I’ve been very quiet on this blog lately.  Don’t you hate these posts?

Here is some bead porn to view; this was the result of a very long torch day last week.

Lots of Beads

I make these beads 6 (usually) at a time on stainless steel welding rods (mandrels in glass-speak).  The white substance is called bead release and prevents the beads from sticking to the mandrels once they have been cooled.  I like making multiples because I can get matching sets much easier.

Rosemarie Hanus makes Lots of Beads in her home studio.  See these many beads at Etsy,  Art Fire, or her Spawn of Flame website.

Bubbling Spring Spawn of Flame Earrings

Cleveland Handmade is hosting a giveaway to thank all our wonderful supporters and customers, as well as give you the opportunity to check out the high-quality handmade art in member shops.  The giveaway this week are earrings made by ME!

Go here to enter!

You have until Wednesday noon (EST).  Hurry!

Update: the deadline has now passed; I don’t know the winner yet, though!

We visited the Headlands Beach State Park, Ohio again over the weekend to collect beach glass, and I snapped this photo.  It was a gray day when we arrived, but the sun came out.  Yes.  The water looked THAT blue.

Headlands Beach State Park, Ohio

It’s that time of year!  Here are the “traditional” photos of everybody in front of the linden tree.  When I was little, I had my photo taken in front of a huge maple tree each year; I used that tree for my kids until we moved in 1997.

I

First Day of School 2009 - 2010

I wasn’t able to get the cat and the dog in the same picture… well, at least before the bus came.

First Day of School 2009 - 2010

I got a couple of new pieces of furniture for my glass studio.  We went to HGR Industrial Surplus – it was a huge warehouse of all sorts of, well, industrial stuff.

Here is the heavy duty steel cabinet that is the new home for the kiln.  I am going to paint it soon, but for now it’s a nice rust and gray.

New Kiln Cabinet

Here is my revamped desk.  It was sagging in the middle and we have reinforced it now so that it is almost flat.

Torching Desk

And here is a huge, heavy duty cabinet that will soon hold my glass; it even has some nice dividers in the bottom that will help store the flat glass that I use.  I have the oxygen concentrator on top of it.

The Cabinet

I have removed a link or 2 from my blogroll…  Big news, eh?

All of the flowers that have bloomed have disappeared.  The buds that are unopened are still healthy.  Upon close inspection, it was apparent that something was eating all of my flowers!  Deer regularly cross my yard fairly close to the location of this flower bed, so the logical conclusion was that the deer were responsible even though  I was a little confused when my brand new “deer resistant” purple coneflower disappeared overnight.

Chewed Off Daylily

However, when I was taking this photo, the real culprit revealed himself.  Or herself.

The Flower Eating Culprit - Groundhog

Now what do I do?

There is already a flower on our Randers Pride daylily!  The color of the lily is exactly as I remember and the flower is very large.  It does look a little odd though, the flower stalk should be much taller – it is only about 18 inches tall.  I think that it should be twice that.  I imagine that as the plant grows larger, the height will come along.

First Bloom Randers Pride Daylily

This phot was taken on a rare sunny day here in northeast Ohio!  We took advantage of the nice weather, and put Katie to work.

Katie Tending the Flowers

Over the weekend, we bought some day lilies today from Heritage Farms in Peninsula, Ohio.

Gazebo at Heritage Farm

These extra special flowers are called Randers Pride. My family bred lilies up until the late 1950’s. This flower was named after my maternal grandfather, who’s surname was Randers; I believe that he was the one that developed the flower.  It was registered by Libis-Cheetham. Libis was my maternal grandmother’s maiden name, so that would be my great grandfather, but unfortunately, I do not know who Cheetham was. This flower is extra special to me because it was registered in 1957 – the year that I was born. It helps that it is a quite tall plant with beautiful large yellow flowers.

Randers Pride Daylily

Here are the three Randers Pride plants nestled into their new home, along with 2 friends named My Kia.  You didn’t think that I could possibly only buy what I went to purchase, did you?  My Kia was described as “quite prolific with red flowers”.  Oh, the human is my daughter, Katie.

Katie with Lilies

Spike, the dog, thought that she was quite camouflaged while hiding behind the bee-balm. She was a good helper too.

Spike, the Camo-Dog

I have lived in Northeast Ohio my whole life and I had never explored this wonderful resource that we have – Lake Erie.  I took a class recently at Grand River Beads to learn how to drill glass, and we used Lake Erie beach glass.  The glass is beautifully etched by the waves and washes up onto the beaches.  Well, I decided that I had to go collect some of that glass myself.

We decided to go to the Headlands Beach State Park and it was great fun finding the glass.  Most of the pieces were small, but we did find some nice pendant size ones.  Just being at the beach was a new experience, with a nice cool breeze and moderate waves.  I know that people swim there, but the water was still too cold.

Headlands Beach State Park, Ohio, Lake Erie

There were birds there that I don’t see in my backyard.

Lake Erie Beach Bird

My kids were surprised at the vastness of the lake itself.  Although only the 4th in size of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie is the 10th largest lake in the world.  It is 9940 square miles – which is larger than any one of these states: Vermont, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, or Rhode Island.

We were there early in the day, there weren’t too many people there.  We had “hard time” finding our car. [/sarcasm]

My Lonely Car