a good Sunday....

For those of you who know, I've been a bit under the weather this week after getting the DPT injection. I checked and apparently the one I got was a combination; Diphtheria, Pertussis, and Tetanus. Can't really explain how it made me feel, but it was weird... sore, headachy, and extremely tired. So I basically slept through the week. But...

I woke up Sunday morning around 2:00 am... drenched in sweat... and suddenly realized that "I felt good"! My jaw is still sore, but I'm pretty sure it's TMJ and it hasn't gotten any worse.  But I'm so happy to feel good again!

Thought I'd send a few pics of my finished wind chime. It has definitely been a learning experience. I will make more as I really like wind chimes and have learned some of the pitfalls. Firsts of all, I didn't realize until I was putting it together this morning that some of the holes I had made for the strings had been glazed over. This was a real problem as those pieces wouldn't even drill out. So I improvised.  Then I realized that the piece that should be in the very center of the chimes themselves should have had 4-5 holes in it - not just the one in the center. This piece holds the actual chimes apart. Another mistake! 

But I put it together the best I could and still like it. The colors are exactly what I wanted, even if the shape isn't. Here is a picture:

outside on our tree

pieces up close

I was trying to get a close up picture inside and had hung up some cloth in the kitchen and if you will look closely at the next pic, you will see a paw playing with the strings underneath.

see paw?

I

It turns out Tux had climbed up on the counter and was after the strings I had cut.

Tux with strings

So these are my first wind chimes. I'm sure I'll do better for the next set. And here's a picture of my finished cheeky chickens soap dish.

Since it would be exposed to water, I had to glaze it so it wouldn't be porous. I used a matt glaze and was happy with the result.

Thanks so much for reading! Hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!

same o'... same o'

Nothing new to post about.  Summer is definitely here... it's 90 F today and will continue to get hotter.  Texas is not the place to be in July and August.  

I'm working on my wind chimes as my summer clay project. Haven't ever tried to make wind chimes before so it should be interesting. We have some out front that make a really nice sound and I've been wanting to get some for the tree out back... so I decided to make my own. They may be all ceramic or they may be ceramic and copper tubing. Haven't decided yet.

Also I took a Word 2016 class this past week. It was offered by the Library and was a beginner class. Now I've used Word 2007 for a long time, but probably only use a small percentage of what it can actually do. We were told that Word 2016 basically does the same things, but may just do them a little differently. Most of the things he showed us I already knew, but I did pick up a few new techniques. There's an intermediate class next week. 

I was talking to someone this past week who has recently retired and we were discussing the pro's and con's of retiring in place as to moving to somewhere they've always wanted to live.
In our cases, we both seem to lean toward retiring in place... as everything familiar is just too convenient... doctors, friends, classes, etc. (not to mention family). Not that we wouldn't mind traveling a little and visiting some wonderful places. But it's expensive to move and feel that retiring in place and visiting the other places would be the practical thing. Starting over (new surroundings, new everything) after a certain age seems difficult. But many do this... and it works out well. What are your thoughts?