Road trip

On Hwy 37, looking across the mud flats towards the San Francisco bay

Crossing the bridge over the north fork of the American River, just outside of Auburn

The creek I hiked down to in the El Dorado National Forest, still flowing despite the drought

Kelly before the start of the race

I took a little road trip this weekend with my boyfriend Kelly. He was riding in the Fool's Gold Enduro, which is a 100 mile dirt bike race, mainly on single track trails in the foothills outside of Auburn, CA. The trip was full of minor misfortunes and Kelly ended up crashing out of the race, giving himself quite a black eye. His knee is pretty sore too, but nothing appears to be broken, and we made it home in spite of the rear differential on the van sounding like a jack hammer for the entire drive. The way the weekend went I fully expected to arrive home in a tow truck! It was nice to get away, but after all that I'm glad to be home.

Barbara Simon workshop

A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of taking a two day workshop in San Francisco with Barbara Simon. She's been working with PMC since the very early days and she makes some amazing things! This is one of the two projects we did (I still need to finish up the other one.) We bent copper wire into a free form shape and draped a textured sheet of of clay over it. I used one of my own textures, a squiggly line that I never get tired of. After that dried, it was removed from the wire form and the back piece was cut out, following the edge of the front. Then the fun began - fitting the two pieces together with a mitered edge. It was a bit tricky at first, but once I really got what we were supposed to be doing I quite enjoyed it, and was able to make a really nice edge on the piece. It's all in her latest book, but if you have a chance to do a workshop with her I recommend it. She was a good teacher and shared lots of information with us. This piece is quite different than what I normally do, but that's what I like best about taking these workshops. I do something I might not otherwise try.

Fun with google analytics

Google analytics is an amazing free tool offered by google that tracks a ridiculous amount of information about who is looking at your website, how they got there and where they are from. Big brother really is watching you, and his name is Google!

One of the things I find really exciting is that people from all over the world see my work, which was not really even a consideration to most of us back in the olden days. It was all about craft fairs and getting into galleries and shops. That's all changed now, and I have sent my jewelry all over the planet. The map above shows where all the visitors to my Etsy shop have come from since the first of the year. Pretty amazing! Click on the map to see a larger version. The countries I haven't had visitors from are off white.

Boris the Spider

Continuing with the Halloween theme, here's Boris the spider. I don't usually give my pieces names like that, but I've had "Boris the Spider" by The Who playing in my head since yesterday, so it seemed fitting. He's available at my Etsy shop.