Harvesting Wild Mussels

We bought some 2011 Fishing (specifically shell-fishing) licenses at the local store. An impromptu beach vacation with friends gave the opportunity to hunt our own seafood dinner!

Our beach cottage was perched on the beach of Lincoln City, on a cliff overlooking the ocean and giant rocks that become exposed at low tide. The rocks are covered with wild-life, a free aquarium to explore and discover.

We brought some buckets and chisels and pliers and paint scrapers... tools are definitely helpful. Last year Tim and I went without tools, just a bucket, and this was silly. Now we know. Mussel beards are really strong (the little hairs that hold the shell to the rock) and tools help to pry the shellfish and save your hands from injury.

Not only did we collect mussels, we also harvested some edible barnacles that look like parrot beaks with long mussels that hold them to the rocks... I had seen Anthony Bourdain eat them on his show and he said they were delicious. They were a little more difficult to harvest, but they ended up being super tasty! (even better than the mussels I dare say!) It was a little creepy that the barnacles made noises as we harvested them. Naomi and I squealed and screamed a bit as they hissed and blew bubbles and spit orange juices at us. What can I say, the barnacles put up good fight! We won.

After harvesting and cleaning and cooking them we had a delicious traditional Moules Marinieres. What a great time! Enjoy the slide-show

Beautiful Pictures

My Nikon D80 whispers sweet nothings in my ear, take more pictures, play with me, find beautiful images and feel the creative juices. Inspiration. Seriously, I took about 1000 pictures over the last few days... I made Tim pull the car over so I could take pictures of these old train cars... and my little friend in the pictures is 6 and looks so sweet when he plays with his trains... Ah to be 6. When I look at these pictures I can hear his dad bellowing "Alllll Aboard!!!"

More Tulip Pictures

I went and took a ka-zillion more pictures of tulips at the Wooden Tree Tulip Farm.

The farm was a-buzz with people and their fancy cameras and cute babies. I couldn't help myself from taking a few shots of all the other people taking pictures. The site of these millions of tulips all bloomed at once is just really fantastic. Rippling waves of bright colors. Nearly everything was full bloom (the black tulips seemed to be the last to burst, they still hadn't) and there were plenty of orange tulips for me to photo!Afterwards we drove out thru Silverton to Silver Springs Falls... such beautiful countryside, happy cows and many many farm fields. I think Silverton is one of the cutest little towns in Oregon, its just so darn quaint. Oh and the Falls are so incredible. We went for a short hike and I couldn't stop taking pictures of flowers, they were popping up everywhere! Its spring! My camera was not co-operating at the falls though, it simply did not want to focus properly on all the little bitty spring flowers. Frustrating. But I took some 200 pictures at the tulip farm, so it was all good. :)

I took a lot of pictures of the various orange tulips. yummy orange.There were a few frustration-with-the-camera moments... I am getting anxious to use my new camera (new TBA photography equipment... oooooh I can't wait to get a powerful camera in my hands!!! by the end of the week I might not be dreaming anymore!)
This yellow and purple shot was my favorite from the day. I like how silky the purple tulip looks against the fuzzy background of yellow. That farm (the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm) is simply amazing. Rolling fields of color. Made me feel like I was in Holland. Its the stuff dreams are made of!

If you are interested in seeing more pictures I took, check them out on flickr(click here)

Two of my favorite things...

My Fat Cat that is oh so hairy.

I spent 1/2hour brushing him out yesturday and the day before I took a pair of scissors to his dreads.

And my magnolia tree - it blooms right outside my bedroom window. Spring is my favorite time of year, and this magnolia tree always welcomes the season so brilliantly... just as my daffodils start to fade in the front yard, the magnolia springs to life with pink and white.

Sweet Necklace Made of Some Bits

My friend Aimee came over today wearing this wonderful necklace she created from my scrap mobile pieces. How great is that! I think the pendant looks like little buddies, and I love it, the little curlie of twist around the black cord... its precious. I am inspired by her creative use of these pieces.

And yes, Aimee came over wearing this necklace and I took it off her neck and put it in my photo setup so I could capture a few shots and share about it in the Garden of Leah. :) Isn't it beautiful!

