Free Earrings ~ tskDesign, Sterling Hooks

To say thank you for a great year, I am giving my customers a pair of my tskDesign earrings with sterling silver hooks for all orders $75 and over. My wife is something of an earring fanatic collector, and of all the pairs she has, she says mine are the amongst those she enjoys the most, as they are pretty, unique, and very comfortable.

Colors are mossy green, light green, cobalt blue, light blue, champagne and frosty white. I used to sell these for $25 in a local store.

There are lots of good reasons to shop now, as, if past experience is anything to go on, things are going to get crazy in a couple of weeks. Prices may go up, and selection may go down. To see my amazing creations for the home, garden and office, Click here.

Great Wind Chime Store

Received an email from a fellow who had seen my work around on the Web. He asked if perhaps he could place some of my wind chimes on his website. It turns out he runs an online store dedicated to wind chimes~ Wow! Of course, I said yes.

What a wonderful job he did! I never imagined he would go to so much effort~ he did a super job! Others must like how he set things up, too— I've already had some sales. If you are at all interested in wind chimes, check out this great wind chime site (click here).

eBay Guide

Beach glass inspired artist-made glass, tung nut oiled red cedar, copper chimes with a beach stone clapper. To learn more about this wind chime, or to buy it, Click here.

There are wind chimes, and there is art, and then there is wind chime art. My thoughts? Why own just a wind chime, when you can enjoy wind chime art? I explore this further in my eBay Guide on wind chimes~ you can read it by clicking here.

Copper Wire

Price January 2006: $95.00



Price October 2006: $199.00

Price increases are expected. But the mega jump in copper prices (not just wire, but hard copper that I use lots of too), is a drag.

Glass

tsk Design Beach Glass Inspired Artist-made Glass with Copper Wind Chime
For more information on this and other glass art, or to buy, Click Here.

There is good glass, acceptable glass, and bad glass. Sometimes there is excellent glass. Even though I have been working with my glass for years, I still can never be one hundred percent sure what I am going to end up with. There are a lot of variables at play. Even now, with years of experience, truly exceptional glass is not an everyday occurrence.

The glass for this blue glass wind chime is excellent. I'm all the more happy, because blue and frosty white are by far the two most difficult types of glass to work with. They are thinner, and more brittle. To get the mat finish and smooth edges, I need to work the pieces long enough, but if they are worked too long, they become thin and fragile, and fracture easily.

When the pieces are just perfect, they have a nice mat finish front and back, and are still thick. Most often, I have to settle for a little more gloss than I would like. But this time, for this wind chime, the glass is perfect.

Yukon Holiday ~ Cool Paradise

Kluane National Park, Yukon Territory, Canada

The Yukon was just great. In the past, we'd driven back and forth across Canada, and explored Southern British Columbia extensively, and those trips had many special moments and places. But I had always wanted to visit the Yukon. I thought it would be 'my type of place', and it was. I love it up there.

For shear beauty, for wide open and uncrowded, for low stress and peace and quiet, you just can't beat it. The long days are a bonus, since even if you pull into a campsite at seven or eight, you still have lots of time to set up camp, relax, cook dinner, and relax some more. The government campgrounds were all clean, well designed, and inexpensive~ $12 including firewood. The firewood was much appreciated, as it was much cooler than we had thought it would be, often getting down to around 40 at night, and only hitting 65 even on a sunny day. That coolness, by the way, was one more thing I really liked-- I hate traveling, getting out of the air conditioned car, and melting!

Not infrequently, there were only a couple of other visitors at a large campsite, and once we were alone~ a little scary, but also a memorable experience. When camping elsewhere, our lively, young golden retriever usually would have to be restrained on a twenty foot leash at a campsite, but not often in the Yukon. First, there would most often be no one for him to annoy with his friendliness, and second, those few times when someone was nearby, they were dog lovers and invited his attention. The Yukon is truly dog paradise, especially for a water dog like a golden, as there is a lake or river always a stick's throw away. The cool air and cold water limited our own swims to very brief plunges.

The roads and highways were all excellent. The few towns are (mostly) adequate for supplies. No malls (wonderful!). Very little traffic (low stress). Very few bugs (nice surprise!).

Driving back south after an all too brief visit, how odd that Northern British Columbia, that before had seemed so sparsely populated, now looked developed and busy. Even a short visit to the Yukon can change the way you see the world.

A Really L-O-N-G Break

Why so long without a post? Well, a two week (wonderful!) holiday up to the Yukon (see the grizzly mom and cub) and a week to take it easy at home. I was all set to get back to work, and threw my back out~ Ouch!

It was all I could do to keep working and packing and shipping my art, so the ol' blog had to be put on the back burner. All is going much, much better, back-wise, now, and I hope to post more frequently. Thank you so much to those who continued to look in and check out my blog, and I am sorry it was always the same old thing. Stupid back.