Shiny stuff

I've been trying not to buy other people's jewelry since I've been making my own, but I broke down over this pair of earrings. It's a bit of a problem - I have been spending a lot of time on Etsy looking at jewelry, because I'm probably going to end up selling stuff there eventually and it's helpful to know what other people are making - but I have to resist the urge to actually buy stuff, unless it's something I can make more jewelry with, i.e., beads. However, I said my rule was that it had to be something I couldn't make myself, and those weren't, because I don't have access to those beads. And for that matter, those look like beads that would be pretty expensive when & if I did manage to find them. So I am not feeling too horribly guilty.

I never have gotten around to saying that I did make a jewelry weblog, although there's not a lot there yet. But I dunno, making a specialized blog worked pretty well for the quilt weblog so it seemed like a good idea to do the same for this. The latest thing I posted there came from columbina, who linked to Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories earlier - which it turned out I bookmarked sometime in 2006, but I had forgotten about - and they had the cutest fractal earrings. I can't imagine actually making them myself, but they're still cute. (A reaction I often had to quilts, as well. Say, this one.) 

Fly fly away

We have new plane reservations to Ohio, on Southwest which will hopefully not go bankrupt in the next month.  I asked my boss about when would be good in May and June - our budget process usually gets rolling around June, and we get busy, and she said the earlier the better. So the middle of May, it is. This means my planned early May trip to Austin will have to get postponed - actually, I went ahead and cancelled it and used the funds to pay for part of the trip to Ohio. I'll figure out the Austin part later. (I suppose I could have gone to Austin one weekend and Ohio a few days later, but that sounded awfully exhausting. I'd rather spread my travel out a bit more than that.)

We are on vacation until the middle of next week, so woo! Tomorrow I am going to work on taxes etc., and Saturday we are going inland to see bluebonnets and baseball. The taxes aren't so much fun as the other part, but such is life.