Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all--hope you are having a great day and Santa was good to you. We are in San Diego with family...the day is beautiful and the company the best. Beside Santa's appearance I love Christmas as it gets me thinking about my Savior and the path He walked from baby to His ascension from the cross.

Bangle Class

Last evening taught four very creative gals how to twist 16 gauge wire into coiled beads and "string" them onto a 14 gauge mandrel to form a bangle. I love teaching...it gets you in the company of motivated and creative people... it allows you to nuture their creative process...it feeds my creative process. The bangles were awesome!

By the way the crockpot roast was a hit...next we try crockpot lasagne!

Crockpot Cooking

This is totally off subject but I am a huge fan of crockpot cooking. I hate stopping what I am doing at 5 p. or so to fix dinner but I love putting it all together first thing in the morning before I start the day. So...I found this blog called A Year of Slow Cooking--what a concept--and am trying one of the recipes today--Super Simple Cranberry Roast. I am using a pork roast that I got on sale last week at Staters. The blog is now in my favorites list...will let you know how it turned out and my family's reaction.

Forged Cross Class and Horse Time

Last night Dana and I meet at Garden of Beaden and I taught her how to make the forged cross. After we finished our crosses Irene brought out a gel liver of sulfur and we experimented with it. At first nothing seemed to happen until we remembered that LOS needs to be warm to work. So out came the torch and presto we had a reaction. Dana used silver plated wire for her piece and it appears that the LOS ate some of the silver plating. However the effect was very attractive so it was a serendipitous event.

Today I took my horses, Max and Breezy, to West Cajon to get their feet trimmed and to do a little ground work with them. They are getting to be such good horses. Being out with the horses is the most relaxing thing I do.

New Design

I am working on several new designs, the cross is one of them. My first attempt at this design was in four pieces and it proved to be unstable so I had to rethink the design and came up with an armature using a single piece of wire. Getting the mechanics of a design right is almost as satisfying to me as the artistic aspects. Anyway, I will be teaching this design at the Garden of Beaden in Upland on Tuesday December 8 at 6 p.m.