Time to review and reset some goals again with the Weekly What List. Firstly the review

Review of the Weekly What List for the 1-7 March.

Physical
- drink 1 litre of water a day. – Not completely but I did drink more water.
- Eat two pieces of fruit a day – mostly yes
- Eat less lollies. – on a whole yes.

Spiritual
- Memorise this verse (emphasis is on the word PATIENCE): Ecclesiastes 7:8
The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride. – I would say that I have memorised it, I’m yet to really think deeply about it.

Creative
- Get out oil paints and paint something AGAIN – yes, did that.
- Make pendant for C – did it but not happy with the outcome.
- Sew another dress – No.

Family
- Go to the park with L, weather permitting. – sort of, we went to Sculpture by the Sea
- Continue Doll’s House with K – Yes

Friends
- arrange more morning teas – Yes arranged one or two
- birthdays – started.

Now for this weeks What List:

Weekly What List for the 8-14 March.

Physical
- drink 1 litre of water a day.
- Eat two pieces of fruit a day
- Eat less lollies.
- Don’t buy Ice Magic.

Spiritual
- Continue to memorise this verse but also get to know its meaning more: Ecclesiastes 7:8
The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.

Creative
- Get out oil paints and paint something AGAIN (yes again, have to try to do this every week)
- Fix pendant for C
- Take photos of work for listing on Etsy

Family
- Play outside more with L, even if its earlier in the day.
- Continue Doll’s House with K – time for carpeting and more walls.

Friends
- arrange more morning teas
- send off parcel

I really enjoy making canes. If you want to know what a cane is, pop over to my other blog where I wrote a post explaining them. Knowing how amazing some caners are I know that I’m not brilliant at it but I do get a buzz out of slicing off the end and seeing what I’ve got. I also like to make random canes using up scrap clay.

Yesterday I lined them all up to see what I’ve got and here’s the photos:

Today I’m tired. I had a great day with a friend though so I’m in one of those tired but relaxed moods. The photo of the day is of the latest bangles I’ve produced for the Red Feather’s shop in Melville. Today I sanded and buffed these so they are ready to go. I think thats going to be the extent of the creativity for today, unless the berocca kicks in.

Close up to see the pattern.

One of me for a change. I am ‘modeling’ my newest necklace here. I have just finished a whole lot of these and might blog about them a bit later. In the meantime, ‘hello!’.

I am slowly adding to my cane collection along my 1950’s line of work. After making a list of possible images I want to turn into canes I thought that this one looked like it would be the easiest one to do. WRONG. Actually, once I thought about how to make it properly it was easy but my first attempt was an embarrassing disaster! This was attempt one, I did not use the right method and the lines ended up jagged and amateurish.

As soon as I cut the first slice I knew I couldn’t use it so I popped it in the freezer (where I sometimes store canes during our hot summer) to think about later. Last night I pulled the cane out again and decided that instead of trying to turn this cane into anything good I would just mix and mix until I got a different brown and use that for a new TV cane. I used much more sensible and methodical techniques and this is the end result:

Much more satisfying. I just need to wrap the whole thing in black to keep it in line with the other two canes I’ve done so far and this one will be finished. Then on to my next challenge…..cat’s eye glasses!!

With the small amount that was left over I created this random cane. I quite like it.

Today’s photo of the day shows the custom order I did over the weekend. These earrings are 1″ x 1″ so really huge! They came out pretty well and according to the customer’s specifications.

Early on as I learnt to work with polymer clay I learnt to never throw away any clay, no matter how muddy it got after too much mixing. It can be used for a number of things including the inside of beads or the like. Recently I ended up with a large pile of scrap clay and learnt a lesson in the process.

You see I have my items listed in various places and sometimes sell them in person. When this happens I have to remember to remove them from my on-line stores as most things cannot be repeated. Late last year I sold this necklace:

This wasn’t what I would class as a difficult pendant to create but it is what you would call difficult to ‘recreate’. Well, what did I do….forgot to remove it from my Etsy store and of course, after it sitting in my store for a very long time, it sold….for the second time. Big boo boo there.

I wrote to the buyer and explained what had happened and she asked if I could make her another one as it matched her dress perfectly and silly me said ‘yes, no problem’. I’m not sure what compelled me to say yes, maybe the madness of the moment with getting a sale. The technique to get the graduation of colour involved putting two different coloured clays through a pasta machine many many times and to match the exact green and blue was going to be a challenge. After three goes at this I ended up with these options for my buyer:

As you can see they are not really like the original but she was quite happy with one of them and I completed the order. This left me with a lot of scrap clay and so I needed to make something sell-able out of it. Here’s some of what I came up with:

Hopefully these colours will suit someone and they will snatch them up when I eventually get around to listing them. The rolls will become earrings and the squares will become pendants.

So, lesson learnt. ALWAYS remember to remove sold items from on-line stores and be prepared to say NO when you should. Hopefully I’ll remember this.

I have finally been able to move forward with my 1950s line of work. This week I have completed one cane and started a second, the first being a retro caravan in apple green and cream and the second being a coral and black dress. Its quite challenging getting the shape right for these but so far I’m fairly happy with the results. Lots more on their way, yay for the Aussie Open Tennis, something to watch on the teli while claying in the heat!

As you can see the door and window on the caravan look a bit wonky, I like to think they look hand drawn (thats my reasoning!). The tire looks a little flat but I think thats ok too. The dress needs to be packed with white and black around it yet. Then I’ll move on to a retro tv, record player, cats eye glasses, rolling pin and whatever else I can think of! Phew!

If you were ever so inclined as to make a polymer clay cane with a gumnut pattern in it I’ve written a tutorial (complete with half good and half blurry photos) here on my Polyclarific blog.

Here’s what the finished result looked like:

Today is my 5 year (and three month) blogiversary. I missed my actual blogiversary (and actually haven’t celebrated it before) and it wasn’t until I looked it up that I found out the date.

On September 18 2004 I started a blog over at Xanga. I did it so I could keep in touch with the kids I’d gotten to know while teaching in Africa and most of them were using Xanga. After a while though I realised that it wasn’t for me and moved over to blogger. It took a bit of convincing but after a couple of years on there, hubby convinced me to move to Wordpress and I haven’t looked back.

My very first post is pretty boring, it read:

This is my first entry here so I’ll have to think about what I want to say! Blogging is new to me although I’ve been blog reading for quite some time. I’ll have to decide what kinds of things I really want to put on here so I won’t write much this first time.

It gets a smidge more interesting after that although it took a long time to develop any sort of theme or style. Nowdays I have two blogs, one for more personal stuff and one for the shop (which you can find over here).

My old posts were mostly transferred as I went so here’s the stats from the last 5 years (and three months) of blogging:

963 Posts
2,298 Comments
30 Categories
110 Tags
16,530 Spam Comments

So, when I get to post #1000 I’ll have to have a little celebration or something.

Of course a lot has happened in 5 years:

- had 2 babies
- moved house
- started Polyclarific
- bought a new car
- changed churches
- hubby graduated from his degree
- our 15 yr old sausage dog died
- four rabbits lived and died or went to different homes
- my family moved back from overseas
- both my grandparents died

Time really flies. Happy Blogiversary to me!