six inches long, then fold it in half.


Loop it over one side and pull taut

Flatten the doubled end with your flat nose pliers as tightly as you can.


Squish!

Measure your folded wire against the bead you'll be using, leaving enough length for wire wraps on both ends.


That looks about right

Start a "regular" wire wrap, working with the cut ends of the wire


So far, so normal

When you've done a wrap and a half or so, lay the ends flat against the rest of the wire length. If your wire ends are longer than the bead you're using, snip them off.


Those ends will be hidden inside the bead

Slip the bead over the doubled end of the wire, and complete the wrap. I've shown what would be the first bead in an assembly, and not left it open to accept another.


No sharp ends anywhere

If you cut your folded wire extra long, you can have extra fun.


Curls and loops



More curls and loops

I finished the bracelet this morning, and am quite pleased with it. The photo with the brown background is the truer color. There's actually no blue in the bracelet at all.


Brown Button Stack Bracelet



Same bracelet, but taken in the shade

THE VERY ANGRY BELL PEPPER

I had a lunch date with a salad yesterday, starring Mr Bell Pepper. Boy. Don't know what set him off, but when I took off the paper towel I'd wrapped him in after making Saturday's salad, this is what I saw. (I'm not kidding. He just about took my head off!)





I went ahead and sliced off some for my salad, thinking that would change the pepper's outrageous expression, but I was mistaken.




Haven't had a salad today. I'm kinda reluctant to see what's inside that paper towel now.

THANK YOU, YouTube

My niece put this video together. I was touched almost to tears by it, but then, I'm the woman with the laptop. The photographs were all taken this past December, a week or so after Dad died. He's the Grandpa in the video.

You may wonder at the armchair full of gifts. That's Dad's chair. We put all the presents there, and perched his photo on top, so he could be our Santa Claus one last time.

What struck me as I watched was the way something that might seems trivial at the time can be important in ways you don't imagine. I mean, what's more trivial (much of the time) than silly videos on YouTube? Just goes to show you never know what's going to deeply affect another person, or in what ways.