Fastest turnaround ever!

Hi!  I'm back after another hiatus - hopefully my last one.  Mom is doing much better.  She's gone through three chemo treatments and is tolerating them pretty well.  She's still weak, but we did her Christmas shopping for my stepfather yesterday.  It was brief but complete!  Now that things have calmed down some I can get back to blogging.

I have been making a number of pieces of jewelry in the last few months.  The Loose Bead Society participated in a sale called Loominosity at the end of October, and I made quite a few pieces for that sale with silver clay focal elements - earrings and necklaces.  I also made some new things using my new stitching skills for a craft sale at a church last weekend in Waukegan.  Both sales went pretty well, and they got my mind thinking about how I can get my items "out there" more.

There is another big project in the works, but I'm not ready to divulge that information yet.  Mum's the word!

The project I'm going to show you today is the most recently done.  Yeah, I know that doesn't make any sense, but it's the most handy.  In computer terms, this is called LIFO: Last In First Out.  Tomorrow I'll show you my first knitting project that I completed a few months ago.  That will get me started in a more normal chronology.  I've always preferred FIFO (First In First Out).

While my husband was looking on eBay for a new timer for our kitchen, he tried to find one that looked like a piece of sushi.  I used to call this a "sushi timer", but after some confusion about why a timer would be needed for raw fish, I had to stop using that term.  Anyway, Steve found an auction for 6 glass lampwork sushi beads at a very good price - 99 cents for the opening bid!  Steve won them for just $1.29, plus shipping.  If you search eBay for "Sushi Lampwork Beads", you'll find other lots available.  None of them is as cheap, but they look like the same ones.

The beads came in the mail yesterday.  Once Steve gave the nod that I could open the box (I didn't know if he'd withhold them until Christmas like the adorable cat jacket we found in a Fair Trade store), I had the beads out and a finished bracelet in about a half an hour!  I dithered a bit about what beads to put with them, but with Steve's suggestions, I decided to use all black, faceted beads.  They give the bracelet some class without distracting the eye from the sushi.

From left to right the sushi looks like egg, roe (fish eggs), super white tuna, California roll, tuna, and shrimp.  All very tasty, and I'm looking forward to wearing my new bracelet whenever we eat sushi!  (For those of you who don't eat sushi - not all of it is raw - there are a number of types of sushi that are cooked or fish-less that can ease you into it.  Egg is cooked, of course, as is shrimp.  A shrimp tempura roll is quite tasty!  Eel with avocado is very good, too - you don't even realize you're eating eel!)

Now I'm hungry.  Time for lunch, although unfortunately it will not be sushi.