Myrtle Beach - 3 days away

We will be heading to Myrtle Beach on Thursday to visit my father-in-law and we're taking our Winnebago and staying at the Myrtle Beach RV park. It is right on the ocean and under a mile from a campground we used to camp at when we were kids, which has the longest fishing pier on the East Coast - more about that later.

Last weekend Gerald washed and waxed her and she is all pretty and shiny. Yesterday afternoon we packed linens, made the bed and cleaned out and rearranged the outside compartments- we had a lot of things we never used and everything is now more efficient.

This will be our first trip since our new floor was put in, now the only carpet is under the slide and in the drivers part of the cabin.

I plan to knit on the way down. I would like to finish my Daria purse, http://www.ravelry.com/projects/christinak/daria-purse, on this trip - I already packed it up. I know I won't knit a lot while I am there or at least until after the sun sets because if the sun is out and it is warm or hot I will be outside.

I packed my fishing poles, too. I like to fish more than Gerald does but he keeps me company, takes the fish off the hook, cleans and cooks them - what more can a girl ask for?

Viking knitting, band aids, and roses.

Monday was good - went to Williamsburg for my lace group meeting. We did Viking Knitting, we had all taken the same class (although we did not know each other at the time) three years ago but none of us had done it since then. It is done on a dowel or hex wrench. The tape at the end just holds the wire on. When finished you pull it through a hole in a dowel in everything evens out. Once you get the first couple of rows done it is easy. Check out page 2 of this link and see the end results http://www.fineartbyrocio.com/vikingknitdirections.html
Late afternoon I went to Glitz and Tommy gave me a great haircut - 3" off feels so good.

Tuesday - this is where the week started to go downhill - if I picked it up I dropped, spilled it or broke it. Not exactly the day I was looking forward to getting blood work done.... but I went to Labcorp (read that as vampire center) on Midlothian signed in and started reading a Janet Evanovitch. About 70 pages later (and trying not to laugh out loud) I looked around and everyone was still there. 2:30pm, an hour later and no one had left the waiting room - there was only one technician. Now I have really tiny veins so I decided by the time it was my turn that would be one grumpy technician so I checked out. I went across town to pick up a piece of glass I ordered and decided to try the the location on Forest Avenue. I only waited only a few minutes and and everyone was pleasant - the technician had "the hand" because I did not even feel the pinch of the needle going in. If you need blood drawn go there. I started to get a migraine on the way home as the barometer was dropping for the evening thunderstorm. I decided to make something to go in the kiln but wound up with 3 band aids from glass cuts. I did not make it to TNK.

Yesterday got better after playing in the garden and cutting roses to bring in I put the designs elements on a plate I had fused and experimented with a new firing schedule so that it would remain 3 dimensional - took it out this morning - success! Here it is - I need to take a better picture but I want to get started priming the hall wall. Wish you could smell the roses.

Nancy sent me a picture of a windchime she is working on - there is a caterpillar on the leaf but I can't see it in the picture. Today she is having a root canal but is here on Friday for a weekend of "fusing fun."

Busy weekend,shawl almost done & scary glass

I am almost finished with the Prayer Shawl - I got all the rows finished on our trip Sunday (more about that below) and last night Patsy showed me the magic to create the fringe. I'm almost done.

We started off the weekend early by going to the Greek Festival on Thursday evening - good food and we always see people we haven't seen in a while. Friday afternoon I drove to Chapel Hill where I met up with 3 of my bobbin lacing friends with whom I went to the NCRL Spring Lace Day on Saturday. We stayed at a hotel in Graham, NC and ate dinner on the patio of a local restaurant in the tiny downtown. Saturday we drove into Chapel Hill for lace day - it was fun. I bought bobbins from my favorite vendors, a wooden one from Richard Worthen and from Susan Wenzel (aka Lacy Susan) a lovely carved bone and a glass one, which I will need to spangle with beads. Aren't they pretty?

On Sunday Gerald and I went to the Chrysler Musuem to view more of the art of glass exhibit, we got there late and they gave us a discount so we plan to return on Friday. There is an entire room of the works by an artist from Italy, Lino Tagliapetra who at 74 is still creating incredible works of art. http://http//www.linotagliapietra.com/ but pictures do not even begin to do his work justice.

Some of the glass I made during the week - I have more but have not taken pictures.

Blues and greens: I really like dichroic glass and my favorite combinations are blues, greens and purples followed my the red, orange and golds. It was the first that I played with last week. Dicro is difficult to photograph because it reflects ligth every which way, but that is why it is so nice to wear.

It is only one pair of earrings but I took pics at diffrent camera angles. The center is blues and purples.

After making the shawl pin for Cathy I got on a pink binge and made a few pendants then since I put blue stringer in one of the pendants I was going to make earrings to match but that blue and green thing I have took over. I have been trying different ways to make the jewelry look good in phots and used a milk glass dish that belonged to my mother but I think I need to arrange the beans better if I want to use it. I like black beans because they do not create more of a reflection..and they make great soup too.

What was I thinking! I really really want to like frit - it is so pretty in jars and bags but just does not work when I use it. I could see them as buttons on some voodoo doll.