Yes, it’s really true!! Three Space Monkeys are now part of the next Space Shuttle Mission set to soar into orbit on May 14th!

At the moment they are secluded in training for their special trip, but they did manage to sneak out a crew shot for us -

The shuttle crew looks quite happy with their new Simian Mission Specialists don’t you think?  As you can see from the image, Ray Gamma, Sam Supernova and Mike Mercury will go down in history as being part of  Shuttle Mission STS-132.  It’s rumoured that some banana experiments are going to take place and probably a good dusting of the Canada Arm.  I know the three of them are hoping for a spacewalk, and we’ll just have to cross our fingers!

So, you might be wondering ‘how on earth did all this come about?‘

These three Space Monkeys

have been selected as part of a very special payload on STS-132.  The payload consists of 8 ounces of glass beads that were created especially for Beads of Courage ‘Beads In Space’.  The beads will travel up in the Space Shuttle and upon return from the mission flight, the beads will be returned to Beads of Courage.

The Space Beads will then go on a traveling tour to Beads of Courage member hospitals to bring joy to the children who are members of the Beads of Courage Program.  Beads of Courage will also be creating a colorful poster with the space beads featured to give to all members of Beads of Courage with words of encouragement from the mission astronauts, and the contributing bead artists..

If you are unaware of Beads of Courage, it’s a wonderful program that provides beads for Children who are hospitalised with a serious illness.  Each time a milestone in the child’s treatment is passed a bead is added to the child’s string.  It’s heartbreaking but also very inspiring to see just how long some of these strings of beads are that children have collected.

Each of the beads for ‘Beads In Space’ needed to be a space theme that children would recognise.  Some of the other beads chosen include a space dog, a space frog, and aliens!  I think I can probably speak for all of the artists who participated when I say what a total thrill and honour it is to have our beads chosen for this project.

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that something I created would travel into space — it just goes to show that life is an amazing journey in itself where unpredictable and wonderful things can happen!

. . .The real mission of my Space Monkeys is to make people smile, and I hope that they can be successful in bringing some smiles to the Children who get to see them.

Read more about Team Beads of Courage and NASA here

Learn more about Beads of Courage and how you can help them here

Find out more about NASA’s STS-132 mission here

Thank you Beads of Courage and NASA for allowing this very cool thing to happen!!

I’ll be sure to keep you updated on this story!

Still obsessed with my Newfoundland trip, many waking hours are spent daydreaming about the ocean crashing upon rugged headlands, of breathtaking vistas and Vikings!

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to find that my night time dreams are also coloured by this incredible experience, including a recent one which involved a voyage on a Viking longship.

I’m not sure how much of a voyage it actually was because when we turned south towards Gros Morne I think the ship became a car, but for a few moments I was in the presence of an awe inspiring ship, one that had graciously slipped out of time and into my dream.

The longship in my dream had a name about it’s prow, it was the Polonius.

This meant nothing to me at the time, other than a name I vaguely knew, hey it’s in a King Crimson song!

The next day my curiosity was aroused and I had to find out if this meant something.  Since, it turns out Polonius is a character in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet – it’s pretty unlikely that Vikings were naming their long ships after him!

More interesting is one of Polonius’ better known lines in his advice to his son -

“This above all:  to thine own self be true”

Was that the message of my dream?  Most of us are tossed and torn between what we ‘should’ do and what we really feel we ‘want’ or ‘need’ to do.  It’s an interesting quote to have come from my dream of a glorious Longship.

If you haven’t seen this yet, you really, really should!

Those Welsh sheep are so darn clever! ;oD

I entered December’s challenge over at The Glass Challenge and have just found out that this little monkee

2nd prize winner!

has won me second place in the Hobbyist’s category!  The prize is a $75 gift certificate from the lovely folks at Burning Brass.  To say I’m excited is an understatement – ordinarily, brass tools are way beyond what our bank balance can afford, so this is going to seem like real luxury shopping!  I know I’m going to have a very hard time deciding, they have so many great  lampwork tools.

This looks like it would be wonderful for putting necks on animals, vessels and much more -

Neck shaper from Burning Brass

But ohhh this looks like a dandy little knife -

Shaping knife from Burning Brass

and I’ve always hankered after one of THESE -

Brass Shaper from Burning Brass

And this looks like it would be really nice for making captured bubbles -

Round Push from Burning Brass

You can see, I have a hard choice ahead of me!  The nicest thing about the whole competition is this -

Burning Brass was proud to be the sponsor for the November / December Glass Challenge.  We would like to thank everyone who entered.  All of the entries were very creative and since judging so many great entries was difficult for any one person, we decided to make judging a company project.  We spent most of one morning casting votes to determine the winners.  Everyone here at Burning Brass had a chance to vote for their
favorite.

