Long time no see, lots of things happened

Well, it's long time since I last posted. On top of trying hard to catch up with the tutorials, pieces that need finished, writing articles for the website and filling it up with content, as well as taking photos of pieces of jewelry and uploading them to the online store, I had unexpected health issues to deal with, this time not mine, but my furbabies.

First Whisper woke up one morning with half of his face swollen. Couldn't get in to see the vet until 2 pm (the vet was not there, was gone to a dr. appointment for himself). then once we got there, they ran the routine blood test and some values came up unusual so they asked me if they could run some additional tests. To make a long story short, his liver enzymes came up 3-4 times higher than normal. So there's a suspicion of either Cushing's or liver cancer. They gave him a "shock" shot of antibiotics and we got antibiotics for home too. I won't be able to know what is going on exactly until I have the money to run the test that would rule "in" or "out" Cushing's. I don't want to go liver biopsy way not just for the expense but also for the stress it would put on him - that, and the fact that there is the risk that, if it's cancer, it may be "seeded" by the biopsy needle.
Since then, his swelling came down completely. After extensive research, I switched him (gradually) to mostly raw food and started to give him Melatonin and ordered online some lignans (one of my neighbors gave me the money for it). If it's Cushing's I don't want to give him the meds they have, not just that they're very expensive but the side effects are very serious and they make the dogs' lives miserable. I read quite a few materials (including studies done by accredited reputable establishments) that show that switching to a raw diet combined with natural supplements not only has proven to control Cushing's but in a few cases it actually cured it. Whisper is 11, so he can be considered a senior dog - even if he doesn't look like it - so I don't dream about ccuring it but if it can be controlled I'll be thrilled.
He seems to be doing really well now. He even played, he sleeps, he enjoys his new diet. He refuses now to eat most of the things he used to love - like carrots and yogurt - but he finally ate chicken soup and a few peanuts.

Then Conor started sneezing Thursday. I thought it was just allergies but then it got worse, and he started just not being himself. Quite lethargic, with a runny nose. He spent Friday on the loveseat, sleeping, and Friday night too, no roaming and running around the house at night as is his habit. He seems to be just a tad better right now, he actually came to me last evening and slept on my chest, and in the afternoon he joined me in the craft room as is his habit whenever I work there. His nose is still runny, but clear runny, he had at one point teary eyes (also clear) but now his eyes are not teary and the third eye-lid that was raised yesterday seems to have gone down to normal again. I will try giving him a puff of Flonase sometime later today.

I am posting updates (including videos) on the Kalyana facebook page about them.

So these are the bad news. I am working on making a "destash" video, right now working on separating and making "stashes". I intended to do that in a couple of weeks but I decided to do it sooner just in case I need to rush Conor to the vet - it's the end of the month and after Whisper's vet visit I really have no money, got $21 in the bank right now and still got the gas bill to go through (it's really small) so I got about $12 to spend - definitely not enough for a vet visit.

One good news in all of this. Finally, after working for three days to get things exactly the way they want them in terms of file format, presentation, etc, the malachite tutorial is up on Amazon, and you can get it. I am posting the link below.

Faux malachite tutorial on Amazon.

Good news

Well, my clay is in town and the tracking shows "out for delivery" so it will arrive sometime today. As the UPS site says "Friday before end of day". I hope it doesn't mean 11:59 pm haha

I finished the last tutorial on malachite jewelry for my sponsors - this one is a bracelet cuff with faux malachite on a base of faux (well yes, faux, encore faux, because it's polymer clay) so faux met

al mokume gane. It's a poem in gold, with a delicate chain fastening.

As soon as I upload that (which shouldn't take more than 15 minutes total) I will start working on part 2 of the mokume gane tutorials. The methods of stacking, layering, etc. I decided that Hidden Magic deserves a separate video for itself. In this one I will show you various methods of constructing the layers - and of course, deforming them.

O hai

O hai. long time no see, sorry, I did not go MIA, I was just super busy trying to finish things.  I did start about half a dozen times to write an blog entry but something happened each and every time and I never finished.

As you can see I posted two new public tutorials; one on a Halloween theme (as promised) and one that is the first part on a mokume gane journey. I will link them at the end of this post.

