more bead storage

I'm getting faster at the shelf building, the edges are nearly straight on the 3rd set too! I think one more set will finish the project until I go shopping again.



With this wider angle shot you can see a few of the empty plastic drawers and a few that will be empty soon. I like getting my beads out and available to inspire and intrigue me!

Hey, see that orca painting up above the right corner of the blue and purple shelf? Dad did that when he was in his early 80's, just goofing around at a little class they had at the old folks' home. It's awesome, I wish I had more of his paintings.

hack carpentry and happiness

Jill of all trades, master of none? I can thug my way through a lot of stuff, but that doesn't mean I'm good at it...the right tools would help, but when I have an idea I just want to DO it. Bead storage where I can see the colors has been on my list for ages. I've been using those translucent plastic drawers for ages, but they're not very good at holding heavy loads (yeah, I have a lot of beads)


I built the shelves I've been imagining! The cut edge on the plywood isn't straight and a few of the nails are poking out, but the wee shelves are level and I can see the colors! Now I need to make about (guessing) 3 or 4 more of these to get the whole array out in the open. Magic is afoot!

Spring is over but it was terrific while it lasted.

It's back to fairly normal here in terms of the weather, down to 10 last night and the wind is whipping down from Canada again.

While it was still warm, I decided to get the oil changed in my faithful car steed (who refuses to be called "Daisy"). I wanted to do it while the weather was decent because there'd be a couple of miles of walking involved in dropping it off then going to work. I also decided to have them put in a block heater so I wouldn't have to bundle not "Daisy" up with blankets and a heat lamp when it gets cold.

So...Wednesday came along and I dropped the car at Bushmasters, the local trustworthy mechanic, walked home with the dog then walked back to town to work. If this is starting to sound like the short story made long regarding the magnetic block heater, you're on the right track. So...I walk over to Bushmasters during my break, expecting to fork over some 400 bucks for a newly oiled and electrified car. The (very) nice lady at the desk said..."you already have a block heater" to me! The cord just wasn't routed out the front of the car. Yes, after ALL that drama and worry...the car already had a block heater where its frost plug would be found somewhere deep with in the bowels of the engine compartment. Mmmhm. I got out of the mechanics shop for $102 bucks, about 1/4 of the amount I was expecting to spend! Crazy. Any embarrassment was wiped away by the savings.

Today, I was hoping to go to Juneau again for a visit and a little side job as a sewing machine courier. My former landlords down there run an electronics store with sewing machines as well as audio/video equipment. I was getting all excited for a round of thrift store shopping and some drive through coffee. Was. The fast ferry that's really for tourists in the summer couldn't sail again today. The same wind that brought the cold weather back stopped the boat...again.

Here's how I feel about having to stay here because the ferry can't sail:

Inauguration Day

Listening to the beginning of the new presidency on the radio, thrilling to the hope and new found pride. Mr. Obama has a rough road ahead of him, but it's a new road that doesn't lead to further isolation and humiliation. Thank goodness the times have changed.

heat wave!

I never thought I'd be so excited about rain. I mean, it's not like I'm a dry land farmer waiting to see if my years' crops will survive. It's not like I live in a desert, we make jokes here about "it's a rainforest, what do you expect?" It rains double, sometimes triple digits in southeast Alaska, I never thought I'd be so excited about rain. It takes temperatures in the mid 30's at least for rain to happen, it's a heat wave! I was sans long underwear for the first time in (what?) 2 months! The woodstove is able to keep the oil stove from clicking on and the floor is warm (ish).

Yesterday, at the store, the guy that fixed my hot water pipe back in September was looking haggard. He's one of those incredibly rare plumbers that will charge you less than you expect and do more than you asked. He has been crawling around under houses repairing frozen burst pipes for days. I'm almost glad the insulation under my floors is so scanty, it kept my pipes in tact.

December bjp offering

I didn't even start this cuff until December 15th or 16th, for some reason I lost momentum after the November one. I think it happened because I finished November so early, maybe?

I liked the way the paw prints on the November cuff sort of splashed in the dark blue beads so I tried to use that technique again. I'm not so sure it worked here except around the orange slice itself.

