Seven, Eight

Lay them straight...

Let me tell you about the ridiculous travel this past weekend. I booked tickets from Newark NJ to Spokane, WA on Delta. I selected seats and everything was cool. Until I checked us in. My seat selections were changed. Crap. I tried to change them back over the internet. No such luck. I tried upgrading our seats to first class (usually about $200-$300/ea with United, and totally worth it for a 4-5 hour flight) $984 each through Delta. Are you serious? Holy WTFBBQ Batman?! Not that into first class folks. I then asked the agent if it was possible to just get seats together on the plane. No I cannot help you was the response. OK...Just out of curiosity, I looked at prices for first class on the internet. It would have only been $940 ea to purchase them there. Something wasn't right with the customer service agent. I called them back. This agent told me $1650 each to upgrade. Nevermind. She also told me my best bet for changing seats would be to get to the airport early, which I do anyway. Methinks I was getting the runaround. We ended up asking someone on the plane to switch. He was more than happy to trade his middle for my aisle. The second leg of our journey went a bit better-the gate agent was more than happy to move our seats so we were together. The guy next to me was deathly allergic to cats though, which he should have mentioned when we asked "you aren't allergic are you?" But he got moved after the sneezing and gagging and wheezing...and we got to sit next to a Crazy Cat Man. (We've all heard of the Crazy Cat Lady?-this must have been her brother :) )
The fight back was interesting-we were delayed out of Spokane due to copious snow in Salt Lake City. This resulted in our missing our flight out of Salt Lake and having to get a hotel for the night. Thank goodness we brought a real cat box, and not just the butchered (disposable) Fed-Ex box we had used on the way to Spokane. Kitty litter always gets searched at security, FYI. We got a whole row of three seats on our new flight back to NJ though, so everyone was happy.

Marvin the Cat-Beast doesn't mind flying. He was better behaved than most of the kids on the planes...He doesn't care for going through security, as he equates it to being snuggled (a cruel punishment for a cat-beast.) He also learned that his Auntie Rascal is a grumble butt and a mouthful of her long tail fur sticks to one's tongue and is hard to spit out. He spent much of the weekend following her around saying "will you play wif me now"? to which she would reply "grrrrrrrr". He seemed to have fun though, and is all pooped out.

We had an awesome time visiting the Husbeasts family. His dad does the best smoked turkey ever. And his mom made 6 pies. Six! and all sorts of other wonderful delicious whatnot. I also went cross country skiing for the second time ever. Husbeast thought it was great fun watching me fall down. 2.5 miles of skiing. 2 miles of which was a long hill. He also couldn't tell me how to stop or slow down. Apparently the best way to go about it is to just fall down once in a while if you're going too fast.

The good thing about long flights is the amount of time one can spend beading.
The bad thing is that one's camera and phone are in the overhead. You'll just have to take my word for it that I really did make a seventh ornament. But since it's the internet, I guess "pics or it didn't happen" is in effect.

It was a silver ornament, overlayed with cream 1.5mm cubes in a netted pattern with silverlined purple 11/0s at the points. It had a swatch of purple acrylic flowers and green leaves training across in a semi-spiral path. I should make another one... :)

Number 8 was completed during the flight delay in Salt Lake City and on the flight back to Newark.

It has 6 vintage foil backed crystal gems (I don't have any idea as to the maker). They are a pale seafoam color. I'd been wanting to put gems on an ornament for some time now, but as I suspected, they scratch the finish on the ornament. These don't have pointed backs, but they still did a bit of scratching




I bezeled them in transparent green Delicas and dark silver 15/0s (not quite hematite, not quite silver). I also added silver 3.4mm drops to the edges, you know, for zest.

I then beaded a collar with the Delicas and drops and ran stringers to the crystals. My count was off for the top collar, and I ended up with a funny 13th point that I didn't need...My solution-pretend it isn't there and everything will be fine :)



This one could have been the overworked ornament(as seen with the amoeba fringe startng on the bottom), but I reigned it in (and the plane landed). This one doesn't look complicated or time consuming. In truth, it wasn't. It just took a while to bezel the stones.



Remind me to show you the fruits of my Husbeast's Christmas present to me :) Shopping spree at Beyond Beads North in Spokane!