I am getting my first view of my living room with painted walls. The painters were there on Wednesday, the day I left for Oakland. Thanks for taking and posting the pictures, sweetie!

Although the room could use some straightening, sweetness. :D


Here's my first view of the progress on the bead cottage. It looks like a building! Hooray!




OK, so here I am in Oakland, California. The people here are extremely friendly, helpful & nice. It stuns this New Englander when people are not afraid to talk to you even if they don't know you. And the weather is fantastic. A touch on the cool side, which for August is fabulous. I wanted to drink the air it was so cool and crisp. If I weren't building a bead cottage I'd move here in a heartbeat. LOL.

Today construction started. This is the first wall going up.


And here is the progress so far. It looks like it's going to be pretty crappy weather the rest of the week so progress may be minimal, but it doesn't matter because I will be away and the less I have to miss the better.
I made some nice beads for trades today. I will have a good number with me in Oakland. So wish me bon voyage because my next post will be from the Gathering in Oakland.

I was giving Barney his eye medicine when I glanced out the living room window to see the sun's rays streaming through the trees. I ran upstairs to get the camera and then outside in my jammies to snap this picture. I love seeing the sun's rays coming through clouds or through trees. When I was deep in the throes of mourning for my father, they comforted me and made me think that there is something more to this life -- that somehow they were his message to me that he is OK and is watching over us.

Happy Birthday, Martha! I hope you have a wonderful day.

We've been stuck in a rut weather-wise since last Friday. Rain, rain and more rain. It's doing a number on my bead cottage because it is putting off other projects which in turn put off my project. So rather than the end of this week, it looks like building will start the middle of next week if I'm lucky and the weather cooperates. So say a prayer, keep your fingers crossed, light a candle, and do an anti-rain dance.

Arthur the electrician is here fixing my plugs in my garage studio, so now I will be able to make beads at last. It's been too long and I've been jonesing, especially now that things around here are nice and quiet for the time being. It's a perfect opportunity to create. I have nothing scheduled for tomorrow, so I think I have a date with my torch and kiln.

Another haiku

I took a nice nap
So that I could watch the game.
Is it 10:10 yet?

A haiku

West coast road trips suck.
What happened to the Bullpen?
Lester takes the mound.

Happy Birthday Elizabeth!

It has been a very relaxing weekend. Friday night I put the dogs in the kennel and drove to Northwood Lake to spend the weekend with my mother and sisters and niece. I've been relaxing, reading and watching baseball pretty much the whole time. The weather has been hot and muggy but the airconditioning takes care of that nicely. Today is the same, hot and muggy but also cloudy and raining. Go figure.

Today, one of my favorite people in the whole world turns three. Happy Birthday, Elizabeth! We celebrated her birthday with a party for the family last night. She got some great books and 2 princess dresses. Today she has been impressing everyone by going around saying "Dammit, my hat is missing." We are trying to ignore her foul language and to not encourage her by laughing, but it's hard not to! It's so funny when she does that. There's a good reason that I'm not a parent.

I can has lumber?

Today we got a delivery of a bunch of lumber for the bead cottage. It wasn't delivered by crane, but by moffett, a kind of piggy-back forklift. It was kind of fun. I'd like to drive around town in one of these things.

After the delivery came, I met my mom, sister and niece at the Backroom for dinner and then my sister, niece and I went to the NH FisherCats game. It was a beautiful evening. And it satisfied my jones for some baseball during this baseball-free week.

The view from our seats:


Sarah and Elizabeth sharing an ice cream:
A very excited fan:I left around 9:30. I was hoping to see the moon rise over centerfield, but the moon didn't cooperate. It rose behind the stands instead.

Weekend

We had a great weekend. Sunday we went to Fenway again. This time the Red Sox won! Yippee! And now they are at the top of their division at the All-Star break. That totally rocks. It was a gorgeous day-- nice and warm if a little humid but there was such a refreshing breeze it blew away the stickiness. This was the view from my seat:
Notice anything missing? Like maybe the batter? The catcher? The home plate umpire? I had the perfect non-view of home plate. If I leaned forward to where my nose was almost touching the person in front of me, I could almost see a righty batter. Forget about trying to see a lefty. It kind of stunk, but I felt fortunate to be there in the crowd anyway. It was a lot of fun.

Manny went into the wall again during a pitching change. This is him coming out.
(I deleted a big whine here about the all-star break and about west coast road trips)

As far as the bead cottage goes, there won't be too much progress this week as Keith and Charlie have to work on some other projects before building starts here. I do hear that we may get some lumber drops, though. They might be blog-worthy. Maybe they'll use a crane.

Well slab man Steve has come and gone. I was considering placing some beads in the slab but couldn't make up my mind. I didn't want to mar the perfect finish. It was so smooth and nice. When Steve left for lunch I went out there and tested the slab and even if I wanted to there was no way to put a bead in. That stuff was like a rock already. It's too bad because I had the perfect beads to place in there. They were beads with sayings like "joy" and "dream" and "create" -- perfect for a bead cottage.

This morning slab man Steve showed up along with another cement mixer to pour the slab. It was pretty exciting to watch. Here's the cement being poured into the forge area:


Even Barney was fascinated with the goings-on:

Here's a close-up of the cement pouring out:

And the almost-finished product (slab man Steve had run out for coffee so I snapped a pic):

This morning Keith put up our new canine containment system. We tested it out and it works! No dogs escaped. Until the filling in of the foundation, the hills of sand plus a wheelbarrow and a couple of sawhorses worked to contain the beasts. After the hills were flattened we were forced to break out the leashes. This would be fine if we had normal dogs, but Barney will not do anything on a leash. Anything. It's a nightmare when we travel with them, and we cancelled our plans to bring the dogs to Bar Harbor pretty much for that reason. You have to wonder what goes through these dogs' heads. You know?

