You must be lost

A lengthy, photo heavy entry on our trip to Asheville is festering in the browser on my laptop, but there's other stuff going on... mostly gardening.

Today, we had to bid farewell to our largest tree. I noticed while I was out in the yard with Jonah on Monday that it was leaning considerably. We've been keeping an eye on it for a couple of seasons; watching it lose large branches & develop holes between the roots & the soil. A guy came out to look at it yesterday morning & suggested we get it cut out as soon as possible. The tree had three leads that met on about a 2 or 3 foot tall trunk. The lead that aimed directly at our neighbours' house had developed a crack all the way through the trunk to the ground. I'm honestly not sure what was still holding it up. Once we accepted his bid, he called up his climber to come out & help him tie it off to one of the other two leads, which were still sturdy & healthy, so it wouldn't fall on our neighbours' house overnight before they could get back out this morning. Now there's a huge hole in the yard & I don't just mean the one in the ground. The whole yard is changed it seems. We're going to go out this weekend & find the biggest maple we can get to replace it.

On the plus side, while they were out here, we had them cut out the burning bush which was way too big of a shrub to be where it was (I had to severely prune it twice each spring), as well as the two holly stumps that WILL NOT DIE! Both of those had been cut out before we bought the house. Both stumps kept sprouting up from the roots. One was in the front garden where I wrestled with its roots every spring & fall as I was planting. I'm very glad to have those all gone! I also just realized that was the last of the landscaping that was done before we got our hands on this place. All prior foundation plantings are now gone. I can now finish putting in the rest of the 8 flats of pansies I started planting last weekend, unobstructed by stupid holly roots.

Also, we just now have the first tomatillos on our plant. Lots of them! Hope they finish before frost.

Other than that:
I'm wrestling with fabric options for my bridesmaid dress (wants vs budget vs fabric snobbery) as I begin putting together my mockup.

Jonah's potty tra ining is still going well with slow but frequent improvement.

We've got one more "free" weekend before we pretty much have stuff every weekend until the end of the year.

We finally have another soccer game this weekend. We missed 2 weeks ago & last weekend was a bye. I'm sure Jonah has missed it.

Jonah's teacher asked me about my jewelry yesterday which sent me scrambling to renew expired listings after handing her a business card. I'm utterly embarrassed by how much I've neglected that stuff. I've got a ton of stuff that needs to be photographed & listed. A ton of stuff that I made almost a year ago & never listed. Yes, it's despicable. My last entry on my jewelry blog was freaking lamp pulls! Maybe I can squeak out an hour or two per week to devote to this. Agggh! Too much stuff, no time!

I'm just not even going to think about writing again until after the new year. Okay, one quick thing: it's important that my romance is just something to get readers emotionally invested in the characters & that it doesn't become the focus of the story. A romance is not a plot! I refuse to even open my document for fear of getting sucked in (or seeing how bad it is after some distance). After talking to some people about it at Dragon*Con, I realize just how many questions are still unanswered. I've only scratched the surface here. Huge project is ENORMOUS! I think my next big question to answer will be "why is there a war & how does that all fit in?" I've got to stop filing these away under "answer eventually" & start picking them off one by one until the blanks are filled.

I suppose I'll stop rambling & relax some tonight. The weather is absolutely gorgeous lately, if not a little chilly for my tastes at night. Having the windows open during the day has been nice, except for today when I was inundated by the smell of two stroke engines. Maybe I'll get the Asheville post fished up tomorrow.

Posted via LjBeetle

Although it seemed busy, most of this past weekend was spent just puttering around the house doing stuff, yet still being quite productive.

Friday - Jonah and I went to the zoo for much of the late morning/early afternoon. So, I didn't run, but I did walk and sweat and push a stroller around the zoo for about 3 hours. Felt kind of good to see people my own age that we seemed to lap around the zoo. I'd see them looking wilted on a bench somewhere while their kids were checking out the nearest animal. I'm glad I can still keep up with Jonah. Trying desperately to keep it that way. Baby tigers are gone (last day was Father's Day, I believe). Didn't take many pics and only took the ones I got with the camera phone. I really like that we have a membership. For the cost of the gas to get there plus $3 ($1 to feed nectar to the Lorikeets and $2 to ride the carousel), we can have a really fun day at the zoo. We've well more than paid for our membership by now and the year is only half over. Plus special events like the Easter and Halloween things are free to us (since they're only the cost of admission for everyone else).

