Odds and ends of the day

As you may recall my saying, mending is about my least favorite thing

Recent mending has taken on a whole new twist -- viewing a hole to be patched as a design opportunity is a whole new take on the chore

This is a velour blanket that I use over my legs when I'm sitting in my chair in the evenings

Thing is, it somehow developed one of those "L" shaped rips -- who knows how -- and I didn't want it to get any bigger

This was my solution -- a little bunch of purple grapes stitched over it --

now, I'll admit this took a bit more time than it would have taken to just zig zag it on the sewing machine, but this is prettier!

we made our trip to the second hand store and Tuesday Morning yesterday

This is the "haul"

The two glasses came from the second hand store -- it's hard to tell in the photo, but the taller one is a clear blue, but it has some really interesting textural patterning, which should be a good thing after it's tumbled. The gold glass also is heavily textured. I'm looking forward to seeing how these come out of the tumbling.

The three plates and the "basket" (?) came from Tuesday Morning, and were about the same price as the stuff in the second hand store. The orange plate has a little bit of texture on the back side, and the other three pieces have definate texture to them -- especially the purple plate which looks almost like hammered copper -- except it's purple glass!

I had hoped to find something pink or a "pretty" green (NOT olive), but had no luck with those -- oh well, there are always other trips

I also looked at some pieces that were cut or pressed glass with some really nice patterns, but most of those are so thick that I'm not sure how I would handle a controlled breaking of them.

So now I will be cleaning all the stickers/marker off the glass and finding a hammer! Oh yes, figuring out some way to organize the broken pieces -- both before and after tumbling!

While I was in Tuesday Morning I also found two jars of size 11 seed beads -- each of them weighing over 250 grams -- and they were only $2 each. This brings the net cost of those beads to about a penny a gram -- for that low price, I can definately sort the colors as I work!

While I was walking around in the second hand store looking for glass to break, I found this

Since there will be times that my new grand dog will be coming to visit, I decided that it would be good to have a dish for her here just like I do for the first grand dog

This was just tooooo cute to pass up, and it's heavy pottery and just the right size for a small dog



and then there was this

freshly placed on the magazine rack of the local grocery store (I never know what I'll find there!)

this issue is pages and pages of beady goodness --- about half a dozen new projects to try -- and that's just the ones I can try right away because I just happen to have the right kind of supplies on hand (the joy of a good sized stash!)

mmmmmmm, got to love getting new inspiration!

time to go get some breakfast and start in on all those projects