I am OFFICIALLY old!

Yup - it's my birthday.  Kind of a non-starter really but I am going to go and have a crafting evening with my best friends in Deer Park today.  Can't think of a better way to celebrate.  Should I take my wheel? My loom? Knitting? It would only be better if my twin sis, Lya, could be here with me.  Happy birthday sis! 

Funny thing is that I just don't feel an age...some days I feel like I'm still wet behind the ears and sometimes it seems like I've been there and done that.  I do hope to have many, many more years to ponder the meaning of life though.  It's never easy but it's always interesting!

We make the most of it (well, we try, I think) and this week I've been up to my eyebrows in websites, weaving, and listing items in my Etsy store.  Here are a few goodies - http://janellezorko.etsy.com/.  This isn't really meant to be an ad but I so rarely post my work, I thought you might like to see it.

Thanks to everyone today for the happy thoughts and well wishes - I appreciate every one of them!

Family Tree

So, finished A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon this week - no small feat.  I adore this series.  It's a story of time travel mixed with historical fiction and each huge book keeps me completely riveted to the end.  In these books A LOT is said about the clans of Scotland.  Since I became a weaver (ha!) last week, I started thinking...hey...somewhere on my mom's side, I think I'm Scots Irish...yeah...I wonder what my tartan woud be...I wonder if I could weave it...

So I call my mom and say, "What do you think our clan name would be if we could trace the ancestry?"  Keep in mind that most of my family is Hungarian or Austro Hungarian or German.  There's something like 1/16th that might be Scottish.  She decides that it might be "Dalrymple" from her father's mother's side.  He ended up with some middle names that included "Augustus Dalrymple" - of whom, it turns out in my research, there really was one mentioned in history.

Soooo, I look up the tartan and guess what?  No disrespect intended...none at all, but I'm not sure I like it.  It's not horrible and I may still try to weave it but here it is -

Well, you can't choose your family - but maybe you can at least find out who they were.  I'm going to research them further.  Maybe it's that I have a milestone birthday coming up - maybe it's that I think it would be a shame to forget.  No matter what, it's bound to be interesting!

Weaving and Bobbing Along

What a few weeks!  I find all of the sudden that I have more time on my hands for various reasons.  That is good and bad.  More time often comes with less money, know what I mean? 

The good part is that true to my "serial hobbyist" moniker, I have now taken up weaving!  I had to go and do it - I found a used loom on Ebay.  Yes, like I needed another hobby...  It sat on the dining room table oh, for about 5 minutes, before I started pouring over the manual to learn how to warp it up.  Those people at Ashford really know how to write an instruction booklet and within an hour, I was ready to weave!  I wove and I wove...and I wove some more and finished a scarf, this time for ME (I tend to give away everything I make).  I was very excited to have finished something without any help and I think it looks pretty good!

Someone who does not look pretty good?  Why, that would be Beanie, my normally fluffy, fluffy Persian kitty boy.  However, around this time of year, he starts to get more than a little matted and being the declawed guy that he is, he bites like a son of a gun when brushed.  So, off he went to Grrs and Purrs for a little salon time.  Poor dude - does he look silly or what?  He's cold all the time now but the sweater lasted all of about 10 minutes as he kept walking backward, thinking that would get him out of it.  He's my boy - no matter what he looks like!

Back to (cold) reality...

Back home and while I truly didn't buy any souvenirs, I got one anyway. I believe I brought some Mexican bug with me. Anyone who knows me, knows that if I have no appetite, I must be sick!
Came home to a cold house - the furnace had decided to go out while I was gone. Again, I can probably thank my lucky stars that it wasn't the middle of winter. The pests were so happy to see me. No matter what the temperature, it's a warm welcome when you have two dogs, four cats, three rabbits and a fish vying for your attention. Annie did some might fine dancin' and Beanie McPhee asked to be picked up and purred up a storm - makes my heart hurt!

Zippy!

As my birthday present (a bit early), my mom paid for me to go on a zip lines/canopy tour.  It was awesome!  The tour I took was the "Canopy Veranos" trip.  We left the hotel at about 9:30am and headed up into the mountains south of Puerto Vallarta.  It was a nice, air conditioned tour bus - for which I was eternally grateful, given the heat this week.  It took a considerable amount of time to get up to the tour site due to road construction and generally bad, narrow and bumpy roads.  The trip is gorgeous though so even the rough ride was ok.