Snow Shoeing on Mt Hood

1. fallen, 2. follow the blue diamonds, 3. summit trail sign, 4. Snow covered bridge, 5. deep snow, 6. view of Meadows Ski Lodge, 7. trees, 8. snowshoes on the burm, 9. moss on trees

Yesterday was due time to take a day off.

heres the breakdown of my Tuesday weekend day off
-Pine State Biscuits for brunch
-drove up the mountain (new car's first trip up Mt. Hood - we took chains just in case, but we didn't need em)
-snow shoeing(there was so much fresh snow, and more fell as we wandered)
-the sun set and we drove home to have lasagna for dinner (re-heated home-made lasagna is always better than fresh)
-lastly my friend Corrie came over and gave me a massage

It was a blissful day... now I must work. My body feels relaxed and exercised and humming with happiness. Next Tuesday we are tempted to go snow shoeing again, this was the first time we've gone all winter (too much snow in town in December, the novelty factor had worn off) and now we want more before it all melts!

Traditional Thai Massage

Its time to take a breath.

Each week now I either give a massage or receive one.

After a long weekend of work I am so grateful to have the chance to get a massage from my friend Corrie. Years ago I contacted Corri and began the most wonderful friendship. We both are trained in Thai Massage and we worked out an arrangement to trade massage on a weekly basis. There were a few years there where we let the habit slip, but its back in action and such a wonderful part of my life.

Corri is awesome (if you are local and need a massage - she is a practicing LMT - check out her website Splendid Tranquility) and its fun to get together with her and make each other feel good. Last night she came over and gave me a thai massage. My body says a big THANK YOU.

If you have ever had a Traditional Thai Massage you know what I am talking about! :) This type of body work is similar to having someone do yoga to your body. It is an ancient and spiritual art, opening up the energy lines and freeing blockage from our systems. I have lots of knots to work on. I find the world to be very stressful right now, especially financially, and this makes me tense.

I studied Thai massage in Philadelphia at the Druya Network, working on my college buddies (lucky them!) to accumulate the 100 hours of practice I needed to complete the course. Then when I had certification I worked on a handful of clients there in Philly... it was a pretty good job, better than being a waitress (my other college job) although I found that most times I was scheduled to give a massage I felt like getting one! :) Self indulgent me! Also I much prefer working on my close personal friends, its such a pleasure to do so!

After moving to Portland, I no longer could maintain this casual side-job because Oregon rules mandate that I also complete the normal massage therapy training (Swedish Deep Tissue type work and another 100+hours of practice and $$ on courses) and pay for a state license, otherwise it is illegal for me to practice. In Philly my license in Thai massage and completion of certification was all I needed. In Oregon my 3 licenses (pictured on the left) are useless as far as the law is concerned.

While I don't have any passion to become a professional massage therapist (I love being a glass artist), I adore this modality and it fills a wonderful little nook of my life.

I traveled to Thailand in 2000 and took all the certification classes again at the Old Traditional Hospital in Chiang Mai, as well as a course in reflexology and acupressure from a monk at Wat Po.

Back in Philly I was taught this Sanskrit prayer that went along with the traditions. It was a goal of mine to one day make it to Thailand and hear Thai people say this prayer, I craved the glory of the audible experience. And then to finally have this in Thailand a few years later was really funny! I wish I had been able to record it. The Thai people literally sing the prayer, the words are as sing-song to them as it was to me (I had overlooked the obvious fact that Thai people do not speak Sanskrit!!). But they say this prayer at the Traditional Hospital twice a day every day, so they really enjoy the process, some of them belt it out like a Hymn at church. Its awesome.

My study at the Old Traditional Hospital was one of the most indulgent and incredible months of my life. 3 weeks of Thai pampering: great food, massage, ginger tea, sunset get-togethers, late night drinking sessions and early morning prayers before class. It was complete bliss, I'd highly recommend the experience to anyone. I filled a whole little book with delicious stories of the things that I experienced there. It was simply out-of-this-world AMAZING.

pictured below is a poster illustrating the energy lines as the Traditional Thai Medicine describes (its very similar to Traditional Chinese Medicine chi lines, the Thai system simply has 10 where the Chinese system has hundreds)
So today, years later, I still chant the Sanskrit prayer from time to time when I need to get focused, it soothes my bubbling brain. And my massage training has become like this secret skill of mine - I can do the most amazing massage. Seriously, I'm not even bragging, its the massage itself, it takes hours and its awesome. Oh and don't even get me started on the foot massage that I learned from the Monk - its just heaven. Life seems to be so depressing sometimes, but massage is just bliss.

the Oregon Coast

It was a windy day at the Oregon coast! I love watching the grasses blow in the wind and the sand whip down the beach. Sorta painful, but beautiful all the same.