Saturday - I finished getting the last of seven new items listed in my Etsy store. Messed around on my gaiasjewel accounts everywhere, trying to catch up with email for those addresses and such. Then, early that evening, we got ready and drove out to Leiper's Fork to a pig roast. I've got a picture that I'll probably post later. But I must warn you, if you're not comfortable knowing where your meat comes from, you might not want to look at it. To me, it was kind of satisfying to pull a hunk of pork directly from the side of the pig that was providing it. They had way too much food for such a small group though. A 200 lb. pig and there couldn't have been much more than 20 people there. It was refreshing that everyone brought salads and nice fresh stuff. Two pasta salads, a mixed green salad with raspberries and almonds that was really good, some fresh salsa that tasted just like my dad's only hotter, a black bean and corn salad and a black eyed pea salad (that I didn't see until I was definitely done eating, or I would have liked to have tried it). One of the landowners made some awesome chess pies, too! Was a lot of fun, but we ducked out shortly after 8pm since Jonah was starting to show that he was overstimulated and getting tired.

Sunday - Chris brewed. Jonah and I went for a run and played around the house. I cleaned up some, did some laundry, worked on some jewelry then made stuffed shells for dinner (yum, with sauteed mushrooms and zucchini in the stuffing). Then I had an extremely restless night of not much sleep and I'm not really sure why.

And that's about it. More along the lines of what I've been wanting out of a weekend for a while. One short event and some quiet time at home. Now I'm bored, heh.

Towards the end of 2008, I created gaias_jewel and now in light of the potential, though not likely LJ troubles, I got gaiasjewel over at InsaneJournal (just like my main journal, there won't be any content there unless something happens to LJ). I intend to use it as a very informal blog and an in for various jewelry communities for the jewelry business I'm starting this year. For a more professional blog, I've got Blogger and WordPress accounts, but there's not really anything at either of those yet.

Oh yeah, by the way, I'm starting a jewelry business this year. It's called, you guessed it Gaia's Jewel. I've registered gaiasjewel.com as well as .net and .org (they'll all point to the .com site, I just don't want someone else grabbing the domains and potential customers being confused by similar sites). I'm even going to look into trademarking the name. I appreciate the tips on domain registration and hosting. I registered with GoDaddy but have not chosen a host yet. I especially appreciate the tip to look for GoDaddy coupon codes before registering. I got the .net and .org domains for less than $8 each (originally priced $12.99 and $14.99 respectively).

I also have an Etsy store, but there's nothing there yet, either. I really just wanted to go ahead and get all the web stuff set up at the end of the year while I couldn't really do jewelry work even if I wanted to. I may not use it all, or I may just set up feeds so I can update one and they're all updated. Once I get the site set up, I may integrate the blog into it so everything else might disappear. But I wanted to have it there in case I wanted to use it.

Now to clear my work space and get some content for all these sites.

( 'Forest Floor' another masculine necklace, and me being a geek about jewelry inventory )

So, enough about that, back to sewing. I haven't progressed on the wedding gown, felt lazy last night and Tuesday night was the brew club meeting. Monday night I think we did some cleaning instead and I just never got to it. Week nights are still jam packed, even though there are no more late nights now with Chris out of school.

However, I spent maybe 30 minutes last night playing with a wrap skirt design using the silk velvet that I tried so desperately to turn charcoal grey. It's a lovely color in itself and I think I'm going to follow through with this design for some everyday clothes (with just a touch of elvish flair). The color of the velvet goes so lovely with the silver sash belt. I took some pics of it, but I think I might also try to sketch out an idea. But no projects will get attention until the wedding gown is done. I've also got on hold a silk shirt using a paisley jacquard (that needs to be dyed) and paisley silk velvet for the sleeves. If the dyes come out like I hope, it would go nicely with this skirt.

