Aardvark Art Glass

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yike-a-doodle-doo!

I ventured into the basement this morning with the intention of solving the mystery of why water wasn’t coming out of our hose when I met this thing. I thought it was an old pancake at first but then I realized it was living and that it wasn’t alone.

Freakshow, huh? Look at those roots, or whatever the hell they are. This is a more interesting mystery than the water thing, though, attention needs to be paid to that as well because my plants need a drink. Speaking of my plants, I have a funny story to share about lettuce. This is the first time I’ve grown lettuce and I have to say that it is one of the best things ever. It produces like crazy and it’s delicious and pretty. I love lettuce. Anyway, back when my lettuce was just seeds, a pal of ours, Jeanne, came by with a bunch of little plants for me including six tiny lettuces which she had started weeks before. (Jeanne is our organized friend. Also, she knows about gardening.) So I planted her lettuces next to my seeds and away they grew.

I was harvesting leaves from my seed lettuce in no time but the other plants were growing slower. Different variety or something, I guessed. Eventually, hunger and curiosity got the best of me and I pulled a leaf off one of her plants and nipped a little off, just to see what it was like. The leaf tasted alright but they had a very peculiar, fuzzy texture that made it difficult to swallow. “That’s weird lettuce,” I thought. But what do I know?  The likelihood of Jeanne giving us the wrong plant seemed really slim. Of course I tried to involve Don. “These leaves look like lettuce but they’re fuzzy–try one. Does that seem like lettuce to you?”

Long story short, on my birthday Jeanne confirmed that the plants she gave us were not lettuce. She does not know what they are but suspects they are some kind of flower. A non-poisonous flower, luckily. I already knew that I had a tendency to just take people at their word and ignore all signs to the contrary. Gotta work on that, especially when it involves plants.

We have a date, now, that we are opening. Looks like July 16 with some kind of an opening fiesta type thing on Saturday, July 18, which will coincide with the East Johnson St. Block Party. As it has only occurred once before, you probably aren’t familiar with this particular block party. I’m not really, either, to tell you the truth. I think it goes from around noon to 7pm. There’s food and beer (I think) and live music from the famous Cork-N-Bottle String Band. Don is going to be playing there as well with his other band, Retro Box. Should be a good time.

Meanwhile, back at the shop, we’ll be open 11am-7pm, I will be doing bead demos, maybe Missy or Sarah will be making stuff out of metal, we’ll have drinks and snacks or something. You know, store opening stuff. I am working like a fool to get inventory made by then, which, by the way, is great, the working. There is ALWAYS something to do around here. And a lot of it has to do with the lights being on for the first time in a couple of years. My walls are dirty, my display stuff is beat up, that sort of thing. So opening is going to be more than just unlocking the door and answering the phone again. I kinda figured.

ANYhoo, I have to get back to my stuff that I have to do. Damn, it’s weird not being on the computer all the time. I’ll be back!

 Just like a person who has a business on East Johnson St., I went to an East Johnson St. Business Association meeting this morning. Save for the incredibly weird feeling of waking up and being around real people for once, the meeting was  pretty much the same as ever. I guess the city has a bunch of dough available in grant form for facade improvement. My facade is pretty crumbly but I kind of like it the way it is (or at least I don’t want to mess with it on account of I don’t want it all falling down on me). I have always wanted a giant fiberglass aardvark for the top of the store. That would be such a commitment, though. I’d have to stay open forever if they forked out money for a giant aardvark.

So, today has been different, but not new. It is what it is. Missy and Sarah got their benches moved it. The front of the store looks really interesting, I think.

I’m home now. I guess I have at least another day of really intensive store cleaning before I can get back to doing my job, such as it is. I roped my pal Patrick into helping me and we got a ton of stuff done today. Patrick cleaned so hard he broke my broom. For real. Tomorrow we’re taking down wood shelving in the office cave and putting up metro shelving to hold all of my lidless totes full of irregularly shaped objects. And sheets of glass. Metro shelving was just a drastic measure looming in the back of my mind last week when I moved the sheets of glass from the front of the store to the office. At that time, had I then considered that the consequence of moving the glass once would be that I would have to move it two more times before it was in it’s forever home, I probably would have just left it where it was and cleaned around it. Or maybe I would have locked the door and burned the building to the ground. It’s this lack of foresight on my part that really adds some hours onto even the simplest of projects. Window to my world, yo. And this is kind of large scale happening, too, so thank god for Patrick.

Anyhoozle, after we get this done, whenever that may be, I’ll be able to post some camping pictures and Etsy stuff. In the mean time I will be throwing things away so that I can make space for other things. Then I will move things to that space. Then, tomorrow, I will move everything back to almost exactly the same space that it was in before. But it will be on a new shelf that will hold twice as much stuff so it will be completely different and much better than it was before. Great will be my rejoycing.

is cup holders that are cheap and also devoid of insipid sayings. Yep. Couldn’t find any. Somewhere in the shop I have a rubber one shaped like a fish head with the saying “If this is missin’ I’ve gone fishin’” written on it. I rather like that sentiment though something that beautiful is bound to be impractical and not fit in the built in cup holder on the camping chair.

So I guess we have all of our stuff now, save for a can cooler with which I can be seen in public. I cleaned the refrigerator, the hedgehog cage and the hedgehog. Pretty much anything that was going to stink by the time we came back is clean. That’s Cathy’s triage cleaning system. It doesn’t work real well. Even the sightless know somethings up.

Well, off to the wilderness! No technology, no nothing where I’m going. Talk to you Tuesday.