It was due time for an excursion, so today Tim and I hit the beach. I love me an impromptu adventure.
We tried to fly a kite (one must always have a kite ready in the car - when we bought the new car that was one of the things I had to transfer from old car to new: the handy kite, my GPS and my car mobile of course, oh and a roadside assistance kit and window scraper thing). It was really windy :)

This was the first official impromptu adventure in the new car. I must admit I didn't drive at all. Pure bliss.

When we bought this car it had 7miles on it!! Now it has about 500. There will be many many more adventures to be had on those 4 wheels. I look forward to it.

Winter Crafty Goodness: Making Cinnamon Ornaments

Mary blogged about her fun times making cinnamon ornaments and the idea was planted in my head to try and make some myself. Cinnamon Ornaments!

Here's my how to on making these wonderful smelling decorations:

What You'll Need:
- equal parts applesauce and cinnamon (I used 1 cup each)
- ground nutmeg and clove if you have them
- Elmers Glue
- oven or dehydrator
- plastic straw
- rolling pin
- wax paper
- cookie cutters
- cookie pan

The process is odd but easy. Mixing up all the cinnamon into the applesauce takes a bit of persuasion, and then the dough isn't very cookie-dough like... but its relatively easy to work with. Use the wax paper to roll out the dough pretty thin (1/4") so it won't take too many days to dehydrate. And the plastic straw is for cutting the holes so you can hang them. Then bake them at 250degrees for a while, flipping them once. If I had a dehydrator, that'd be the way to go... but I don't... so I just left mine out to sit for a couple of days before I decorate them.

Don't eat them - they won't taste good, they just smell good.

The whole house smelled so good as I made these! My brother said he's gonna sleep walk during the night and eat some. When I opened the oven the smell of cinnamon was so strong I could taste it!

Now I need some puffy paint so I can decorate them.

Images Printed on Glass

Yesterday I attended a great workshop at the Bullseye Glass Resource center with Carrie Iverson

The workshop was a quick run thru of Carrie's experience working in printmaking and her exploration into techniques that can be applied on glass. My thanks goes to Bullseye and Carrie Iverson for such a wonderful afternoon!

Not to over-simplify... but basically following printing with oil based inks on float glass she sifts powder onto the glass and it only sticks to the ink. She demonstrated a process of using lazer printed (or photo copied) text and images that she then wet down using a printmaking process and rolled on ink that then only stuck to the toner, then inverted this wet paper onto a smooth sheet of glass and blotted it dry. When she removed the paper she had made a perfect transfer onto the glass. This technique required a few key printmaking supplies and tools, but it was relatively simple. Although Carrie made it look easy from years of experience working in printmaking!

It was interesting to think about this process oriented use of glass. Print right onto the glass, screen printing or letter printing, carved blocks and whatnot, Carrie was just doing it by hand using regular paper and a firm foam sponge to blot and tranfer - heck what about the old potato printing! (do potatoes work with oil based inks) and then sifting powders onto this ink. Its like the old glue and glitter technique. Although I don't like working with powders... gotta get out the respirator and whatnot... kinda dangerous to the lungs... but fine frit may do a decent job (fine frit is a bit heavier than powders, so it tends to not stay airborne and float up to be breathed in by the artist).


Ah... it was a fun day. I got a ride with my friend Jonathan and JeanMark in his infamous car - the Star Cruiser.






I sat next to one of the many light-up parts of the car, my alien friend Roz. It was an awesome ride (thank JeanMark!). I took a bunch of pictures of it, cuz thats what I do :)

Snowflakes

Okay - here ya go - this is one of the projects I worked on this weekend. (I am making lots and lots of Christmas ornaments lately)

I know, you are thinking - thats a craft punch from the crafty-store! And you are thinking - you can use that with glass?!

Yes. Copper is fusible (it expands at relatively similar rates as the glass) and copper foil is relatively easy to work with. One way you can use it is with crafty punches, making letters and shapes and then sandwich these pieces of copper in between sheets of glass.

You must cover the copper in glass, both front and back... basically the glass must completely encapsulate the copper. The copper will turn colors in the kiln... the cause is the heat in the kiln consuming all the oxygen and when this oxygen depleted air comes in contact with the copper the color changes. As the glass melts and the copper is trapped, it stops changing color, however, before the glass starts moving (which doesn't happen until around 1400F) any copper that is exposed to the air in the kiln will change color. In the picture above you can see how the copper changes. This is a big 17" glass bowl, just clear glass, with a big copper circle for the color. You can see how the edge of the copper turns almost black (this is where the oxygen depleted air changed the color of the copper) and towards the center where the air could not get, the copper stayed copper colored.

