OMFG now I'm actually turning red in shame for having mis-translated bonhomme. Damn you Frenchies! I'm embarrassed. Way more than I should be. Seriously. (Shake it off. Shake it off.)
And dina I think it's today. But how much to charge?!?!? Damn you pricies!

OuKay, all these boogers are finally up:
Angels of Torment.     Saddle Gems III.Saddle Gems II.          Bellibone.Dweomercraeft.          A Moiety.Enthrall.                      The Mendicant.
Of Bondage.               Zanzibar.

Took a bit cuz there was a fever in the interim. And a night of strangely loud barfing by Mr. Devices. We're good though.
Here's the next batch (she says in the tone of someone delivering a bag of cement).

I used to make little compositions somewhat not totally dissimilar from this. I'm not going back to my roots, I just had this little box is all. I am rootless. I'm feeling goofy fr sum reezun.

'Member I showed you these cutesy little shriney pre-made masonite stupid things that I feel like a fool with my pants on the ground for getting but couldn't resist?  (Pant pant).  Am I, like, lame-onaide for being drawn to dumb kits and stuff that should be left in the scrapbooking isle? And why am I drawn to them? Is it the lure of a shortcut? The desire to play with the other kids' toys? Hu? Hu?

Hu? Hu? Why aren't you answering meeeeeee?!?!?!?

Even these earrings are little bezely compositions. Actually, these have been waiting half-made on the table forever. (I love me a half italicized word!)

Here's a big chunky choker. I don't know if you've noticed, bloggees, that every so often I bust out a huge bead chunky choker. Ai laiks um.
What else what else what else.
Oh! Fucking finally sent out all the packages. Oh wait- except for the actual winner of winners grand prize lottery pick Paula Bonhomme! I emailed her at the email on paypal and nuthing.
So if anyone knows this so-called Paula French-for-Good-Man, can you help a sister out and ask her to contact me? Cuz she also happened to give a PHAT donation and totes deserved to win. Also the amount of $ increased her chances, you know what I'm talking, I don't have to explain this ridiculousness of a sentence that never ends I'll be stuck typing forever- AAAAAAGGGHHHH!!!!
I know it's a tiny batch today, but I have some half-made things.... Wait! No! No excuses! I realized I have to somehow obtain a more level-headed attitude towards my makings or I'll loose it. It's like I'm on a hamster wheel. And it's not because I wanna be spending any less time on this and start showering or anything, don't get me wrong. I just realized I haven't done any soldering or metalwork or more involved projects that take more time because I have so much stuff connected to so many ...
Lets start again.
All of my supplies, they cause a mental image to appear of a potential project or two they could be put into. More supplies = more ideas and crap flying around my head thus causing oversupplypanic, as I've explained before. Lately I've just been reaching for the fastest projects just to make enough room in my brain to stay sane. I have to slow down.
Oh and convos! I'mna answer them every other day! Ok, that's not true, but no more than once a day. And if you don't like it you can stick it up your cake hole! (Which is an incorrect use of 'cake hole,' I know.) 

Finally!

After forever without showing y'all new stuff, Mother Nature has finally honored Chicago, Illinois with more than 30 seconds of sunlight.
So here's some stuff:

 These ^are a re-make of these-->     that I just loved too much to be done with. Seeing the originals now I realize I forgot the little labradorite dangles. So they're not done.
Ok, in real life neither pair looks anything like a pair of cartoonishly round boobs. Let's make that clear. I would never put boobs on your earlobes, ladies.

 Some more hyper colorful ones with these bird cabs that I got from any of a million etsy supply shops and painted to be more interesting. See, I can be cutesy. Cutesy is just one 'r' away from crusty. And an 'e'.

Here's these glowy-colored scarabs on hammered wires with leather cords and neat ear posts. 

These 2 pairs have similar formulas. They invert colors/beads and they both have this finding that swerves around the first dangle. Why did I do this? Who knows.

 Anything new to report? My 3 year old niece diarrheaded all over our downstairs bathroom today. That was unexpected. What else? Sparrow is doing well. She's in good spirits and glad to be re-bonding with her awesome brothers. The one who'll be living with her is another 'multicreative,' as she calls it, so I'm hoping to see some photos of what he makes while they're together. I'm hoping they inspire each other and she'll have more eye candy for me soon. An aunt suggested she make her jewelry a hundred times bigger to hang on the wall. I would pay to see that.

 This has a little MOP-lidded pillbox and some kind of undersea creature both from Uruguay.
Oh I also got Making Connections by Susan Lenart Kazmer as it's now in paperback and it's making me feel like a connections retard. I gotta put stuff on stuff with more stuff...

Here's another long focal necklace based on a piece of saddle hardware. There's a mini colander, a zodiac charm, pewter cross, antique spoon, part of a sewing kit with a chunky crystal and bead strands. The long charm with some globby beads, the 1st one is ancient. And the dangle on the lengthener chain is a giant chunky raw garnet. 

