It's lilikoi season ...

Once again, it's lilikoi season. I finally found the end of my main lilikoi picking site on one side. 300 feet from the road, with a hill involved. And of course, as it's wild lilikoi, it's overgrown. This year the season didn't start slowly but pretty much with a bang. The second week into it my legs don't hurt anymore - this is the first time I got sore legs picking lilikoi. If it starts out with 2-3 bags a week for a month it's easy to get used to. If you get 6 bags in the second week it's different, especially as I also got 17 years older since I started picking. It isn't a real big lot yet, not like in this post (that was 13 bags in 3 days), but I also finally got my pruners back into the truck to cut through some of the weed vines (pilau maile), and relearned why it is a good idea to take more than one bag even if you don't have a bag carrier. You really don't want to carry lilikoi down the hill and then carry them back up. Really. You also don't want to lug a heavy bag through underbrush if you can help it.

Of course, yesterday it would have seriously backfired if I had done that on my last trip down the hill. I was way back in the brush when it sounded like rain coming, slowly getting louder, and it was rain coming. I got myself and the lilikoi back up the hill and into the truck and by the time I was inside the truck it was a downpour. If I had had more than one bag I would still have been down there when it was pouring. I got most of the lilikoi out for the time being - but that's as of yesterday, and tomorrow I'm of course going back to work. It's a good thing that the first big drop (and the bigger one of the two, if there is a second one) happens while the days are still relatively long here. I still have an hour or two of daylight after work now, and hour if I get out late. And if I'm lucky, on a grocery shopping day I get home before 8 and it isn't raining when I get there.

Today I did some catching up on yard work, little as it was, counted enough Swarovski crystals to restock my trays, finally finished putting the next batch of mgambo seeds into clothes pins for drilling (I drill them by 100s), finished washing one batch of gardenia taitensis seeds (tiare, or Tahitian Gardenia) and got some new ones (the latter one is a good thing as most of the current batch is sold - wholesale).

Is there time for lampworking? No, not really. I'm glad I'm caught up on batch annealing so that if I have some time and energy left over I can make some beads, stick them into the fiber blanket and anneal them later. I hate small batch batch annealing with my current setup because the mandrel that I use as a mandrel rest is sloped in the kiln when I batch anneal (I've been lucky with that this far though and not gotten beads stuck together or even gotten marks). Of course, the weather that causes the lilikoi to get ripe and drop also implies more wind than I can deal with for lampworking. So, while I miss lighting the torch, the weather wasn't really good for it anyway.

But also, if anybody in or around Hilo reads this far: if you know of any place where I can pick lilikoi, and you are the owner or know the owner of the land and allow me to pick the lilikoi there (it keeps both the pigs and the rats down or out), please let me know. The closer to Hilo town you are the more likely I'm going to pick you up on it. I used to pick lilikoi from Kalapana to Ookala, but these days I rarely leave town to pick. Gas got too expensive, and as I'm by myself these days I can't pick as much as even with a 5 year old as a helper (the former 5 year old is about to turn 22 and lives in Oregon, and the last time she was home in the summer she helped pick lilikoi :) ).

And now I'm going to count some more Swarovski crystals.

Dear IEEE

You may not believe it, but I have other things to do than read your emails.

Oahu and Big Island mgambo seeds (picture)

Admitting I took this picture several months ago, and finally illustrating the difference. The seeds I got from Oahu (on the left side of the picture) are darker and smaller. The ones from the Big Island (right side) are bigger and lighter in color.

These are also known as weleweka, Hawaiian pussy willow, Maui Mink (and of course mgambo).

Brief update

After taking most of Monday to catch up with Sunday night's computer failure at work it took me most of today to catch up with what I didn't do Monday (at work, wfacq3 - again). Lucky me, my husband cooked dinner last night. Tonight I drilled 100 mgambo seeds and caught up with the bead cleaning (including catching up with the batch annealed ones - I did the last batch of batch annealing for now on Sunday), including the broken, chipped and otherwise ones. I can now turn those into frit (whenever time allows). Petrol green, partially reduced, ought to look pretty good on dark ivory, with the red and some orange.

Now to get over this head cold ...

Maren's day off

I took today off from work because there was something I had to do, Norman needed me home (and that's as far as I'll get into this, nothing scary, everything is well). I got some of my bookkeeping done, that was part of the plan for while I was spending time not at home waiting. Found that I should probably use a calculator as in the end my wholesale and retail totals didn't add up to my total total. Maybe it's time to go back to computer aided bookkeeping. (Rethink that: Lug notebook computer around instead of ledger? Bank on power available when battery runs out? Better keep that calculator handy. Weighs a lot less.)

So, getting back home after having a late breakfast out, got some stuff done and then decided I needed some more sleep. The weather wasn't for yard work or making beads anyway. Missed a sortof repeat meeting of my Etsy street team during the time, feel bad about that in hindsight. After a while the weather got better for yard work but worse for making beads. So, did some more yard work. Pulled another 500 or so Alexandra Palm tree seedlings, got another few (definitely single digit, and small) strawberry guava stumps out, but found a buried tool, no handle left, pick axe. Rough as it is (Norman says it predates him, and he lives here since 1984), it came in rather handy and helped me to get a bunch more stuff out without mangling my fingernails completely again.