Got 7 of 10 pieces listed to ebay. Ok wait, 6 of 9, one listing is just an assortment of bone beads that I really want out of my house. You should be able to search for Gaia's Jewel and find all of them (I put it in the title in the hopes to build a "label" of sorts). I've got pictures ready for 2 of the remaining three and descriptions to write for them all. Fingers crossed for success. Even if I don't make a dime, it's been fun.

I figure what doesn't sell will go into a pile for a trunk show here in town next month. I know of a couple of local shops that I'm sure would be grateful for such an event. We're so starved for culture in Alabama, most artists and merchants jump at the chance to promote something of that nature. And there's the Monte Sano Art Show this weekend I'm going to check out. That might be a venue of opportunity as well.

Chris has been giving me nightly coding lessons. Tuesday night, I started on the basics of Python. Wednesday, he helped me with some CSS for the ebay listings (not that I needed to use CSS for it, but I want to use it for my website as I start building it, so I thought I might as well learn on something as simple as an ebay listing). We didn't have a lesson last night, but he said he wanted to switch back to Python. I find CSS more useful (not really needing to write "serious code" outside of work, and for that stuff, I've been using my very limited Perl knowledge). Next thing I know, he'll be wanting to teach me Zope so that I can help him with his home automation software he's working on. *sigh* I'm marrying a total nerd. He programs for the fun of it. While I'm working away on jewelry and costumes, he's sitting coding for the fun of it on his laptop. Oh well, he thinks I'm nuts for my hobbies too. I guess we're both nerds in our own way.

I've decided to jump into the muslin for the Blood Red gown this weekend. I'm realizing it's the middle of September and I haven't started on Halloween costumes yet. If I don't start now, I'll never get done! I don't know why, but I'm nervous to start this gown.

For me, when motivation and creativity comes, it can't be ignored, lest it be wasted. I've felt very stagnant on sewing since I got back from our trip. But instead, I've been working on dwindling my jewelry supplies and working up some finished inventory to auction off on ebay (as soon as I get boxes to ship them in). This is kind of a test for me. While I have a job and steady income, I'm going to see how well I do with this as a side "business" (ebay store to be named Gaia's Jewel, once I get enough sales under my belt and if the individual auctions do as well as I hope). If I do well enough, I might be able to get by on jewelry making as a source of income when I start school (hopefully next fall).

So, here's what I've got for sale so far. The pics are poor quality (need more light), and I hope to get better ones in the next couple of days. Also need an earring display so that I can take pics of the earrings I've made to go with the necklaces (all but the elephant necklace will be sold as an earring/necklace set). The first three pics of earrings are pieces I did quite a while ago and never got around to selling. I might not get the price that's on them, but I'd be happy getting $5/pair (which is probably what I'll list them as).

The rest has been done in the past 4 or 5 days. In most cases, I took apart necklaces I did a long time ago on that black rubber cording stuff. I think the beaded strands look much more elegant (and can pull a higher price tag, especially all that iolite, wasn't cheap, that's for sure). The wire wrapped pieces I did a while back as well (about the same time as the earrings). Looking forward to getting into that again. Unfortunately, these were done before I started using sterling silver wire. These are likely nickel craft wire, but I can't remember for sure (there will be a disclaimer on the auctions that it will discolor). If anyone is interested in a piece, let me know, and I'll give you a deal on it.

My favorite one I made last night. I don't have pics yet, but it won't be up for sale. It's a necklace of mine, again, on black cording, that I took apart and paired with gems that I think suit it much better than what it was with (it's now with peridot, rainbow moonstone, amethyst and a little bit of moss agate and Hill Tribes silver, the pendant is a polished shell which I'm not sure how to describe). I should have taken a before and after pic. It's amazing how you can take the same pendant, and in some cases the same beads, and string them differently with some different materials and turn it from an everyday piece to a special occasion piece.

Also, while looking over my jewelry making inventory, I ran across this, which I've had for years and never intend to use. Yvette, with your work on Aladdin, I thought you might get better use of it. Drop me an email at mellymel_hsv at yahoo.com with your address and I'll gladly send it to you if you think you can use it. It's about 2"x2".