Thank you Jim and everyone else at Burning Brass!

I’m sitting here feeling very blessed.  For many reasons but one big one is that I’m part of a wonderful community on the Wet Canvas Glass Forum – I’ve mentioned them before but they have to be the most giving, wonderful bunch of friends I have ever come across online.  I’m almost embarrased to share everything I’ve received but want everyone to know much I appreciate their kindness.

I went to the Post Office this afternoon to see if my copy of The Flow had arrived – YES!!  Woohooo!  The Women In Glass Edition – crammed with incredible pictures and tutorials!  But alongside that was a ‘come and pick your package up’ ticket.  I wasn’t expecting anything so imagine my surprise when the clerk brought out a box -

My box!

One of my WC friends had sent me something!  I couldn’t wait to get home to see what was in there!

Oooh! it looks EXCITING!

Wonder what could be hiding under the tissue paper??

SOCK MONKEY SLIPPERS!!!

OH WOW!!!  It doesn’t get much better than this!  Thank you SO much Deborah for finding these and thinking of me!  The funny thing is, I had put slippers on my family Christmas list and even mentioned I’d seen some cute monkey ones, but they were not forthcoming – so these put an extra big grin on my face, and my feet!  My old slippers are just about in pieces.

Warm tootsies!

I wonder what Raff is going to think when I chase him wearing these?? Hehehe!

Since I had the camera handy, and since I’d been so remiss about posting most of the other wonderful things I received over the last while I decided to get some more pictures while I was at it -

Monkey Socks!

Rita of Rita’z R-tistic Ramblez gifted me these colourful socks!  I wore them for the first time on Christmas Day and got lots of great comments!  Thank you Rita!  –anyone would think I liked monkeys?! ;o)

Karen Leonardo Book

I was speechless when I opened a package to find this book that Deb sent me – It is full of tutorials for different beads followed by a section on how to turn them all into different pieces of jewellery.  I made my first brooch following instructions in this book and was thrilled with how well it turned out!  Thank YOU Deb!

A while back Paula had surprised me and sent me two crochet books -

Books from Paula

The Bead Crochet book answers so many of the questions I had about how to do, and what to use, and I’m looking forward to trying some of the ‘recipes’ in the wire book too!

As if this wasn’t MORE than enough, I also received Pipyr’s eye cane tutorial from Maggie – I’m working on this one, I’ve got a cane made, but trying to perfect setting it into beads.

I know I posted this before but will show it again, Maxine sent me one of her presses!!

If you aren’t a beadmaker and wonder what this contraption does it helps to create beads of a certain size and shape when the molten glass is pressed between the brass blocks.  I’m still working on this, it doesn’t come naturally to me and is going to take some practise.  There is a definite skill to getting just the right amount of glass melted to fill the press and no more!  When I get some decent beads made with it I’ll post them here.  Thank you GirlFriday!

And to top it all off Rhonda sent me the Lichen glass I wrote about a few posts back – I don’t have a picture of it as I made it into -

(except the bottom one which is my interpretation of Pipyr’s eye cane tutorial)

I’m now feeling very indebted to everyone!

Here’s The Flow

It’s very exciting to see beads by so many people I know all in one place!  I’m now going to go and have a proper look at it, the gallery of glass in there is breathtaking.

Well, yesterday to be precise. I was feeling discouraged with the temporary loss of my oxycon and trying to think of ways around the problem.

• No Torching! – not really a possibilty
• Torch with Hot Head and 1lb cannisters – Yuk! Yuk! Yuk!
• Torch with Hot Head and bulk propane – requires change to current setup
• Try another option! – but what?

Then! Like a bolt of lightening from the blue I remembered the little torch I was gifted a while back. It only requires propane, and has the same hookup as my Mega Minor!
I pulled this little torch out and hooked it up, thinking this might be a good learning experience, making mini beads (for that’s all it would do for sure!).

Without further ado, here’s my first Micro Mini Monkee – I put it next to a regular sized one so that you can see the size difference. The neat thing about this is how tiny I can make details with this torch, combining this torch with my Mega Minor could yeild some very interesting results! It would also mean I’d need to rework my set up so that I could have two torches running at the same time, or in tandem at least.

