I have been fairly quiet and semi-hibernating the past few weeks. I don't know why and after trying to figure it out, I've gone on to pondering more useful things.


I went to the beading show at the Convention Centre last weekend. Now, I live right down at Queen and Spadina streets which means I live in the heart of Toronto beading country. There are maybe a dozen beading stores on Queen street (I may exaggerate a teensy bit), and they carry all sorts of mundane and fun beads. There is even a Swarvorsky crystal bead shop, oooh sparkly. But all these stores sell beads that you can get just about anywhere. So what, big deal. Okay, the exception to that is Arton Beads which sometimes has some really fun beads. So I went to the bead show hoping to find some different beads, maybe some hand-made beads. Well I did find some, but out of all the vendors there I believe only 3 or 4 were people who made their own beads. Disappointing, but I can't imagine that bead-making brings in much dough, so the lack of bead-makers is understandable. I did get three wicked beads though, keeping in mind I'm on an extremely strict budget - you know when governments say we have to tighten our belts, well mine's so tight I've nicknamed it Anaconda. So having to pay $8 to get into the show meant $8 less dollars to spend on beads. Too bad, cause I would have bought another one of these

Yes siree-bob, that's a bone. Made by Erin. She had a few bones left, some with rusty shiny looking bits, but I liked this metallic-y silver/blue/white bone. Very cool. And I found these made by Alicia Niles (no website)

I have a "thing" for ladybugs. Maybe one day, I'll tell you why, but not today. The pink bead is just a knobby pink thing that reminded me vaguely of some spy robot from Dr. Who, so of course, I had to buy it.

Amy Waldmansmith had some very fun beads, but I had reached my spending limit by the time I got to her booth. Too bad.

I have been working on a new project, a small, self-closing backpack, but I'll wait until it's finished to post pictures. I came up with the design from various inspirations including a cardboard box that held a case of cat food (great size for a small backpack).

After posting my tagged post which included some pictures and info on some of the plants I have, I stumbled across a great plant blog, Plants Are the Strangest People and was ecstatic to discover on his site that the "cactus" that I thought may be a torch cactus, is in fact, not a cactus at all, but is a spurge called euphorbia trigona - African Milk Tree, and various other common names. I really was ecstatic and wandered around work talking about my euphorbia, and when at home I kept gazing lovingly at it and cooing sweet euphorbia nothings into its leaves, or at least in its general direction. It's as if I had rediscovered an old friend. I love plants.

Allrightythen, keep busy, keep happy, and,

keep your foot on the dogs.