Well, I’m home. That show turned out a lot better than I thought it would, given the economy and all. Most people I talked to were pleasantly surprised at their sales. So never doubt the power of low expectations, I guess. My only purchase at B&B was this giant set of spacer beads made by JC Herrell. Aren’t they wack? I think they are so funny. I also got one of Margaret Zinser’s beetle beads and an ammonite pendant from Andrew Brown. SO much fantastic work  at the show. Really, really.

Meanwhile, back here Cracker Doodle is still with us. I put a little heart shaped sign on her cage professing my love for her. (That was just in case she heard me mention last week that, should she pass on, I was thinking of setting up a centrifugal casting machine in the back room.) Guilt. Cracker is welcome to stay just as long as she wants.

I started clearing out the front of the building for my jeweler pals who are moving in in about a week. God, this reorganization. Any small semblance of order that I had from cleaning the store in April is completely gone. I just want to throw stuff away but the stuff is too good. It needs a place. And there are no places left. Internal organization of all the totes I’ve got lying around is necessary. I think I’m going to have to work on this for the rest of the week.

So, Real Life sure is colliding with my web world. I have less than 48 hours til our annual camping trip. In that time I have to get the store shaped up, clean the house to a certain extent, do laundry, make meals for the pets and pack my junk. I’m not going to bother with the Etsy store this week because I don’t have time to ship stuff. I don’t really know when web things are going to get done. I could guess but I’d probably be wrong so…. Anyways, I’m outta here early Friday morning and then back on Monday. I’ll post after I check Don’s beard for ticks.

Leaving for Milwaukee momentairly. I’ll be at the Bead and Button Show/Midwest Airlines Center booth #1246 next to JC Herrell and Lori Greenberg, Thursday thru Sunday. I’ll be able to check mail while I’m there so if you have any free advice or tasty recipies, don’t be stingy.

There will be much going on after I’m back on Monday with the jewelers moving into the shop. I’ll be back on the blog soon. Had a pretty crappy weekend, this last one. Cracker Doodle, the very old  store hedgehog, stopped eating and drinking for four days. I had planned to have her put down on Monday, which, frankly, would have been impeccable timing on her part, since I don’t want to leave her in someone else’s care if she’s about to keel over. But then Sunday night she started eating and sprang back to life. So, the gift of emotional strain was mine last week. I’m very glad she’s back up, even if it means that we’ll be going through that again, probably pretty soon. That Cracker.

See you Monday!

 I needed something to transport my display stuff to Bead and Button so I bought a rockstar piece of luggage from the thrift store the other day. It’s an American Tourister that was designed for transporting suits or something–many are it’s pockets and compartments. Like almost everything in the world these days, it has wheels and a handle so you can drag it along behind you. Probably not the greatest shape for my needs but it’s big and hardly used and it was only ten dollars.

So last night when I was gutting it to make room for my junk I found a hard object wrapped up in tissue paper jammed into one of the compartments. Of course a brief thrill ensued as I wondered if maybe the object would turn out to be a diamond or gold or something. Though not of intrinsic value, I feel lucky to have found this in my suitcase. I’m going to carry it with me for a few days to see if it is indeed a lucky object.

Someone purchased this little resin apple ornament  at City Merchandise in New Yawk City. It cost $4.99. Half the price of my suitcase. What I find most intriguing about the find is that, if the price tag is correct, this apple was purchased and placed in the suitcase in 1990. That information brings me one step closer to ascertaining something that I’ve been wondering about for quite a while which is: What is the exact year in which people started putting wheels and handles on every damn thing?

Growing up I always borrowed my parent’s ancient Samsonite luggage which was  known for it’s durability rather than it’s beauty or portability. Samsonite commercials featured a real gorilla flinging the bags around a steel barred cage, not unlike a modern baggage handler. That was some tough, heavy luggage. Our luggage. Luggage we planned to carry proudly, strongly, with our muscular arms, in the event that we would ever go somewhere, which we never did. 

So, back to the wheels on luggage…I travel some now but I still feel like I missed something between the gorilla commercials and the backpack with a handle and wheels that was at the thrift store. Now I know, whatever it was it occurred pre-1990. The thrift store suitcase held all the answers.

Here’s news, finally. Last winter when people were making fish right and left this gal, Becky, from the Frit Happens forum organized a fish swap. Whomever wanted to participate could send Becky a fish they made and in return they would receive a mystery fish from the fish pile Becky amassed in her house. So that was kind of fun, I thought…something to look forward to, anyway. I sent in two fishes. Here are the ones I got in return:

Fish one is from The Netherlands–Maria Louise aka. glassbeadsculptress.com.

Happy yellow fish! Who doesn’t need one of those? This one is quite large and impressive. I like it very much. She will reside in the bead case in my foyer.

Keeping that bead company will be this fish pair from Helen. When I find out Helen’s website I will post it here for you. Right now all I know is that the name has something to do with magpies.

Look at them! These guys are tiny. One of them is silver-cored:

That’s cool. I don’t own any silver cored beads. Now everyone will know what I’m talking about when I say “I sure do like silver-cored beads.” Thanks, Helen!

Know what’s funny? Even though I’ve made pounds and pounds of fish beads, I haven’t kept any for myself. These fish are the only fish in my case. I’ll have to fix that-I only have about a zillion of them right now.

Well, my O2 tanks are almost empty. I’ve decided that when the oxy is gone I’m going to be done making beads for Bead and Button. That’s going to leave me with a pretty empty week, I think, unless something unforeseen happens, which is likely. I don’t think I’ve had one “seen” thing happen to me this year. I guess it’s all good as long as it works out.

Well, got rid of that. What a colossal waste of time being sick is. I had some world-class crabbiness going on, too. Don’t know if the sickness was aggravating me or what but that was a f’ing drag of a week.

Anyhoo…back up and working on B&B inventory. Not much to say today, just thought I’d check in. More later.