I’ll be a week or so without a concentrator, I’ve spoken to John at Artistry In Glass, he has been super helpful and is having a replacement shipped asap from the company in the States, and will have my dead one picked up next week. I am really happy with the service they have given and continue to give me – thank you John and Carri!

The GOOD

What a lovely surprise to find that my friend Ananda had sent me some Vetrofond Lichen to try after I had commented on her beads made with this colour (thank you so much Ananda!). Isn’t it pretty! It’s the most delicate green with a hint of blue. My favourite of these beads is the middle, think I’m calling it Glacial Fields, which means it’s probably a keeper, if I start naming beads it’s usually because I’m seeing them as offspring…
The little black bead was my first attempt at using some eye cane I made from a tutorial by Pipyr.

The BAD
My oxycon died on me today, I don’t know whether to be mad or cry. It’s only about six months old and I’ve treated it with all love one would bestow upon a family member – except I never named it… perhaps THAT’s the problem. Fortunately it’s under warranty, but I’m wondering how long it’s going to take to get the whole thing sorted out and what I’m going to do in the meantime. Does this mean a switch back to the trusty old Hot Head torch?

The UGLY
Well, that would be my mood, I feel like things are conspiring against me so I’ve taken to eating to make myself feel better – which by the way is a lousy solution!

The #9
Ahh yes…. the number nine! Cloud nine, Love Potion number 9, the 9 horsemen of the Apocolypse (really!! they just forgot to tell you about the other five!), and the fact that the Mayan calendar ends at the year 2012 and 12 is divisible by three and so is nine! I read somewhere that for some reason if you use odd numbers in your blog posts people tend to be drawn to them – consider this a test! ;o)

Thats it – if you’ve got any interesting uses for the number nine I’d be happy to hear them.

Happy New Year to everyone!

I have the results from my Giveaway to share!

I thought it would be fun to have a little ceremony, so I gathered all the things I needed -

My list of email addresses

A nice box to put them in -

And a guest celebrity to do the drawing

Unfortunately Bono wasn’t available…  nor were any of a number of other suitable guests that I had in mind.  I had to lower my sights just a little.

Fortunately (or not!), our own dear Ms. Monkeepenny agreed to step into the roll as Celebrity Guest and Draw Officiator.

Ms. Monkeepenny

I had to give her a bribe gift of jewellery, but then she seemed quite happy to be the centre of attention.

What I hadn’t counted on was her welcome speech…

“Dear friends, we are gathered here on this auspicious occasion of the very first Fireseed Giveaway.  I graciously conceded to perform the drawing of winners names in Bono’s absence.”

She went on… I’ll spare you all the details,

“It gives me GREAT pleasure, or it will, once I’m at the party I’ve been promised afterwards with champagne, choklit and I heard a rumour about some good looking male chimp that might attend…  …where was I..?  Yes, PLEASURE….   I am almost speechless with excitement to conclude this drawing”

It was at this point that I realised she’d been into the champers already, she began gesticulating with great relish -

And I cringed as she began to list to one side – this wasn’t going at all the way I had planned –

Before I knew what was happening she was on her back!

And a strange squeal emanated from her mouth as she toppled backwards off the podium –

I tried really hard to stifle a howl of laughter and went to her aid – this was not the time to upset the Guest of Honour!

Ms. Monkeepenny managed to collect herself together and with the promise of a few more perks after the event, prepared to continue -

With all the entrants in the box

Celebrity Guest Ms. Monkeepenny dipped in her hand to select the winner….   *** Big Drumroll***

She fumbled around for a while and brought forth…. (it was right about now that the camera battery died..)

THE WINNER!!

And right about now that the flash batteries died, and Raff jumped on the table and tried to disassemble my whole awards show!

Never the less we managed to proceed -

Stanley Starpuck, Space Monkee!

And the Winner of Stanley Starpuck is:

Valentina Miletic!

Since I had such a great response, and since Monkeepenny was costing me a fortune, I decided to add a couple of runner up prizes to the draw

Second Prize, one of my Cold Monkee beads goes to:

Diane Hart!

Here she is Diane -

And finally Third Prize, another Monkee bead to:

Karin Wilcox!

Here he is Karin! – Karin, I’ve emailed you but haven’t received a reply yet – I’m wondering if it’s an address you don’t use much, or if my email has gone into the spam bucket. If you read this, can you email my your mailing address ;o)

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everyone else who entered! I have another idea for some fun but need to think on it a bit more – maybe I’ll have it ready for my next newsletter!