Now, what happened to the bead making? The wind finally died down way after I got back from grocery shopping. I did more yard work after grocery shopping first before the wind died down. As tomorrow is another workday, no go on the bead making.

At least I got most of the house vacuumed, the laundry put away, the UKIRT fault summary in on time (yes, I try to do this on vacation too, but don't always manage, today I did), and I still didn't take pictures of the beads I made a week and a half ago, still didn't list the 6/0 Ornela seed beads on Etsy, still didn't make any new jewelry to send over to Kona. I'm glad I took the whole day off in spite of that Norman didn't really need me to stay home the whole day. I did get caught up on some things. However, it doesn't feel like I got caught up on sleep, so some of that is next (7 hours at max, and I call that catching up).

As I made some headway on my weekend stuff (grocery shopping included), there's some hope for making beads during the weekend.

I should have taken a "before" picture of the driveway because an "after" picture alone is going to be useless. I did some more work on that today too, after doing a lot of driveway weeding last weekend.

Updates: Etsy street team, new lampwork on Etsy, and I'm getting a second (spare) torch

Much to my surprise I got invited to join a new Etsy Street Team, Prayers on a Wire. We're about rosaries and rosary supplies. While I have never made a rosary yet this is partly due to supplies other than beads being hard to find here, though I have been asked (in spite of the Lutheran church that I grew up in not using rosaries, I would make them), and I have sold Job's Tears to rosary makers before. I hope to make lampwork sets for decadal beads and the like as well.


Our Street Team has a summer competition going that is entitled "Colors of the Ocean", and while it is not required to list the entry on Etsy, I did:
This is Hilo Bay Beach, light teal, the link will take you to my Etsy listing. This set of lampwork beads was made by me, here at home, one by one, melting glass with my HotHead torch. The smaller beads are Moretti (Italian glass) light teal, the larger ones are the same light teal, rolled in sand from the Hilo Bay Beach and then encased in clear Moretti glass, annealed in my digitally controlled Glasshive kiln and the bead release cleaned out with my Dremel drill. You can see through these beads, including the empty space, not like a lot of the beads imported from Asia.

As I got sortof addicted to lampworking as time and weather allows (I can't make beads in the carport when it's windy, and work comes before lampwork) the last thing I need is my torch to give out (I already have 2 kilns), so when a good deal came up I ordered myself a second one (another HotHead, hopefully old style).

Once I get my second torch, and a get second gas hose, and as long as both are working, if anybody wants to come by and use a hothead when I'm home, and possibly already even making beads, I'm game. It'll be kinda tight spaces, but I'm sure it'll work somehow. Bring or buy your own glass and mandrels (I have some extra) and clean your own beads. I'm not saying I can teach you anything, I'm still a newbie, but if you want to come by and make a bead or three (or three dozen) we can talk about it.

Announcement regarding lawsuit against Ullja Kuntze

Not my lawsuit, though some friends were involved with it, and I helped with the fundraising for the AGLF (Artisan and Glassworker Legal Fund). I should say that I didn't write what follows, I'm just re-posting it:

June 17, 2010 Announcement (permission to repost granted):

The Plaintiffs in the defamation case Liz Putnam et al v. Ullja Kuntze have filed to withdraw their motion seeking relief against Ullja Kuntze for defamation (libel and slander per se) and fraud.

The Plaintiffs arrived at the decision to withdraw after Ullja Kuntze, with much delay, finally complied with court-ordered disclosure and provided documents confirming that she publishes the blog "handmadeartisanfraud.blogspot.com" and has made false tax evasion reports specifically naming the Plaintiffs and many others to the IRS and state revenue offices around the country.

During the legal proceedings, the Plaintiffs attempted settlement with Ullja Kuntze and requested that she remove the blog, but Ms. Kuntze refused. The high cost of pursuing the case to completion has been weighed against the satisfaction of her admission that she is the publisher of the blog and the person behind the spurious reports to local authorities against artisans around the country. The investment to date resulted in obtaining evidence of her acts, an ample and welcome reward.

However, to pursue the case to completion and obtain an injunction against Ullja Kuntze ordering her to take the blog offline would be very expensive, given her lack of cooperation to date. With proof of her wrongdoing, the Plaintiffs and others targeted by Ms. Kuntze have the needed evidence to protect their professional and personal reputations individually.

The Plaintiffs wish to thank everyone who contributed to the legal costs and to assure their supporters that with proof of Ullja Kuntze's guilt, a win in civil court is not necessary. Thanks to the support of the artisan community, the evidence of Ms. Kuntze's acts is now a matter of public record for all to see.

Case information is available online at the Harris County Clerk's website. The case number is 200966253 and can also be located searching for Defendant name "Kuntze, Ullja".