As a little bit of a better news, I managed in the last week to stay awake about 8 hours a day. Awesome. Hopefully it will improve more and more.

My next blood tests are scheduled for the 15th of September. That is when I go do a bone density test too.

I also go on the 18th to get shots in my left wrist. The ones on the right wrist worked great, the hand hurts way less and I am able to do more stuff with it. And the splint helped tremendously.

I finished three tutorials for my sponsors and have only two left (well, one is actually partial of one of the other three, I divided one in two parts to be easier to watch as it was a set).

So I guess I didn't do that bad, in terms of productivity.

Where I'm behind - of course as usual my own pieces that need to be finished and photographed and posted in the online store.

House keeping.

Grocery shopping.

Bummer. Then I got some paperwork to take care of for my probate in Europe and also schedule a house viewing (after I do the housekeeping) for the sale of the house. Yes, I've been trying for over a year but no serious buyers.

I've been doing some research too on various techniques. Hopefully will be post something soon.

Still have to finish the enamel thing. I need two hours of not falling asleep
Still have to do the glitter tutorial.

The translucent canes have to wait a few days, y'all. As a piece of advice.

DON'T BUY STUFF FROM SCULPEYPRODUCTS.COM.

I should have listened to my gut instinct that told  me that a website that doesn't give you the shipping amount until AFTER you enter your payment details has something shady going on. But I didn't.

It took them three days to put my shipment together. That is, they put it together in the fourth day. And it didn't get to UPS until the evening of the fourth day. That was yesterday. So I have big doubts I will get the clay by Friday.

And this was on a $150 order. My BFF had given me some money to get something for her too, so yes, this is how they handle orders, even larger ones. When I commented on the delay, I got some mumbled excuses about "we dont' want the clay in transit during the week-end" - what is the difference between the package being in transit during the week-end and during the week? I pointed out that mail actually does travel during the week-end too. At which they asked me if I wanted to cancel the order. Yes, y'all, after waiting since Friday (I had put my order in a little before 6 am, so they could have processed it Friday) til Tuesday, they offered for me to wait for my money to be refunded, then order from somewhere else, so get the clay maybe two weeks after I had initially ordered it?

Yea, don't get enticed by the prices. You'll wait and wait and wait. Well, unless you don't mind waiting. I looked then for reviews. Yeah. I'll add my own to the one or two star after I get the package.

What next? I don't know. Honestly, I don't. We'll just go with the flow.

Here's the two tutorials:

Ah yes, and I did an intro on the malachite tutorial that is on the sponsors group

Sunday "clay with me" and word about tutorials and other stuff

First of all apologies if I haven't been very active this week on the blog. As I said, it was a week full of doctors appointments. That kind of messes up my whole day.

Friday was not better in any way, it was worse. We has tropical-style rains and flooding and that made it so that it took 2 hours for me to get back home from the dr. appointment. So left the house at 9 am and wasn't back til 2 pm. You can imagine how worn out I was.

They drew a bunch of blood (and that made me be even more worn out) and part of the results came back Friday. Good part is that I am not Vit B and Vit D deficient anymore. Bad part is that not only the abnormal values I had in the blood test in June were more abnormal, but there were a few more abnormal results. They called me late in the afternoon Friday that I will have to go in for more tests and they're contacting my oncologist. Let's hope it's just another messed up metabolism from chemo type of thing.

Tutorial wise, I hope you liked the lace and the bubbles canes.

Just as a FYI, here's a few photos of beads made using these canes:

I did not manipulate the photos in any way, they're just raw, taken early in the morning in artificial light.
I made some beads out of an IKAT mix of violet, white and jade green (with the white in the middle) that I covered with slices of the canes (two beads are with the lace and two with the bubbles) then I've placed some slices of very reduced flower canes on top. This is the result. Now you can see what pretty results these canes can bring you



I'll post one more translucent cane and then we can go ahead and do the project.

And don't forget today's live broadcast! we'll do a little bit of color and shape play, as I thought you might get some ideas.

As for the project after the translucent canes one, I think I'll do a patchwork piece. I'll post all the small canes tutorials that will go into the project here on the blog then do the tutorial video on youtube on how to put them together and make the piece.

See y'all later. Now I go do the malachite tutorial for my sponsors.