Copper is not terribly predictable in glass fusing (as the color changes so easily and inconsistently) and sometimes its much more successful than other times (simply due to inconsistency) but seriously its beautiful and do-able and oh-so-tempting.

So go check out your local crafty-store and see what stamps they have. Then find some copper foil and have a blast. Or just cut the copper foil with an exacto blade - that works well too.

Just remember, you must sandwich the copper in between glass, and don't get your hopes up that the copper will look copper colored in the end. It won't. But it will look cool. Oh and try not to get too many finger prints and wrinkles in the copper, all this will show in the finished fused piece of glass (eek!)

Purple

As I had a lot more free time than usual this weekend (no vending at the PSM, the rainy weather does not make for good outdoor vending in my opinion), I took a lot of walks and I went to the farmers market. I spent most of the weekend cleaning and working in the studio, but hey, it was a great weekend. Just now I was taking pictures off my camera and strangely, I did not take a lot of pictures over the weekend. This makes me sad, I like pictures. But what I did take, was purple. Inspiration? I am usually not that into purple (orange obsession runs deep) and its pumpkin time... but hey, these are great purple pictures.

PS. whats with organic eggplants that have noses? hm? did they lie about being organic :)

Crazy Beautiful on Mt. Hood

Tim and I took a hike up on Mt Hood this last week. It was most beautiful, truely incredible: fields of rock and small glaciers, meadows of blooming high altitude flowers.

This is Timberline Lodge pictured above (the view from above the lodge) which previously I had only visited in the wintertime to go snowboarding. Timberline is an awesome snow park location and the lodge is a masterpiece of old massive timberframes, big fireplaces and panoramic views out the many windows. It was built back in the 1930s as a WPA project during the Great Depression, fell into disrepair as a government owned building, and then was bought and restored by the Kohnstamm family. Today it is a beautiful tourist attraction and my delight as a local Portlander. Its only about a 45minute drive from home and an absolute pleasure all year round! Although previously I had only seen Timberline under over a dozen feet of snow!

sidenote: Timberline Lodge was used in the movie The Shining for the outside view of the hotel in the opening scene

Alright, enough about the lodge and the fact that its summertime so most of the snow is melted.

There are many trails that lead up and around the area- we hiked a section of the Pacific Coast Trail that passed thru to the Zig Zag Valley. Only about 4miles round trip and some of the most awesome views I've ever seen from Mt. Hood. It was really amazingly beautiful. I took many many pictures, posted some of the on flickr.

so what now...

okay, so now that this big conference is over, the question lingers

what do I feel inspired to do now?

I'll tell ya all that time spent watching sweaty glass blowers ... I feel compelled to play in the hot shop. I do think I might rent some time with a friend down at Elements glass.

But that is just play. I am inspired by the pattern work of Klaus Moje. My grandmother loves quilting and I'd like to make things for her that remind her of quilts. And I somehow think that doing pattern work in fused glass, like how quilters do pattern work, would look really neat. Let alone the idea of maybe taking these into the hot-shop and maybe rolling them up.

I also happened to locate a lot of my borosilicate dichro glass last week when I was emptying a box for shipping (I was going thru a box emptying out the peanuts and found a few sheets of dichro) so I am all inspired to make a big batch of rings.

Life is good, my torch is calling out to me to use it... my body wants to get back into doing yoga again (I have been lazy) and tomorrow I am going out fruit picking on Sauvi Island.
Its interesting, the balance of keeping up with work and orders and current projects abounding - I am grateful for the business and excited about make a living doing what I love and enjoy. However there in lies a challenge to balance work with play - time management. How do I find the time to do all that I am now inspired to do?

.

Photos, lots of them

I have been taking a lot of photos lately. I'm very inspired by this team of amazing glass artists that I am part of, the EGA (Etsy Glass Artists). They all sell on Etsy and some of them have been experimenting with techniques to increase sales - and they have been finding great success! The experiments focus mainly on listing very often (some of which is "renewing" but a good deal involves a lot of new product which to me screams a LOT of new photography and digital editing) and then taking really great pictures.

Ah photography... if anyone has ever checked out my flickr site you can tell I play around a lot with my amateur photos trying to capture what my glass creations look like. Its fun. The more I take, the better they get.

I recently took new shots of a favorite piece of mine that is for sale on Etsy - and I thought about some advice I read on the EGA forum for choosing the 5 pictures to use. The indecision kills me, I take sooo many shots to get a few that I like.

