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Water
Have you ever wished you could talk to the animals? Do you think that’s a crazy notion or something that might be achievable? I have a hunch that almost all if not ALL animal lovers have at some time wished they could communicate with the creatures in their lives.
A bit of research online and you’ll see that all kinds of people are doing exactly that! You can even purchase online readings of your pets – yes, someone versed in communicating with animals will, for a fee, connect to your pet – living or passed over and relay information back to you. OK, so this is one of those things you either laugh hysterically at, totally understand, or are willing to take a leap of faith and believe that it can actually be done. Our new family member Miss Munky has once again brought this issue to the front of my mind. I want to be able to communicate with the animals in my life on a deeper level than ‘fishy! fishy! dinner is here!’, or ‘get your claws out of that furniture!!’. I do believe we are all connected on a very basic level, humans, animals, plants and even the universe. If you are looking for an interesting and possibly life altering read look out for The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, it totally changed the way I look at things.
Following along with that thought, if we ARE all connected on some level why shouldn’t we be able to pass information back and forth. I began looking for animal communicators online. They are many and varied, there are all kinds of courses you can take to learn this discipline – apparently it’s something we can all do to different degrees. I settled on Danielle MacKinnon – her site is very informative without being airy fairy or leaving you with the thought you might be dealing with someone who’s lost at least half their marbles. On the contrary Danielle’s site is very grounded, and matter of fact, she has a lot of free information there if you wander through the pages including lessons and constructive exercises. I decided to sign up for her beginners class on Animal Communication. It was in my price range – $69 and offered a starting point to see if this was something I thought I had any interest or talent in exploring. I’ve just finished the course, or I should really say class – it’s an online presentation accompanied by a pdf download of ‘how to’s’. Was it worth it? Absolutely! Did I learn anything? Yes, for sure! Did I REALLY learn to communicate with animals? I don’t know for sure that I did actually communicate with any of the four test animals – I did receive some information that was accurate and some that wasn’t. Will I continue to try? I think I will, I know the two sessions that I did left me feeling like I had gone to a deeper/other level, coming out of them was like suddenly waking from a deep sleep – it took a while to ‘come to’. Danielle says this takes time and practise (don’t all the best things in life), she offers some exercise ideas and also an online group (for a membership fee), where you can connect to one animal a month in a community where you share your findings with others. Very helpful because you can see what information is correct and what is not – you can learn to understand how information comes to you and what to look for. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this subject — have you experienced communication with animals on a deeper level than we usually do in our day to day lives?
There is one beautiful thing about living in an old house, with old windows, in a cold snap, in Canada – FROST! I’m always fascinated by the patters that appear and wonder what causes the different types of patterns that appear in frosty windows. The wind? How quickly the temperature drops? The amount of moisture between the panes? I suspect all three. Here are some pictures from our current freeze-up, I hope you enjoy the patterns as much as I do.
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 -
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.
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! 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 BAD The UGLY The #9 Thats it – if you’ve got any interesting uses for the number nine I’d be happy to hear them. |
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