Sawdust is… Jasper!!!

Hello Mo fans!

Well our visiting cat friend Sawdust gets the spotlight this week.  He is the orange and white cat with the sweet face who has been hanging around from time to time.  When the weather took a real cold turn a few weeks back Mr Sawdust became a very regular visitor, stopping by the back porch every morning, sitting on the windowsills, meowing to come in.

When I went outside he would rub up against my ankles and seemed so determined to come in that I became worried and fed him a small bit out on the porch some mornings.  There were a couple families that had moved recently, had he been abandoned?  I finally decided to try a test message and put a red collar on Sawdust with a short message:  HUNGRY: am I a stray?

Oh giggles, he shows up a few days later with a pretty black collar and name tag:  Jasper!

Mr Jasper stops by for a visit

Jasper is a type of semi-precious rock that comes in a variety of browns, quite the appropriate name for him.  The name tag also had a phone number on the back, and a call to Jasper’s family was fun.  Apparently Jasper goes visiting to quite a few neighbor’s houses, and he is just over the back fence from me so we are happy he is not crossing any roads.

My cats are quite relieved to not have this intruder be homeless.  Miss Nimbus has had her run-ins with Jasper, it was he who had her trapped up on the shed roof.  Now when she sees him sitting on the windowsill she jumps up on the inside of the window and smacks the glass with her paws to scare him away.  Cats can be very jealous defending their human from other cats!

I sneak outside and give him the chin scratch anyway, he’s such a nice fellow.

Fire bead in a woven choker

fire bead in peyote stitch woven choker

Finally finished another woven seed bead choker this week.

I call this series Fire beads because of how great they look in full sunlight – like they are on fire!  Translucent ambers and blues with glimmers of gold and lots of encased air bubbles make this handmade Aura Sun Arts bead special.

The focal bead colors are repeated in the seed beads along the necklace, in shades of amber and brown, with flecks of gold and a scattering of blues.  The bead weaving technique, using upholstery thread and a tiny needle, is called the peyote stitch.  With it you can create patterns or completely freeform pieces, it is much like knitting.

Browns and blues just naturally complement each other, it’s a good team.  Here is another shot to show the detail on the end clasp.  Some of the beads were just 1mm in size, it made this one more challenging.  It is 15.5 inches long.  $250.00.  Click on each photo for an enlarged view.

fire bead with bubbles