Well, I woke up this morning, and you were on my mind… you were on my mind…  Oh sorry, too little sleep has me starting the day off with a song!  Let me try again.

I woke up this morning to find I had been tagged by Rita’s Rambles – Thank you Rita!

What does this mean you might ask?  Well I will tell you, here are the rules -

Here are the rules of tagging
1. Link to tagger and display these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself – some random, some WEIRD.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by including links to their blog.
4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Now I have to find SEVEN people to tag!  Bet you are all quaking in your boots!

Before I do the weird stuff and tagging, I want to quickly share this wonderful brooch that Meghann Gervais made for my right before my very eyes yesterday!  I love visiting Meghann because she’s super talented and loves too bake, so there’s always something yummy on the go as well!  Yesterday she sent me home with a whole half of her delicious bundt cake that was still warm and moist and crammed with cranberries.   Ooooh I felt so special D

The brooch?  Oh yes, here it is!

I’m planning on wearing at the Ottawa Glass Bead Artists show next weekend. I used these three monkees as my image on our promotional postcards so I thought it would be fun to be able to wear them as well. I have a great fondness for these three guys, I don’t know why, they are just special!

Now back to the tagging thing seven facts hmmm…

1. I love RATS! Yes we had pet rats for several years and they are the most wonderful, intelligent little creatures. I was telling Meghann yesterday, they really are like little dogs. They got to know their names and would come when called. You can see some pictures here (they really are very cute )  The best way I can think to describe them is that they had personalities the size of elephants in their tiny bodies!  Each one was so special in his or her own way.  I remember Hannah, one day she climbed to the top of a venetian blind in the living room – we used to call her Indianna Hannah, and another time she went missing from her ‘free roam time’ I was a bit panicked, but turned out she had left the room, climbed the stairs found my daughter’s room and climbed on the bed to wake her up!!! Honestly its true!  Then there was darling Smeagol, and little Otis and Big Bo – oh I could go on for ever, but need to do the next six things.

2. I created a whole marketing campaign for Marmite because I love it so much!  I even sent it to them!  LOL, but of course they have their own “people” who do that kind of thing!  Here’s ad one – I have a series of four or five I think, I should post them sometime.

3. I met my husband online! Yes, it’s true!  Not intentionally, honest!  Not in a seedy chat room or anything like that (not saying that all chat rooms are seedy), (not that I have any experience with chat rooms), (well only one and that was full of glassy girls and that was VERY seedy! heheh), no I met my husband because we both happened to be looking for the same book by one of our favourite authors at that time – Whitley Strieber of Communion fame.

4. I wish I lived near the ocean. I was born in Bristol, England – that’s not too far from the coast and I do believe that where we are born or live our first years somehow imprints itself on us, I have a deep feeling of needing to be near the ocean.  It’s hard when I’m planted firmly in the middle of Ontario.

5. I believe the Universe is Holographic! D  And that there are Multiverses!  It’s really not as wacky as it sounds if you start reading about it.  Quantum physics and sub quantum physics is actually finding out more and more that points to some very strange things about the Universe we live in.  One of my all time favourite books is The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot.  It changed the way I look at the world around me!

6. My favourite flower is the Cowslip.

I remember from my childhood in England fields of cowslips.  They were so pretty and have a delicate scent, I remember picking bunches to take home, and I remember my mum telling me that the Gypsies would pick them to make Cowslip wine.

7. Last one eh?  I’m messy! My desk is a mess, my torching area is a mess – most of my house is a mess! D

OK, now to tag seven people, let me see who I can come up with -

Valentina Creations! – My good friend Valentina who is creative beyond words!

Meghann Gervais – Talented jewellery-maker and allergy free chef extraordinairre!

Maxine Chivers – AKA Pickle Girl or Girlfriday1962 who’s latest bead creation is named Busta Bloodvessel!

Monkee Maker – One of my favourite blogs to follow and the inspiration for my first Monkee bead!

Samma’s Blog – Oh my gosh!  You need to see Samma’s wonderful creations, both soft glass and boro – she is AMAZING!!

Sueze’s Blog! – Fellow Canadian beadmaker living in BC and enjoying wonderfully MILD winters

Infinite Charms - Michelle has just got a brand new Cricket torch and I can’t wait to see what she does with it!

Now I have to go let these people know that I’ve tagged them!

Well now, on not QUITE such a dramatic scale but almost….
Avert your ears if you hear a bad word!

So anyway, these Monkees went again!

Monkees In SPACE!!