Nature trail

Last weekend we went to the nearby Nature Center for a walk along the trails, where I pretended to be a National Geographic photographer. There were a million dragonflies by the pond, and we saw a family of what we believe were Canadian geese, as well as pretty flowers and turtles. I'm still amazed that I was able to capture the dragonfly in the last picture, because they were flitting about so quickly.

Twilight Tuesday

My friend Tameka went to the candy convention in Chicago this spring, and among her loot that totaled 35 pounds, she brought me back a box of the Twilight Sweethearts Conversation Hearts candy. Ha - it says "Forbidden Fruits." The boxes come in three different designs, and mine, of course, has Edward on it.

Sewing machine

In between Twi-Geek '09 I managed to make a new piece for the shop, the Nancy necklace. I'm introducing one of the pendants that I found a couple of weekends ago, which was really fun to work on. This one is a vintage sewing machine! How charming is that image?

Twi-geek party

This is the t-shirt I made for last night's Twilight party. Originally I had thoughts of puffy paint and/or a Bedazzler, but both sounded too complicated, so I went with iron-on letters instead. Did I mention that we're not tweens, but rather grown women in our twenties and thirties? You couldn't tell, could you?

On e-readers

My e-book reader is one of my all-time favorite gadgets. It's especially handy when I travel because, depending on how long the trip and the plane ride, I usually bring four or five paperbacks with me. When we went to the Philippines for two weeks one year I brought something like fifteen paperbacks, half of them intended for the almost-24 hour plane ride. I didn't have room for much else in my carry-on. But with my e-reader, I could put as many books on there as I want and I only have to worry about bringing one device with me.

Before I settled on my e-reader a few years ago I was torn between the Ebookwise and the Sony, finally settling on the Ebookwise because it was a lot cheaper ($124 vs. Sony's $300 price tag). At the time, Sony didn't have an interactive touchscreen while the Ebookwise did, but Ebookwise was clunky and the screen didn't have e-Ink technology. Nevertheless, I've generally been very happy with how it has performed and held up over the years.

Then came the Kindle, and then recently, the much bigger Kindle DX, and I've been seriously considering replacing the Ebookwise with the Kindle at some point in the future. I especially love the wireless download feature of the Kindle, meaning you don't have to plug in the device in order to download the book file like I have to do with my current e-reader. But then...but then! I recently read on Time magazine that Apple is looking into designing and creating what I consider to be the holy grail of all e-readers - a device similar to the iPod. An iPod e-reader?! Sold! So I think I'm going to hang on to my trusty Ebookwise for now, and wait for Apple to come through on this. I hope they don't take too long!

Lucky finds

Errands, work, movies, chores, books, travel, family, friends, and Twilight have temporarily pushed aside jewelrymaking and attempts to stock the shop, but yesterday I scored a bunch of these amazingly adorable metal and epoxy charms with various vintage-y looking images on them. I snatched up a bunch. They're very whimsical charms such as a pair of French shears, Gibson girls in hats, an old-fashioned sewing machine, and a black-and-white bulldog. So fun, and I can't wait to work on them this week. I debated taking photos because I had a mind to debut them as finished pieces, and also, it's been a very busy weekend!

Twilight Tuesday

Finally, the first official New Moon trailer! This was debuted during the MTV Movie Awards, and it's great. We see the birthday party scene, we see the breakup scene, we see Jacob transforming into a wolf. And the CGI looks pretty good. Did you guys catch the MTVs? RPattz was looking particularly hot, and his British accent made him a hundred times more charming, if that's even possible. I wish Edward spoke with a British accent.



Also, my cousin Leslie and I talked about going on the Twilight cruise, with a pit stop in Forks, WA!