Fun at the Park

This lovely little being is our Grand daughter Siobhan. We were privledged to spend a glorious afternoon with she and her Mom Rebecca in a great park in Portland. We ate fried chicken, potato salad, cherries, grapes and sponge cake. We checked out the duck pond, wading pool, jungle jims, teeter todder and watched Siobhan wiggle her next exiting tooth. She's a joy to behold, in all her 7 years of exhuberance.
It was terrific to get to see her. We all had a great time! Long live summer and the memories that we are gifted with!!


She lives in Ohio so we don't get to see her very often. Maybe next summer she can come and visit with her Ernst Grandparents here in Drain. That would definitely be something to look forward to!

Who knew that one day could bring such joy. I do hope that we will have a chance to see how she grows and watch her turn into the young woman that she will become.

I hope that your summer days are filled with love, family, friends and mates. I hope that these days will cause us all to stop and remember just what is really important in our lives. This day certainly did that for me.



Rebecca looked beautiful and it was good to see her smiling face and to enjoy a beautiful day in the park with both of them.

Ah, life is good!!!! ;)

Dragon's Breath

We did the Salem Art Fair and Festival this past weekend. It was 106... in the shade.
Here is our booth all gussied up and ready to go for the three days of Summer fun?
We sort of got the clue early that it was gonna be hot....OH Yeah!
The park is beautiful with lots of ancient oak trees to shade the alabaster craft folks who live in the Northwest. We were at the end of a row that had NO trees and thus NO shade after 12:30. The Sun was relentless!!

Luckily we were amongst our fellow "Never say Die" artisians. Good ones too!! The show was amazing. I captured only a few on camera... I am sharing my favorites with you.

I just LOVE these metal shoes created by Gary & Micki Voorhies. They are Very Talented couple and lovely couple. Their "garden art" was quite a success. Check them out!











This is Tamara Greiter. An amazing artist who I purchased a piece from....it was a small, inexpensive piece but.....I got one!! It's the one to her right, the lady with the yellow bird on her head.


Needless
to say,
after three days of
scorching
heat
we were
NOT amused
or often
upright
for that matter.
This was Sunday afternoon on the grass.....get my drift?
I would have a picture of me in here too...but I don't want to scare any children who might accidentally have seen it.
See, aren't you glad that you waited to see the Dragon?
Isn't she bloody amazing? She was blowing fire all weekend.
Amazing sculpture by Shane Schaeffer

All in all it was another interesting adventure.
We are both VERY glad to be home with our sweet kitties and our fairly cool home!!

Life on the rim of Drain

Ahh accomplishment!

Michael is doing a pen show up in Portland this weekend & I am getting projects finished.
I have been working on this "Starfish" bag since May. Isn't it CUTE!! Ofcourse I couldn't resist finishing it off with one of my buttons.
I'm so glad it's done, now I can show it off!
I will proudly display it at Stitches....And I'll have the patterns and kits for it too!



It's from
http://www.felted-bags.com/ .


Holly has many more patterns as well. She is a master at making sure that they are FUN, easy to do & look terrific.
Check out her site!!

You know where to get the buttons...But in case you need it
www.glasspens.com/buttons.html

This felted bowl is a thank you for my good friend Nancy M. She is awesome. I hope that she can find something wonderful.....beautiful stones or candles to put into it & that it will remind her how much she means to me.
It made a little heart in the middle..... all by itself!!
I am really enjoying making these felted bowls. I know that I will make many more!!

Lookie lookie

Look what we got from our good friend Barb. She made these with some of my beads. Aren't they just perfect for holding your place? I am going to be sending her more beads so that she can twist and shout some more out. I will be bring them to Stitches Mid-West in a few weeks. Thanks so much Barb for adding a little bit of yourself into the mix!!

A Day Out!!

