Waiting in Tucson

Some of you may have noticed I skipped last week's blogs. Sometimes I just don’t know what part of my days I want to write about and sometimes I just can’t focus on writing. If you have been following my posts, you know that my love, Peter, has two benign (the joy of hearing that word) growths on salivary glands. One of the glands decided to cause a problem. We ended up going to Tucson to the University Medical Center and having the surgeon, Dr. Gernon, look at the problem. Peter was admitted to the hospital with a staph infection. It is cleared up now and surgery will be in June.

While Peter was in the hospital, I made Viking Knit chain by his bedside. As you can see, I was there quite a while! But I’ve wanted to try combining wires for a striped or segmented effect. I used copper, brass and steel wire. It was interesting to work with 3 metals of the same gauge and see the differences. The steel was definitely the harder and the brass was the easiest to work with. Looks like I can get 3 chains from this.

One morning I took a jewelry break and went to Starr Gems, a great store for tools and chains. http://www.silversupplies.com/index.shtml

I also visited the bead store, Bead Holiday, and am sharing their website with you. http://www.beadholiday.com/

I found several interesting beads to purchase (not hard for me to do!) When I lived in Tucson for 25 years, I was not actively beading or making jewelry. I did go to a couple of Gem Shows and stashed my purchased beads for future use. But I had never been to Bead Holiday and was pleasantly surprised. The owner toured me through the store pointing out the vintage beads, explaining the process of making the African beads, etc. It was a nice break from the hospital!