The Chatter Box 1/06-3/06

Just thought I'd give you an update on what's going on around here.  Wally left yesterday for the Portland, OR show.  My booth left yesterday for the Minneapolis, MN show.  Now that Wally's gone and I'm ready for my next show...I'm doing taxes.  Oh what fun!  I'm hoping to be done today but we'll see how much my brain can take.  Thursday I leave for the MN show and the weekend after that is the Allentown, PA show.  I will be mailing out the prizes for the ATC contest early next week.  I may not have pictures of the cards up for awhile since I'm gone so much in the upcoming weeks.  I can tell you that only 12 people entered...how sad!  I had tones of prizes lined up and I was feeling pretty generous so I've decided that everyone that entered gets a prize!  Part of the prize is four brand new Beeswax stamps that haven't been released yet.  I got some really amazing artwork and I'll try and get it up as soon as I can.  Beads... any bead people out there?  I'll be listing ebay auctions on Monday's for awhile with Monday as the ending day also.  That gives me a few days to mail the beads out before I have to leave again for a show.  I have a very large set (20 or 21 beads) in red, black and white going up this Monday.  Hopefully I'll have some time to have another set made for the following Monday.

I finally got these photographed!  This is the little something special that can go on your stamp room wall that I was talking about awhile back.  They are all hand painted ceramic plaques and I have 12 different ones.  They are $24.99 each and they are all one of a kind.  By the time you add one in your cart and check out it may be sold already so you may want to tell me your second choice.  If these go over well I'll order more in the future.  I'll give you Chatterbox readers a few days to order before I email the whole group.  Here's the link to the page:

Beeswax plaques

I'm home from Indiana!  It was a good show with really nice people but the whole trip was filled with problem after problem.  It was all very bizarre.  Just to give you an example, my flights were all screwed up due to overbooking by American so I got completely rerouted and flew home the first leg on American and the second on United.  Of course my baggage didn't make the switch so I got home from the airport at about 2pm and my luggage arrived at my home at 12:30am.  My makeup bag accidentally removed from my hotel room Sunday morning is on it's way home to me by us mail.  The whole trip was like that.  Anyway, I'm home and the 'dorables are happy and so am I.

The deadline for the ATC contest is today but I'll give a couple days leeway so I won't have any winners to announce until the weekend.  I have orders to catch up on for now.  I also received that little stamp room goodie I talked about in my last email to the group.  I'll take pictures in the next couple of days and put a link to the page here first before announcing it to the whole group.  They are so cool!  I figure those that bother to read this should get first dibs!  I also got some cool glass stuff to try with my beads so I can't wait to get to the torch and test it out.  But, gotta fill these orders first so I'm off to press rubber! 

We had the most beautiful rainbow here today.  I've never seen one this solid all the way across and so bright and colorful.  Wally and I grabbed the cameras and ran outside to take some pictures of it before it disappeared.

Oh my goodness!  I think everything is all back to normal here in Beeswax land.  What a mess that involved multiple phone calls in the wee hours of the morning.  This is what happened...a readers digest version:

I got an email from my web host that they were going to move my site to a new server.  Fine, they've done that before.  Then I get an urgent email from them saying they moved my site and I now have a new IP address.  I must contact my Domain Name Host (Network Solutions) and inform of this immediately to "avoid any interruption to my service".  Fine.  I called Network Solutions and they told me they had to move my domain name to a new server.  Fine.  But nobody told me that because of all this my website would be dead for 24-48 hours!  It's called DNS propagation.  ISP's have all the IP addresses cached and they only update the cache every 24-48 hours depending on the ISP.  Some don't update for a week!  That means the ISP's were all still trying to pull my old IP address up until they actually did a search for new addresses.  I don't even know how many ISP's are still pulling up my old address.  IE and AOL took 26 hours.  The biggest problem from all this is my very pretty set of beads below.  The ebay auction ended last night and since I host my pictures here on the website my auction had  a bunch of red x's up instead of pictures.  Nobody is going to bid on something they can't see.  The drama didn't end there as tonight I couldn't log on through my web software so I had to call them AGAIN!  Yep, a file didn't make the migration to the new server.  He almost couldn't fix it.  Told me they would have to reload my Frontpage extensions and it might mess up my whole website.  Lucky for me he was able to fix it after hearing the sheer panic in my voice after telling me that.  So that's my whole story and now everything is all hunky dory here once again!

It looks like there is a slight chance it may snow here and since I'll be away at the San Mateo show...I'm sure it will snow.  Figures.  I know you people living back east are laughing at me right now!  Anyway, I'm off early tomorrow and I won't be back until late Sunday.  I just had to show you my latest set of beads because I think they are sooo pretty...even if you aren't a bead person, aren't the colors just killer?