Maybe I should explain why an orange slice! Every year we get cases of Japanese mandarin oranges or California Satsumas here, really good, juicy oranges in the middle of winter are the best Christmas treat ever and one of the few traditions I've kept from my childhood. Tangarines/Satsumas/Mandarins all say "Christmas" to me.

Thanks me

Way back in September when I got my wood...remember the repeated "where's my wood" lament? Way back then, I gave myself a little gift. I took the time when I was stacking the mound of wood in the woodshed to chop a few of those logs a little smaller. On those warm damp stacking wood days, I thought "hmmm, there are going to be some not warm days when I'm going to wish for easy wood". Then I thought, f-- that, I'm beat up and tired of stacking wood so I'm going to stop with the little split wood gifties. Thank you to my months ago me for a scattering of already split wood!

Here's the woodshed of today, still plenty of wood and all but I'm down to those gift layers I left so long ago. So long ago, ha! A couple of months ago.

The view from here

View out my window right now...that's the growing drift of the car forming the background. In the foreground from left to right, a slide viewer, a plastic cup with felt circles in it, a jar of pens, a jar of needle work stuff, Pope Innocent, some spools of thread, Nancy Pearl (uber librarian in Seattle) and you bloggy friends. It's naasty weather out there and I'm happy to be in here playing blog post!

I often wonder what it is that Nancy and the Pope are debating, right now she has a pearl button on her finger so maybe they're talking about sewing.
These are the Chilkats again, massive mountain range that is between here and Glacier Bay. It was about 7 or 8 degrees this day...see the haze over the water? That's what happens when the air temperature is colder than the water temperature...it steams just like a pot of boiling water does, pretty cool eh?

not so overnight delivery (and return)

The last post showed you what the weather has been like around here...sort of. When it snows like that it's actually warmer! It's been cold, seriously cold, here. It got up into the 20's for a few days and I was thrilled that the car wouldn't be suffering so much. It's back to a low of 4ish and I'm worrying about the car again. So...I looked up block heaters on line and discovered, much to my joy, a magnetic block heater at J.C. Whitney. Joy because it doesn't involve surgery for the car, just a magnet an an extension cord and the oil is warm when the battery is trying to crank over a cold engine.

If anyone out there has the clue I was missing when I ordered this thing, dance a little dance of saving a load of money on shipping (23 bucks to the foreign country of Alaska) and another little dance of triumph because you KNOW what I forgot.

Long story longer...the 2 day delivery (for 23 bucks) of the product was more like a week but the post office came through and I got the Fed Ex package. Lesson #1 is a good one, you can make UPS and Fed Ex deliver even when they claim they don't even know your community exists, just put both the street address and your box number on the package.

I got the package, I was all excited, I was worried (mechanical stuff ya know) that I might screw it up...I waited til the next day, I bundled up, I dug out under the front of the car so I could mount the little heater on the oil pan where it's supposed to go. (bored yet?) I crawled under the car... the oil pan has a large sheet of plastic to protect it from debris and stuff when rocketing along the highways and by ways. Plastic is not magnetic at all.

Knowing I have trouble with the hood latch on a warm day with out gloves, I went inside to regroup and rebundle. I really hope that those of you that figured out the reality of all this stopped reading at "I got the package" Ok, I figured out the dangity dang hood latch, I propped open the hood, I looked at the little engine packed into the little space and wondered if there's even enough space on the sides to fit the little magnetic (get the problem yet?) heater. I reached, I groped I looked closely at the lovely little grey silver engine. I swore. I came inside and got a 'fridge magnet. It's a Subaru folks, it has an aluminum engine block.

overnight delivery

Between 8 pm and 8 am about a foot and a half of crazy fluffy white snow was delivered to my house! 5 degrees warmer and there's no way I could shovel the stuff, as it is, it was like moving potato flakes or some other sort of movie snow. (not that I've ever shoveled fake potato snow)

When the doggie and I walked this morning, the snow was up over the top of my boots and she had to snort to keep it from going up her nose as she ran through the (potato flakes) snow.

Again with the nature amazement.