Susan Sheehan (susansheehan.etsy.com) had this great advice - any Etsy sellers out there check this out: think about your 5 pictures in each listing the following way

"Grab their attention with an artsy shot.

Offer it as if they saw it for the first time in a show display.

Pretend they have picked it up, and turned it over. (c'mon we all do it)

Offer a close up.

Offer any other view you can think of."

I love this advice! I totally touch things in the retail environment, and its a fun challenge to use my photography to offer a digital tactile experience :)

Glass Pendants with Flowers

I could imagine wearing this around my neck. Beautiful.

I am collaborating with a friend to make these glass puddles into lovely wearable jewelry. Judi is a fellow seller on Etsy living here in Portland Or. She and I are both members of PDXEtsy, the local street team. I love her jewelry, and this collaboration will be really fun.

check out her Etsy Store: Curly Girl Glass

I've made up a dozen or so of these pretty puddles... this one in particular really speaks to me. I love how it turn out. The branches underneath the flowers and leaves were really neat, I purposefully made them multicolored and put lots of little nooks and crannies... the way the trees look now outside, I love how the flowers seem to come right out of the gnarly bits of the trees

Cirque du Soleil

from across the river
Originally uploaded by LeahPellegrini

Last night Tim took me out to the Cirque du Soleil - hes the bestest!

We had such a good time. First dinner at Queen of Sheba (the location of our first date years ago) and then we drove over to the Omsi to snap a few pictures of the amazing circus tents. Then across the river and down to the South waterfront where these amazing tents are set up.

Corteo was the performance that we saw - it was amazing (this is the second Cirque I've ever seen live) - women dangling off huge glittering chandeliers, strong Russian men flinging trapeze artists around in the air, jugglers, gymnasts, clowns, angels and crazy talented whistlers... the Cirque does not disappoint.

When we were waiting in line to get out of the parking area I watched as some of the performers were leaving the grounds. Some of them got onto a waiting bus (the big strong man gave them away, as he is ridiculously tall) and what really struck me was one performer (a man, one of the gymnasts) leaving on his bike. I couldn't help but smile at how he took a running start and delicately leap onto his bike. How else would a gymnast get on his bike and ride away?! Personally, when I get on my bike to ride away, I straddle it, I sit down, and then I start peddling. Tim says I always start peddling with my right foot, he gets on his bike by putting one foot on a peddle and kicking off while swinging the other leg over the back of the bike. I'm not suave like that. The cirque gymnasts are definitely suave, the one I watched ride away treated his bike like it was a prop in the circus tent.

NEW Orange!

new orange
Originally uploaded by LeahPellegrini

Yeah - look how orange the orange (on the right) and how yummy it looks with the red/orange and the coupla blues. I am so happy with this new orange... I am going to make a whole bunch of jewelry out of it. I'll post pictures soon.

The big news for today: this little puppy is now for sale in my Etsy shop! A sibbling of this one is dancing in my car now too! Yeah for new orange!!

my head!

photo taken by tangyoren

my crush on Orange continues... my mind is all a buzz with new orange ideas for jewelry I'd like to start making...

today I went on a bikeride to take pictures of the trees blooming here in Portland.

there are pictures in my flickr

I want to make some orange jewelry that is inspired by the blooming trees. The blooms are startlingly beautiful. My new orange glass is yummy. So far I have just dabbled with it, testing out the color... I made a few little mini mobiles, just to taste it... I'll post them in my Etsy shop soon.

beautiful day!

beautiful day!
Originally uploaded by LeahPellegrini

After my first weekend back at the Portland Saturday Market, Tim and I took a 2 day trip out to Breitenbush Hotsprings - a much needed holiday. Man it was lovely. The weather was beautiful, the snow was deep, the soaking waters were hot and wonderful and the food was scrumptious.

We took our snowshoes and went on a couple of hikes. Fun, but strange, you couldn't find the trails - they were covered in four and five feet of snow! We aren't familiar enough with the area to know where the trails are exactly, so our hikes were short and stuck to the rivers. I get lost driving around with a GPS, let alone walking in the wilderness :)

I took lots of pictures, you can see them in my flickr account.

Hotsprings are one of my favorite destinations. I love the combination of relaxation and inspiration. Oregon is awesome.

My first ever blog entry was about hotsprings... so I thought I'd blog about this trip as well. If you ever have the chance to visit Breitenbush, I would highly recommend it!