 

Got to the place and had a good training on how to ride the zip lines.  Cute guides who all spoke English reasonably well.  We were outfitted with harnesses in good condition, helmets and gloves.  We flew through the air on zip line after zip line, crossing over people below us at times.  The zip lines were hard-earned as we had to climb some pretty steep stairs and steps built into the mountainside.  The air rushing across my face as I "zipped" helped to dry some of the sweat worked up from the climb.

Being the animal lover that I am, I'm not sure if I enjoyed the zip lines more or the end of the tour at which you could actually feed spider monkeys, coatimundi and pygmy marmosets.  Very cool! 

I came "home" to the hotel at 3pm happy and tired and very glad I went!

Janelle

P.S.  The pygmy marmoset looks kinda sad, but rest assured, they were fat and seemed very happy with all the attention they receive.

Same day...new cat!

Ok - had to check in again because I got a picture of my Gattito friend.  He's a sweetie pie.  He enjoyed a little snack of kitten Friskies.

It's a lazy Mexican day...

See?  Even Hector, the Iguana thinks so!  Actually, our traveling companions seem to have gotten a touch o' the "Revenge" today.  I seem to have escaped unscathed - but nonetheless, kind of lazy.  Getting lots of reading done and now I'm out on the balcony watching the clouds roll in.  I think we might be in for a bit of a storm.   

I made reservations for a "Canopy Tour" on Thursday.  14 zip lines - gonna be fun!

On the Road Again...Hola!

I can't believe it's finally here - my biennial trip to Puerto Vallarta with my mom and her friends.  Actually, "biennenial" isn't quite right. Last year, the conditions just weren't happenin' for either of us and we ended up just visiting each other.

  

So, sand and surf and almost unbearably hot weather the first day or so but it's better today and I'm sitting on the balcony watching the iguanas in the trees, seeing peacocks on the resort grounds strut their stuff and obviously, checking in.  Went up to the Gigante supermarket this morning.  I missed it on the bus because it has apparently changed its name.  Came home and got in the pool for a bit.  Not quite lobster-ish yet but I can tell it's coming despite the lavish use of sunscreen.  Blame my heritage for the pasty whiteness.

More pix soon,

Janelle

Always in Catch Up Mode...

Hey! Where is the time going? I feel like I'm always in catch up mode - you know what I mean? Just some quick updates. Made it through August with all the shows and such. Sales - way, way down. Partly because I didn't have a lot of time to make inventory, partly because people just aren't buying. Who can blame them? We're in interesting economic times. I'm working on an article for the Women in Glass issue of Flow Magazine. Fun fun - it will have something to do with marbles and something to do with electroforming - couple of hints for you! It seems I'm connecting with friends from my past. Last weekend, I was visited from dear old friends from Seattle and today, I got a wonderful surprise from a friend in Singapore who I met 20 years ago. So nice to hear from him again! So, what's on the horizon? Article writing, maybe some teaching. Beadmaking and spinning when I have time and a trip to Puerto Vallarta in October. More soon! Janelle

August is BUSY!

Obviously, I made it back from the Con - tired and happy, I might add. On Sunday, we wandered the somewhat less crowded vendor floor once again, haunting the book publisher booths. Picked up some authors I haven't read - now I just have to find the time to actually READ! I started a "real" job this week, which means more social interaction, more brain stimulation, (more money =) but decidedly LESS time. Oh well - it happens. Next week is the International Society of Glass Beadmakers big get together (a.k.a. the Gathering) in Oakland, CA. I am the merchandise coordinator so I'll be occupied. It's wonderful to see people once a year though and along with that comes with getting to see some real talent and beautiful beads. When I get back, I'll immediately get ready for "Glass on the Grass" - a nice outdoor show at Gonzaga University in Spokane and then a weekend later is the Arbor Crest Winery show - at which I'm also a vendor. Someday I'll find time to take and post pix of the beads...maybe that day will come this weekend. We'll see!