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We celebrated the 4th of July a day early with a pool party and steaks on the grill, so yesterday I was able to devote about five hours at my workbench, a rarity indeed in these busy times. My back and hands were very achy by the time I was finished, but it was worth it. This one is Skye, after a family friend's daughter whose name I really love! I deliberately made the circles not be perfectly formed and with different sizes so as to give them an organic, slightly messy, unplanned look - though the "unplanned" part is certainly a misnomer, as they were all very meticulously planned.

Circles, circles everywhere

Notice a theme emerging? This is another new piece from the weekend's creativity burst, named Stella. The necklace is similar to Audrey but with an extra circle pendant. For my next project I'm envisioning something similar to these two, but with even more circles bunched together, maybe with a thinner gauge wire, some hammered, some not. We'll see how that works out!

Also, in case you were looking for the Uhura cuff bracelet, I've temporarily taken it down from Etsy to administer some suggested improvements from a couple of friends who did a test run for me. Uhura will be back up soon!

Twilight Tuesday

I happily plunked down $10 for the highly-anticipated copy of US Weekly's special feature called The Sexy Stars of Twilight, which came out this week. Mr Hazel can scarcely believe I spent $10 on something like this, but we'll just ignore him. The magazine includes seven big pullout posters, as well as articles and quotes. I skipped over the feature on Kristen Stewart but devoured the rest, and my favorite was R-Pattz's quote along the lines of how he now sometimes feels like he's in a boy band. How cute!

Since New Moon has wrapped up filming and is currently in post-production, there has been a dearth of movie news, but today an exciting one came out: they released the filming schedule for Eclipse. Filming is to start on August 17 until October 31, again in Vancouver, and using the same set and studio as New Moon.

Cuff bracelet

I made a cuff bracelet for the first time. I've been thinking about the design and construction for a while but didn't have the courage to actually pick up my torch and start creating one lest it ended up in the discard pile, like a lot of my metalwork attempts. But on Sunday I spent the whole afternoon at my workbench, and this is one of the fruits of my labor. My sister has been bugging me to name a piece after Star Trek's Uhura, but I've been waiting until I made something sufficiently funky and sassy and space age-y. I think this one finally looks like an Uhura, doesn't it?

On the ferry

Yesterday we took a ferry to check out a new harbor being developed into an area for new restaurants, stores, and a resort hotel. Upon docking, we unexpectedly ran into old friends, whom I haven't seen in years. That made me happy. Mr Hazel and I enjoyed some lunch and walked around for a bit before boarding the ferry back. It was a gorgeous day to be out on the river among all the pretty sailboats. The last picture is of a bird's nest built on top of a buoy, a sight you don't come across too often.

Sunflowers

Hello, summer.

Twilight Tuesday

A new cover for New Moon. They relegated Edward to a ghostly, hallucinatory image on top of a moon! What were they thinking? You can't even tell it's R-Pattz, much less notice him at first glance. As a member of Team Edward, I say boo on this one. Stupid Jacob with his stupid muscles. And stupid Bella with that come hither pose. Though I do wonder what that 'exclusive poster' is of.