Fall Harvest Festival This Weekend

See the poster on the right side of your screen? The one from Geo Spencer Vineyard with the fun art on it? This Sunday is the Fall Harvest Festival - it will be a grape stomping~cork tossing~craft fair shopping~wine tasting~jazz playing~good time!! Come see me there. I'll be in the big white tent with my friend Shelley {if I can talk her into coming along - "I'll buy you wine"} It's really beautiful out there - for more information on the festival, go here: Geo Spencer Vineyard.

Zen Jelly

YUM! and look at that color!

...and now I'm going to go pick the rest of the wild plums and make wine out of it!

***From now on - when I go to the Farmer's Market and buy a jar of jelly that is marked $3.75, I will give the vendor $25.00 and tell her she is just not charging enough!***

Open Houses, Jellies, Bucket Head

This morning I had my third Open House this week - Thank you to Becky and to Dawn who opened their homes and let me put trays and trays of soldered charms about. AND - to Pat at the Liberty House who let me set up for a wonderful group of Quilters from "Out West" to shop. Thanks especially to all the wonderful people I met this week and for supporting my habit!

The above picture is part of my display at Liberty House this morning.... When I got home I decided to catch up on a few things and to learn how to make JELLY. I don't even eat jelly, but would like to know how to make it. These are some wild plums I picked from the wild plum thickets on the North part of our acreage. {We call that area Widow's Point because when Tim spontaneously combusts, I'm going to build a log cabin on that 3 acres, move the chickens up there and sell everything else. Outrageous since we all know that Tim will probably outlive me by 50 years...} anyway - IF the jelly turns out, I'll share a picture of it. If it doesn't...just imagine how pretty it would have been.

After cutting up the plums and throwing the weird pieces in the 'scratch bucket', Rumple and I took them out for Cocky Rocky, Crazy White Chick, Mildred and the rest of the girls to enjoy. Rumple's job is to carry the bucket back to the house. He takes this very seriously and is quite proud of himself when he gets there without getting his head stuck in it.

Giving it 100%

What a good day! There were a dozen eggs! That means the chickens each laid an egg today - it's the first time that's happened and I am proud. AND - I just got the mail and there was a card from my son - that's a million times better than a dozen eggs! The large pear shaped egg is a pear. Some days are just better than others, aren't they?

Hightened Security at USB Ports Will Do it Everytime

OK - I got it figured out finally. I swear I just lost two days of work trying to figure out why my scanner, my card reader and my jump drive wouldn't work. Then this morning when it took 2 hours to print one document, I knew I had to take action. blah blah blah....now it's fixed. So - in celebration I played with the scanner and printer and other things that hadn't been working and look what I did:

This is my friend Pat when she was quite little

This is my friend Pat when I was done with her...

Now she just needs a Crown, some sparkles, and she's ready to play!

Double Ding-Dang It

It's not that I don't want to blog...it's just that my computer is on the fritz...Six USB ports and none of them seem to be working.

I'll just keep on soldering and canning and starting fires. Hope you're all having a lovely fall so far - it's beautiful weather here at Two Dog Pond.

Always Creating More Work for Ourselves

You say Tomato, I say Enchilada Sauce. Aloha taught me how to can last week. So far I've made Tomato Soup, Spaghetti Sauce and Enchilada Sauce. It's sort of scary, but unlike the 'big boys' that scared the country with their dirty jalepenos, my canning only has the possiblity of taking out 4 or 5 people... you might not want to come to my house on Italian or Mexican night until we've thoroughly tested my new canning skills...
I know, they look kind of trashy now, but my friend Dawn gave us four old bed springs so I can take them apart and make 500+ hanging candle holders like the ones I sold on the 4th of July. Luckily they don't show up from the house - you have to sneak up on them...
If anyone has any ideas for these springs, I would love to hear them!

Soldering My Head Off

inventory....
more inventory....

lots of special orders including these wine bangles....

and one-of-a-kind necklaces.

County Fair Time

~ Love it when Farm Fowl dresses up for the Fair!~

This was the first time in my life that I have ever entered anything in a County Fair...{growing up I don't think we ever even went to one} ...anyway - imagine my double-D-lite when I saw that I won some ribbons! My wine labels took First and Second place and my stained glass entry earned a first place ribbon and a 'rosetta'. I also entered a bottle of rhubarb/grape wine, but when the judge pulled the cork out, there was a bunch of pressure in the bottle and the cork almost took his eye out....points were taken off for the wine being bottled too early, but still got a second place ribbon. {the fact that mine were the only two labels entered and there were only 8 bottles of wine entered helped immensely!}

Rumple for Eliot

...just for you, ET.

Steampunk

Jill informed me that the style of jewelry I've been making is called "Steampunk". I had no idea what that meant, so looked it up - and it is! I've been thinking about it and think that my favorite show growing up being 'Wild Wild West' must have influenced me more than I realized. I loved Jim West and Artemis Gordon and all the cool tools and watches and inventions...heck, what little girl didn't? Right? {That and Jim West's leather pants...}

Anyway - I've been at some auctions and estate sales and rummaging around for 'stuff' to solder on, wire, epoxy, altar, upcycle, etc and here's part of my pile...

...hmmm...now I need some cool goggles to wear.

I just used up all my words for the day.

Butterflies

They are everywhere...