I have been home for the past few weeks and I was ready for an outing!!!! Michael and I decided that it would be a great and beautiful day to go to Eugene's Saturday Market. It's a great place to buy beautiful veggies and plants and be amongst the good energies of lovely Eugenites. I thought that I would share a bit of it all with you.
This is the Pepper lady. She has been at Market for years and has a booth filled with both plant starts and beautiful hanging dried peppers. As you can pretty much tell by looking at her she is a happy lady who enjoys what she does! Always an uplifting thing to see!
We had too much fun packing ourselves with cabbage, tomatoes, sunflower starts to plant in the garden, cherries.....yummm, zuchinni, lettuce.....and lovely new plants.....I bought these great day lillies, they were too beautiful to pass up!! Day lillies are great, they grow and grow year after year and never complain about where they are planted or how much food they get.
The beauty of everything just blew me away. It is true...... life is a flat of cherries!!
The sun shone, little children giggled and everyone was having a great time enjoying this amazing event and a Summer day.

Michael and I left laden with good, organic food and smiles on our faces!! If you are ever in Eugene in the Summer please come and visit Saturday Market, I know that you will come away with a special knowledge of this amazing place ;)

All the new, that's fit to print

Here is a new batch of orifice hooks. They just keep getting better and better!! The ones with the dichroic in them are not only practical but they are beautifully sparkly too. The dicroic hooks are $60 (the dicro is expensive & much more difficult to work with) and we feel that they are priced so that they offer availability so that everyone who spins can have at least one in their collection. The last two in the line up are $45. Contact us via email at smernst@juno.com if one of them suits you.

This is the baby alpaca roving that I bought at the Black Sheep Gathering.... spun up. I am very proud of how it turned out.
I am new to spinning and I am enjoying the process alot! The yarn turned out to be this lovely champagne color....they call it Sand.
I got it from Stick and Stone Fiberarts from Van Nuys, CA. The two women who run the store are very nice, Margarite and Janel. If you get in touch with them please be sure and mention my name. Also, they have my buttons in their new shop.

Exciting news.....I cast on and have been knitting on the DFS. I am happy that this is the day that we chose to begin...and that it's finally here. It's coming along quite nicely so far. Pretty soon I will put in a "life line" so that I can feel comfortable. As it's my first lace piece I wouldn't want to have to tear it out, if I can help it. So wish me luck......back to knitting.

It's actually Summer in Oregon

Hello and Happy Summer. It sure seems like the other day, I was freezing and so glad to be behind the torch keeping warm and making lovely glasswork. Now it's too warm to do that after 12:00 so I have to sit and spin....bummer ;) I do love Summer!! The out of doors is so accessible and the nights are magic.

Here's another picture that Denise took of Michael and I at Black Sheep. It was so Hot and yet I don't look too wilted....how can Michael handle that beard? Stubborness.
Our daughters call him the old goat. His tee shirt says, "Thou Shalt Not Snivel"...I'm afraid that's wasted on me. I call it rumination.

I am afraid that I have been wasting time here lately. Although I have gotten some orders out for people who have been waiting since the Black Sheep Gathering. I thank them for their patience. I know how hard it can be to wait for things that you really want.

On July 5th some friends and I are going to cast on Sivia Harding's Diamond Fantasy Shawl. Here's the url if you'd like to check it out. http://siviaharding.com/Diamonds2.html . We picked July 5th because it was the day that Daisy, the first cloned sheep was born.
I think that I have decided to make it out of this lovely yarn that I traded buttons for while I was doing a show last year. I do hope that I will have enough to finish it. I started it yesterday....yep, I jumped the gun..just couldn't help it. Got a bit of it done and then....even though I put in a "life line"....I totally messed it up. It was on a row where you bind off 5 stitches, when I tried to back track the 5 stitch bind off had felted a bit and decided it didn't want to coorperate. Damn!!! Will that teach me? Probably NOT!

I had 900 yards of this raspberry yarn, which I just love but will I now have enough to make the shawl??? With so many lovely yarns out there and in my stash, it's really difficult for me to make a decision as to what I should use. I guess that I will take my chances and get as far as I get.

This is the official blue ribbon winner of the Sheep to Shawl competition at the Black Sheep Gathering. She wore both of them proudly!! And rightly so. It's so amazing to think that that was ALL done in just one day!!

And this is Andrea who friends call Cookie....because she is SO Sweet. Michael and I met her down at TKGA in Oakland several years ago. She's an awesome spinner and crocheter and just a whole lot of fun. It was so good to see she and her husband up in our neck of the woods.

Have a wonderful Fouth of July!!
We are staying home and enjoying the beautiful weather and each other! That's enough celebration for us.