New things in a new year.....

I finished beading this sunburst pin last night, so today I can work on getting the backing done.

This piece went so fast that it seems like I must have worked on it in my sleep or something. I can say that I think the idea I was testing is going to work just fine on the next piece I use it on.





Back in the fall, we went to gem show, and one of the items we purchased was a tumbler with 2 jars. The idea here was for the DH to be able to polish up the silver pieces he's been making by tumbling them with steel shot (a process that works really well, BTW)

Anyway, he decided to see what would happen if he actually did some rocks in the other jar, and this picture is just a few of the ones that came out of the project.

I pulled these out of the group for possibly using in the Let The River Run piece because they are similar in thickness (except for the really little ones) to the other pieces I'm working with for that. I'm going to try to do some work on that piece between the other small projects that I'm doing.

Along with the beading, I've managed to get a lot of the machine work done on the new animals we're working on. So here's the status of those projects:

small dog -- ready for closing and finishing
mouse -- DH is working on (he's hand stitching this one)
small wolf -- cut out
flamingo -- some stitching complete
open mouth bear -- machine stitching complete, hand work in process
black sheep -- some stitching complete
white sheep -- ready for turning and jointing
open mouth polar bear -- machine stitching complete, hand work in process
toucan -- laid out

So, progress being made there! Most of these are still in the "work I have to do to get to the fun part" stage, which is why I don't work on them straight through.

Today I'm doing laundry -- from the looks of it, about twice as much as usual for a week -- oh well. And this week will begin the mandatory work on taxes at least half an hour every day (this sort of self discipline is the only way I can get them done!)

Best go shift another load from the washer to the dryer and start sorting tax stuff...