Stringing on a vine

NOW What...excuses excuses.  Well it is nearly a MONTH since I last wrote in this blog, and it hasn't been because I have nothing to write about...quite the contrary, but honestly, I have not had a minute to spare.  I have done the least polymer clay (personally) than in a very long time, but that's not to say that the stuff hasn't been in my hands.  I did a lot of projects with kids over the last few weeks, including Peace Sign necklaces with several groups of Fifth and Sixth graders.  That was to celebrate their "Project Peace" production that they performed over a month ago.  The pendants were traditional peace signs that the kids decorated with flower motifs or other groovy symbols.  They were strung on leather cords (I hesitate to call them thongs as they would have been called years ago) and some kids chose to put them on their foreheads...flashback to the groovy sixties!!

Then a couple of weeks ago I worked with kindergarten children and first graders making father's day key chains.  The kids made little fish....heads with fishlips. a caned eye (that I provided for them) a segmented (beaded) body and a tail that was impressed between two scallop shells.  They turned out very cool and when done, I helped to thread them onto bead wires and attached a key ring onto them.  The kids had fun making them and hopefully their dads or grandpas might even use them for their boat keys or something.

The only clay thing I have done personally was to make a couple dozen 'random' beads from leftover canes.  They are suitable for book marks and hopefully I will get those done before the Canada Day event on Osborne next weekend. 

My time has been so limited because I am working every day at least half day and the preparation and year end stuff is very time consuming.  I will be almost as happy as the kids when school lets out for summer this coming Friday!

I have several sales coming up in July and August, so I will be using those "holidays" to stock up on inventory.  I have some orders that I've had to put on the back burner...the only other thing that I've cooked since June 4th was some delicious dolmades that I made today.  The grape vine leaves are so tender that I picked scads of them, blanched them and then froze them.  But the three dozen that I actually made into dolmades today won't make it through the week.  They were so  yummy....

That's the end of the grape vine today....