Thursday, October 22, 2009

Facing Reality -- and learning to cope with a diagnosis of Diabetes

14 months ago, I learned that I have diabetes. I have spent the last year alternately trying like mad to get it under control and pretending that I can eat like I didn't "really" have this disease. Today, I went to a diabetes management class, and I am hopeful that I will "get it together" and be able to say that I am a lot healthier in 14 months from now.




I find it very scary to have diabetes-- both parents had it and both really died from complications from it, my mother at only 60 years old. She was legally blind by the time she died, and could no longer do any of the things she really loved to do- sewing, crafts, even reading was not possible for her anymore. I am going to be 60 years old in six months. I am petrified... I expect that I will reach the age of 61 and feel a lot better, but this next year just feels like I am following in Mom's footsteps (once I was diagnosed with Diabetes last year that is.) So my challenge is: to keep my blood sugars under control, and to lose weight. My goal is for there to be a whole lot less of me by next fall. Watch this space for updates! 

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Working Off The Fall Blahs....

Am I the only one that feels sad in the fall? I love fall in that it's so beautiful-- but a lot of times I feel badly that a) I am soon not going to be able to get into the garden to work, and b) another year will soon be coming to a close.

So now here I am making myself feel better by trying to create jewelry and other things. Last week it rained all week which didn't help- but the rain is over as of today anyway so tomorrow I may go out work in the garden! (I WAS glad to see the rain, because my garden is parched for it, but I'm glad it's over for the time being :-).

So here are the things I've been working on of late:
I just took a class to learn how to paper piece a quilt block... that was fun and I really learned a lot. I also just have completed several pieces of jewelry for a friend.

Here is a picture of one of the three sets--
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Here is a close up of the beads which were quite pretty.

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There were earrings and a bracelet with the set but I changed them after the picture was taken. I will make some that are similar and post them again. One of the other sets was also black, but instead of the low key milky round beads and the teal freshwater pearls, this had red coral round beads and turquoise chips, and grey pearls to go with it. The third set was of poppy jasper chips, separated by gold seed beads amd accented by peach aventurine and tiger eye beads. I didn't get pictures of those sets, unfortunately.

So I'm getting things done I guess - today I made a card for a friend- I'd made a pin to go on over the weekend -- hope she likes it. I will take a photo of the card with the pin I made and post it after she gets it, in case she might see it and mess up my surprise :-).

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Jewelry Gallery Slide Show

Here are some of the jewelry pieces I've made through the years, showing the very first pieces I did (when I had no clue what I was doing!) to the later pieces that I'm pretty happy with. Some along the way were experiments-- and didn't work quite as well as I'd hoped lol. But overall, there was progress....



Friday, October 16, 2009

A Better Me

Just trying this out--hope it works!

Sunday, August 2, 2009

Previously completed artsy stuff-- first collaged box

It seems I always do things and forget to post them because I am so busy DOING them that I forget to share them. So I decided tonight to post things I have finished some time ago.

The first one that came to mind was a box I made for the grandson of a friend. He was interested in bugs, Egyptology, and tigers. So I found pictures in magazines to decoupage on the box using these motifs.

Bug Box Top

I found a picture of an archeological dig near a pyramid. Then I added a picture of a tiger that appeared to be looking down to my collection of pictures. I put the tiger on the box so that it looked as if he was peering down into the dig site. A giant moth hovered nearby.

That completed the top of the box. I wanted the sides to be all different. I painted stripes on the sides, that started out looking like the stripes on an Egyptian Pharoah's mantle,

Bug Box Back

I found a page of stickers of ants at the craft store. The ants crawled up and down the stripes like the rooms in an anthill, and as the box was turned,

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the stripes became more and more like the stripes on a tiger's fur.

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On the front, I put small cut outs of a bee hive and a few bees flying to it.

Bug Box Front
For the inside of the box, I found a picture of the bug collection of a famous ornithologist from the 19th century. That was glued in, with a plain black bottom of the interior of the box.
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The bottom of the outside of the box was a large picture of a tiger that I found a lovely picture of a giant moth. It resembled a Commodore's hat from the English Navy of old. (My friend and her grandson were British so that was particularly nice for this box.)

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