In Memory of Tim Hawarden

In case you ever wondered what got me to Hawaii, Tim Hawarden was the first person I ever talked to who had anything to do with me getting here and this whole outfit. In the summer of 1986 my phone rang. It was to invite me to a job interview in Edinburgh, Scotland. The person who called was Tim. At that time he was the "UKIRT Astronomer in Charge, Home End". I went to Edinburgh, my second time ever on an airplane, and while things didn't work great (I came in about 5th for 3 jobs, but in the end 2 people pulled out, that's another story), I ended up here. Tim's wife Frances, about the second person in this whole outfit I ever talked to, made my travel arrangements, first for the job interview in Edinburgh, later for my second interview in Hawaii, and eventually to move here.

I got to Hawaii in January of 1987. Imagine my surprise when in the summer of 1987 Tim and Frances came here too. Frances had retired for health reasons, and Tim came to UKIRT. I was working at the JCMT then. I remember applying for a job at UKIRT, where I had worked as a temp for several months in 1990 or so. I remember Tim quizzing me about servos and eventually saying "OK, I know you know more about servos than I do". I the years to come I went to the CSO and Tim oversaw the UKIRT upgrades program - and a few other things. He was still there when I went back to UKIRT now almost 13 years ago. They moved back to Edinburgh some time later. I had the opportunity to visit with them (and their cats) last in 2006 after Tim had retired to take care of Frances who has MS (which is why she retired on the first place) full time. I love both of them, as well as Miranda and Sam (Tim's children from his first marriage).

God bless all of them.

Fairs this month

This month I'm signed up for 2 fairs, both in Hilo.

The first one is at Keawe Center (190 Keawe St. in Downtown Hilo, if you know where Island Edges bead store is, that's where it is), Saturday Nov. 21, and rather short, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.. I will have all of my beads and other supplies including dome that aren't on the website yet there, but probably not all of them out. Of course I'm also going to have my jewelry - and possibly some plants if I have space left in the back of the truck.

The second one is at the East Hawaii Cultural Center, Saturday Nov. 28, 8 a.m. - 4 p.m., jewelry and lampwork beads though I will probably have 'the other stuff' under the table. If you happen to be in town that day and need fresh water pearls, gemstones, chip strands or crystals (etc.), I'm going to have them there but not out. I'll be in the same space as last year, close to the back entrance.

It's my mom's birthday

was by most accounts yesterday. She is 82 now, and I meant to call her last night. I got side tracked. Then, I woke up at 5 this morning, said, even if they are probably in the middle of afternoon coffee, I have to call. I'm glad I did. My brothers and their families were there (minus one college student), and they were indeed having afternoon coffee. I'm happy to report that both my parents are well. I am concerned about them not having had flu shots yet, at least they are going to, but don't seem to be too concerned about H1N1, talking about getting the regular flu shot only. DH and I just getting over H1N1, it's not something to mess with. We got it before vaccines were available here, so not much use for us getting vaccinated now.

Get yourself vaccinated when/if you can, the sooner the better.

Clove tree seeds

Really nothing to do with beads, but it's that time of the year that I have clove tree seeds. For those of you who haven't come across them: out of water they live for maybe a week. Some die on the way to Ag inspection (and there really is no way of telling ahead of time). But, there definitely are survivors. I was sent a picture of a clove tree seedling in Germany last week.

I have clove seeds again now. I can ship those to any US state, Canada and to the EU that I know of. There may be other countries that don't require more than a free inspection, but I don't know which.

I am not certified to ship plants out of State.

Base metal findings and wire prices

Brief update, no pictures. As I made up my mind about the base metal findings and to let you know more specifics about the base metal wire (it's not on the web site yet):

Prices (other than the 1.5" headpins, these are for both the silver and gold colors)
earring hooks:
100 pieces (50 pairs): $4.-
50 pieces (25 pairs): $2.50
16 pieces (8 pairs): 1.-
2" and 3" headpins (these are thin enough to fit through fresh water pearls):
100 pieces: $5.-
50 pieces: $3.-
12 pieces: $1.-
1.5" headpins, silver color only, these are thicker:
100 for $3.-
50 for $2.-
20 for $1.-
Craft wire (gold, silver and copper color, Beadsmith), tarnish resistant:
$4.-/spool (for 20 gauge it's 45 feet, 24 gauge 90 feet, 28 gauge 120 feet)

A bunch of updates: AGLF, Kalera beads, my new camera, base metal findings

Rather than trying to find the time to do these piecemeal, I'm going to try to do them all at once.

I mentioned earlier that there was a defamation attack going on, labeling artisans as "fraud". None of this is true (of course), some details can be found here:
http://artisantruthreport.blogspot.com/ and references therein. To help with a legal fees to put an end to this a private fund was created to which many donated, and many donated some of their creations and supplies. This is the AGLF (main page, links to Ebay, Etsy and Artfire listings are further down), which stands for Artisan and Glassworker Legal defense Fund.


Here is finally a picture of most of the beads I bought from Kalera Stratton, an experienced lampworker in Portland Oregon, who I had the opportunity to meet in person and watch make beads. Some of the beads already turned into jewelry, some on the way there, one being another wire crochet example, another one preliminatrily conected to my first attempt at so-called French Knit. Which brings me to:


my new camera. I hate dealing with new things as there are always learning curves involved. My new camera is a Canon PowerShot A1000 IS, and so far I'm happy with it. I finally got the pictures out of it that I took 10 days ago, a necklace and earrings made with another set of the lampwork beads from Kalera:

This set is currently available in my
Etsy shop










and some chip strands which I'm going to list at Etsy in the supplies category (they're long enough to wear as necklaces as they are if you prefer that):


The first set is picture jasper, leopard skin jasper and unakite, the second is white howlite, snowflake obsidian and blackstone. Each strand is about 32" long, strung on monofilament. There will be more.

A local customer recently asked me about/for base metal earring findings. So I now have the following (not priced yet): french earring hooks, the silver colored ones are surgical steel, the gold color ones I don't know, both silver colored and gold colored headpins, 2" and 3" in length, that are thin enough to fit through the holes in freshwater pearls, and 1.5" silver color headpins that are a bit stiffer and I'm sure won't fit through the holes in fresh water pearls.

Fixed my computer crashing problem - a year later

While I probably never mentioned it in my blog, I've been fighting my notebook crashing sometimes every half hour for a year. It makes a real crimp in your productivity (and sometimes sleeping hours) if you have to wait for a 5 year old notebook to boot up several times a day.

Last summer while on vacation I bought a new network card. The old one doesn't work with all networks, so I needed a new one to be able to access the net from wherever. A day later my notebook crashed for the first time.

This was in a hotel room, with the flat surface being the bed, so I thought of dust, overheating, and such things. Well, no such luck, it continued to be the case. Including, after I borrowed a "can of air" from work (I use the same notebook for work when I work out of hours), took it apart and dusted it rather thoroughly.

A week or so before that I got the first blue screen of death rather than just a freeze, and Microsoft sent me a URL that told me the problem had to do with my network card. I got the available updates for the driver, hoping that would fix it, but no such luck.

As something similar happened again a few days later I decided, oh well, maybe I'll just switch back tot he old network card. - The notebook has been running since.

In case anybody wants to know: the old card (which is rather old and rather slow, but quite reliable) is a D-Link, the new one is a Linksys. I don't have the notebook here, but I'll try to remember adding the model numbers later.