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On a high line, on a high line

It’s been a long week. Various and assorted disasters awaited me at work (a simultaneous water leak AND gas leak in the same place! Hurrah!) and frankly I couldn’t wait for the weekend to get here, since it’s the first weekend in three, maybe four weeks that I’ve actually been home.

I’ve been futzing around with the cabochons I got online, using the Jewel-It glue, which really seems to create a good bond; I’ve tried prying off the things I’ve glued once everything has set, and I haven’t been able to move them, so that’s good! I would recommend using that glue, then. And I’ve been busy:

I’ve worn the top ring around, it’s quite nice, and I love the color. I just glued the two little white roses this morning – they will be earrings, but they need a day to set. And I haven’t decided what I will do with the large pendant with the ivory cabochon. It’s very nice, just not sure what I will incorporate with it. I’m definitely interested in keeping this going, I will just have to find more filigrees to glue stuff to. I got a few things at U Bead It last weekend (the oval containers you see in the top ring that the cab is set in).

I stopped at Michael’s sometime during the week and saw to my annoyance (heh) that they had a load of new things, including a new display showcasing turquoise, which is just my total weakness and I wound up getting some dangles – just turquoise enamel on metal parts, but there were some other nice actual rock pieces that I will snatch up when everything is on sale, as it inevitably will be. I made these earrings with some of the dangles:

These earrings are actually completely from Michael’s, so you can see what kind of cool stuff you can make from supplies purchased at big box stores. I already had the earring wires (my favorite – they are the “perfect” wires from the general findings section at Michael’s, I rarely have a problem with them falling out of my ears) the chandelier components, and the jump rings. I debated hanging something from the middle of the chandelier but liked how they looked bare more so I left it alone.

So today I don’t have much going on – I was going to go to Winco, but honestly I just want to stay home and veg, since I haven’t been able to do that in weeks. I might go make some rice and have chili beans and rice for an early lunch. That sounds really pretty delicious, actually.

Next weekend is STITCHES WEST and I am very stoked. I have been going steadily to this convention since 2005 (I missed in 2006 as I had just started working for Xerox in San Antonio – the year before I cut classes for two days and flew out for it, haha) and I’m excited for this year for no other reason than: I HAVEN’T BOUGHT YARN IN LIKE FOREVER WAITING FOR THIS DAY. Aside from a random Knit Picks order a few months ago and some sweet sweet Christmas yarn, I have been very good about holding off. In fact, I was a block away from Rumplestiltskin in Sac last weekend (at Waffle Square, enjoying a Bacon Waffle) and I didn’t go in. That’s hardcore, my peeps.

(I did, however, make Margie go to Bead Fetish downtown, hahaha.)

Anyway, so I am trying to finish my Brandywine shawl before I go – hopefully I will make good progress this weekend working on it. I need to finish it by Tuesday or Wednesday so I can block it. It’s about 2/3-3/4 done. I worked on it a lot last night while watching Fringe and Supernatural.

And with that, my rice maker is calling me…

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and all the trees in the field clap their hands

This month I have been through a lot, to say the least. I spent a lot of time with my cousins and drove around in the fog, in a fog. I bought two pairs of jeans off the internet that fit great, especially one pair was hemmed up by my illustrious momma. I went to Disneyland for seven hours and two baby showers. I saw Black Swan and ate a lot of Handi-Snacks. Readjusting my life has taken some… readjusting. I’m working on it.

I bought this on one of my mall trips:

Stretchy, plastic beaded bracelets, for about five bucks or so. I like the For Love 21 store, the accessory store for Forever 21. It has a lot of cute, cheap, junk that I don’t mind taking apart and making into things that are better:

Furthering my descent into plastic-mania (a long no-no in this household, but a rule I’ve been breaking lately), I bought some plastic flower things from Michael’s in the scrapbooking section and started gluing them on things:

Inspired by that success (I am using Aleen’s Jewel-It glue, which is pretty strong and seems to work just fine in terms of bonding plastic to metal) I ordered a bunch of resin cabochons from Snapcrafty on Etsy.

Those are so getting the glue treatment, believe you me. I love how they make easy statement rings.

I also got a bunch of bezel rings from Michael’s from the Industrial Chic line, which for the most part hasn’t interested me much (I’m not into found object stuff, to each their own), but I had purchased a resin kit at BABE! in November that I still haven’t used, but thought would be cool to try in the rings. I am not sure how that’s going to work at all, but I’m going to try it out later in the week.

This weekend I will be in Sacramento visiting with my friend Margie who is in town for training from San Antonio, and I plan to stop at U Bead It, my favorite bead store, for additional brass supplies to set the cabochons in.

Margie and I went to San Francisco this weekend. I don’t normally go to the city if I can help it, but we had fun. I hadn’t ever been to the Golden Gate Bridge recreational area, so we stopped there and then headed down to Fisherman’s Wharf and Pier 39, where we went to the Aquarium by the Bay. That was a little pricey but if you’re a fan of the underwater tubes where sharks and fish swim all around, I definitely recommend it.

It’s kind of amazing the sheer amount of things I packed into January. I can’t believe it’s February already.

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Every New Beginning’s End

Despite my optimism that 2011 would be a better year, and outlined how I thought I could make it better by making specific decisions on how I could do that, on January 5th, barely just a few days into the new year, I was kicked straight into a tailspin with a phone call from my sister at 9:30 p.m.

“The doctor just called Mom,” she said. “They’re saying Jason took a turn for the worse – it could be a matter of minutes.”

I had fallen down my back steps that morning. It was a foggy, slick, kind of icy morning, and I took the steps too fast, slipping on the rubber mat at the bottom and landing practically under my car, going down hard on my right knee and elbow. I’d managed to make it into work and through the work day, biting down hard on extra-strength, rapid-relief Tylenols like they were delicious candy.

By the end of the day, I was still in a fair bit of pain, and I knew that I would have to lie down. So when I got home, I did just that, thinking – Jason is in the hospital and I will see him tomorrow. My sister came by briefly to pick up something I had borrowed from her and told me that when she and my mom had been to the hospital that afternoon, he was doing good – better and lucid.

Jason had been admitted to the hospital on Monday with low blood oxygen. I had the day off from work, so I went to bring my mom some dinner when she called in the afternoon to say we couldn’t go to Costco that day like we had planned. Knowing how to circumvent Kaiser’s rather lax security procedures, I made my way past those into the ER and gave my mom a burrito and saw Jason.

I was there for awhile, and he was being crotchety, which was to be expected. At one point he noticed I was there, and said to me, “Hey, Babe! Weren’t you laid off?”

I responded with a “Uh, yeah, but I found a new job awhile ago,” and that was that. Due to lack of oxygen in his blood he was a little loopy but otherwise coherent.

The next day I went by to see him again, but they had put a full face mask of oxygen on him and he was sleeping, so I didn’t stay long. Then on Wednesday I fell down the back steps and went home after work to lie down, instead of the hospital, which was only a few minutes away from my work.

And then the call came. I had been dozing in front of the TV, my knee aching.

My stomach churning, my heart racing, I grabbed a jacket and ran. With a clarity I rarely see, I headed straight to the hospital; it only took me ten minutes on the freeway.

I was the first one there. And it was too late. He lay there quietly. The doctor said they thought a “catastrophic event” had taken him, a heart attack or something like that.

To say that I miss Jason is the understatement of the year. He was my grandfather, but he was also so much more than that – he was my friend, and he was always there for me and my family no matter what. He let me live with him twice. There will be a hole in my heart for him for the rest of my life.

I love you Jason.