I haven't shown you a picture of the 'dorables in forever...beside Misha getting into trouble.  So here is the purrfect Valentine picture of kitty love.

I spent the day, yesterday I guess since it's now Monday morning, cleaning the garage and pressing rubber for orders.  I can actually see progress in the garage now!  The weather is going to change here in a couple of days so I'll make some beads tomorrow and do some more garage cleaning while I can.  It's amazing how long you can put off unpacking when you move.  I swear we'll never, ever move again.

I just finished updating two of the galleries.  There is now lots more gorgeous artwork on Anne and Sulea's pages.  You can get to them both from here.  If you need some inspiration for our ATC contest you will find some new ATC's on Anne's page.  You don't know about our contest?  It's for Beeswax members only so you need to sign up to participate.  Email me or go back to the main page to sign up.

And now I'm off to bed.

Someone got into some big trouble while I was making beads today!

The weather here has been crazy.  It's been 70 degrees and I think it's going to last another week.  I've been spending lots of time at the torch in this nice weather and Wally has spent lots of time fishing.    When the next storm hits it's sure gonna be hard to adjust again.  Wally bought a new camera and the darn things are so fancy now I'm having a hard time getting use to it.  But check out this close up:

Now everyone will be able to see the cat hair on my beads!  

I have something pretty funny for you to take a look at.  Hehehe...after you see it you can have your own fun making one too.  Be patient, it takes time to load and may look as if nothing is even happening but just wait....Beeswax Monk-e-mail.

Wally's been doing a lot of fishing lately and he came back the other day and said he had taken some blog pictures for me.  I looked on the cf card while I was photographing my beads and I'm sure that this is the picture he was talking about.  I can see part of a fish at least!  Tomorrow is supposed to be really nice so I'll be making beads.  I'm trying to get some extra sets done so I have some on standby for the times I'm at conventions back to back weekends.  I'm still trying to figure out why I signed up for so many.  Every year I say I'm going to do less and somehow I keep filling out all those applications.  I still have three at least to put up on the schedule but I haven't heard back from the promoter if we got in or not.  The good news for you guys is that we are hitting some areas we haven't been at or at least haven't been at in awhile.  

BTW, mousie problem solved!...by a human, not a kitty.

Here's a better picture of those beads I showed you below on the mandrels.  If you are a bead person you can click on the picture to go to the auction.

I just saw a mouse in the kitchen...tell me what good are five cats in the house if they can't earn their room and board by doing a little mousing?  I realize we live in the country and it's to be expected but it still disgusts me.  But I guess it's better than dealing with a yellow jacket hive imbedded in the inside wall of your house...huh MK?

Well after messing my back up yesterday I was real concerned about what shape I would be in today when I got out of bed.  Turns out that my plan of continual movement and stretching actually worked.  Instead of waking up with every muscle in my back in spasms and not able to stand up...I just had a few muscles in my back that were stiff and sore.  A huge difference so I was able to spend the day pressing rubber and filling orders.  Tomorrow is my day to make beads while the weather is still nice.

The weather has been nice and mild here so I've taken advantage of it and I've been making beads the last couple of days.  I had planned on making some again today right after taking this stack of orders off to the post office...when I tweaked my back out yet again.  This time I've refused to give in and go lie down.  Instead I've been walking around all day and stretching out my back and it seems to be working.  Unfortunately Wally has been fishing all day and probably won't be home until later so these orders will have to wait until tomorrow to ship.  I'm tired of watching TV standing up so I took some pictures of my lampworking area in the garage and I'll explain it all to you.  I think most people that read this are stampers so you might be interested in how beads are made.

Not a whole lot going on around here.  I just managed to get the new images up even though I barely have an internet connection.  It's pouring down rain right now and when the weather is cloudy or it's raining I can't get a satellite connection.  Of course the satellite TV works fine...go figure.  I think if the TV went out as often as our internet connection I wouldn't be able to handle it.  Let me know what you think about the postage images I did.  They went over well in Grapevine so if you guys like them I'll make more.

Well I'm off to Texas leaving the 'dorables and the rest of the feline family in Wally's hands.  Looking at the picture I think everyone will be fine.  When I get back I'll work on getting the new images up along with updating some of the galleries.  I'm off to finish packing and then off to bed.  My flight is at 6am which means we have to leave for the airport at 3:30am...ugh!

The weather here in Northern California has been pretty crazy as you've probably seen on the news.  Below is a picture of Wally on our local lake taken during the summer along with a picture taken during our storm.  The winds got up to 56 miles per hour.  It was said on the news that if this had been the tropics the storm would have been categorized a tropical storm and would have been given a name.  That's just not the kind of weather we're used to here.  Luckily we don't have any flooding and all of our big trees survived.