So I came home from my nail appointment and there was a Slab Man in the driveway, taking a look around. He told me they'd be back tomorrow to put in the slab.

Oh it's a beautiful day and no one is around so I'm sneaking off to the garage to make some beads.

I took these pictures seconds before a storm blew up, so it was quite dark out. The excavating - or filling in - is finished. The foundation is completely filled up and ready for the cement slab. Here's the typical shot I've been taking:

And a close up of the bead shop area. the forge is straight ahead and the storage area is to the left.


And a shot from the porch. The dark dirt is new topsoil and the lighter area is where the patio is going to be.

And then I had to run inside because it was thundering.

Yesterday, the insulation guys came and sprayed the foundation with a coat of this icky black gooey stuff. Then they insulated the foundation with baby blue styrofoam boards. The boards are scored to allow the water to drain.

When I came outside to take pictures, I saw a sock that was left in the foundation (I later found out this sock was Artie the plumber's sock. This was not the sock he was wearing - I asked. He was using it to wipe up the PVC glue he was using on the conduit) and that gave me an idea. I threw a bunch of beads into the foundation to be sealed in forever. I always end up with a ton of extra beads that aren't good enough to sell or are experiments and I finally figured out what to do with them. Here's one:
This morning the man from the excavators came over to mark where to fill the foundation and he told us that the Indian people he has worked for put gems in their foundations. Cool! They also fly their house plans to India to have them blessed. I didn't get my plans blessed and now I wish I had.

So here they are backfilling the foundation. I got the stinkeye from a couple of the people - especially Mr. Bosnia - but that didn't stop me from watching them. I love watching machines at work. I just wish they needed a crane.

They are almost finished. They just have to back fill the studio room.

Bead Cottage it is

The other day Keith asked me what we are going to call the new building, because he said they wanted to call it the same thing. He and Charlie have been calling it the "bead shop and forge" in all the documents and technical stuff. I told him I didn't know what we were going to call it. For a while I was calling it the Bead Hut and sometimes the Bead Shed and of course here I was calling it the Bead Cottage. I have been going around and around with different names in my head for the last few weeks, not knowing what to pick.

Last night my friend Amy emailed me and told me she liked that I was calling it the Bead Cottage. Yay! One vote for the Bead Cottage!

Then this evening, my mother told me how much she likes the name Bead Cottage! Double yay! Another vote for the Bead Cottage!

So Bead Cottage it is!

First things first. I re-checked my blog's reading level, and I've gone up a notch to Junior High School. Whackadoo! This makes me very happy and I suspect it's because I recently used the words "auspicious" "fascia" and "nosing". I should have thrown in "parge" but I couldn't think of it at the time I was writing the entry.

I have more pictures of the bead cottage's progress. They took off the board-thingies and now it's just bare naked cement (or is it concrete? I'm never sure). Anyway, here it is:





Keith ran some conduit through the sleeves and when I saw those tubes sticking up I knew I had just the thing for it:


Fly your flags proudly this weekend, whichever nation you belong to. Happy 4th of July! And GO RED SOX!

More pictures! Yay! Today the cement peeps took off the forms on the footing and put up the forms for the foundation walls. It started out nice for the concrete pour, but 10 minutes into it and we could hear the rumble of thunder approaching. It poured buckets and I felt bad for the men working outside. Once they start pouring they have to keep going. Here's a picture of the beginning of the pour:
And here's the finished product. Well, with the forms still on. Tomorrow they are going to strip the forms and then next week they'll insulate and seal the foundation and then back-fill it.
I put a penny in the cement. Charlie said it was a tradition in construction brought over from ship-building. I have no idea why you do this but it seems like an auspicious thing to do. I googled it and found this quote: "As part of the ceremony, coins were placed under the keel block in a practice which recreates a longstanding tradition whereby shipbuilders hide special coins in the keel section of a ship as a permanent symbol of good fortune and safe travels." So I sealed a penny in the foundation to symbolize good fortune, creativity and inspiration.

I need to learn the lingo of construction. The meaning of words like "nosing" and "fascia" elude me, but apparently regular words also have construction-specific meanings. Take "tomorrow" for example. I have learned that "tomorrow" can mean the next day, but it also can mean the day after the next day. We'll see if that's the case "tomorrow". :D

This morning the cement people came and set up the forms for the cement footing of the studio. This truck showed up and poured the cement into the forms. It was very exciting.

This is the finished form with the footings. It'll dry overnight and tomorrow the foundation will get walls. Now you can see the separate rooms. The closest room is the storage; the further and largest room is the bead studio and the room on the left is Robert's forge area.

All this nice cement will be covered up with dirt. Back-filled, they call it. The building will be resting on this nice foundation.

We've just been through a huge ordeal. We lost our cable and internet for 5 days! It was horrible, being without baseball and without the web. Our house got struck by lightning, or at least we suffered a power surge and knocked out some lights and the cable. What a nightmare. It's back now and we're in business again.

But on a happier note, we broke ground on the bead cottage. Tuesday night they dropped off this machine to dig out the hole for the foundation:


Here it is grading the backyard and starting to dig the hole:

Here is the hole after the first day. The view is from ground-level.

Here's a view from the bedroom. It's not all the way dug out yet. This is Wednesday afternoon:

Thursday morning they came and finished the digging. Here's the hole from the ground level, looking toward the house.
No one came to work here on Friday, except Keith. I guess it's cause it's summer and Friday. They'll be here on Monday to start the foundation.