There's also a teeny claw/tooth of clay from the assload sent to me by Petra. And Afghan tribal metal bauble. I'm seeing more Afghan stuff everywhere- is it just me? Is it something about a greater peace there meaning more exporting, or is tribal just more popular among jewelry makers or what?

These odd little guys have Indonesian glass and wonky pods by stillpointworks. I darkened them. This is all memory wire. I got a spool of it in one of y'alls unexpected box o' gifts, I'da never bought myself any. Its amazing for very large ear wires that need to be extra strong.

Oh, here's another long one. This is an antique cast bronze piece of hardware from Uruguay. And you can see an Indian stamp, a little vial from Opulent. What's in it? Half a desiccated insect maybe? Beats the crap outta me, as my dad likes to say. Strands with labradorite, these neat thick links.

Haven't shown you any before-n-after redos in a while.
I wasn't happy with these I threw together from some more of stillpoint's charms:

So I divided the pair and made these in the last batch:

And now these:

Asymmetrical earrings are just more interesting I think. Also ones that aren't just thrown together with no inspiration.
There was also this one which was way over the top and the strands weren't working at all:

So I simplified and butched it up with a little tribal crusty . . . -->

Much better. Maybe. I don't know. Somewhat better. Yeah. Better.
Thank you all for so many lovely, funny and uplifting comments. You all make me so happy. This is why I blog so often. Just the comments! You could write, "Hi I'm drinking coffee," and that would be enough. Sure, it wouldn't be my favorite comment of the day. It'd be my least favorite. Unless it was so random that it was funny, then it might be my favorite. Basically it can only be my favorite or my least favorite, is what I'm saying.

And in parting let me just say, Human Centipede Menorah bitches!!!!

Suppl-eye candy. (Get it?)

(Blog randomness while I wait for the winners to contact me.) 

Numinosity sent me these! For no reason! She made the glass head pins and
the metal tubes coated in glass. And yeah, that's Roman glass. I know!

And look at this haul.

 I feel all wacky after having been out of the studio for FOUR consecutive days. Now I'm in there and it's like I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. Busy with this 'n' that, blogging, cleaning. Yes, cleaning. We're having family over for Christmas and we thought they might like to breathe something other than dog hair. So I went on a cleaning spree. I took out vent/grate things and vacuumed out all the dust in there, went under Bingo's bed to the fuzzy world beneath, scrubbed the bathrooms, vacuumed the mess o' cables under the computer table, vacuumed under the bed here that I sleep in but was originally hubs'. And I kept bumping the hose tube around a couple books/albums he has down there, vacuuming those too. Kept feeling some longish thing bumping around. I suddenly see what looks exactly like the handle of a handgun. I kinda freak. I nudge it with the vacuum hose and realize its a rifle!

Petra sent me this crap load of awesomeness.

And I just got so pissed and shocked. Hubs has been hiding a rifle under the bed I sleep in! His fucking hick ass dad must've insisted he bring it to Chicago for, like, self defense, which makes no sense. And I kept thinking of what I was going to say and how he'd be all shamefaced... and I'd be like 'Give it back to your dad and we'll never speak of this again!" or something equally dramatic. Also "You know me, you know my values, you know my ethics! How do you THINK I feel about fire arms in my house?' etc.

 So hubs gets home. I'm telling him how I vacuumed everything.

LOOK! That is a pig snout. Have you ever seen a teeny ceramic pig snout before? No, you haven't.

Leeetle hoof.

"And guess what I found under the bed?'
He's like "What?"
"What do you think?"
"What, I don't know!"
"You don't know?"
"I don't know!"
"A fucking rifle!"
"Oh yeah, the prop I used for my final project in Film 208" or something to that effect.
"WHAT?"
"What? Did you think it was real?"
"WHAT?"
"Wait- You thought it was real?"
"Bbbbbbuuuut.... "
"You thought it was real?!?!"
"Guuuu...."

 My favorite of all is this tiny house-shaped bezel.

"Oh my God are you insane!!! A sawed off shotgun under the bed where Bingo's toys roll under and he crawls in there to get them? Are you crazy?"
"Nnnn-.....uh..."
"It's plastic! Didn't you notice?"
"I didn't take it out! It felt really heavy against the vacuum hose."
"What the hell would I be doing w/a sawed-off shotgun? Do you know how illegal those are?"
"I don't know what kind of gun it is!"
And then there was him laughing and me just sitting there with my mouth hanging open. Him asking if I'd told my parents next door- which of course not. Me having to rewind all the angry discussions I'd been having with him in my mind for the previous few hours....

 Little shrines and windows from one of my guilty pleasures,
Alphastamps. I couldn't resist! 

And Bingo bouncing happily around us which he does at the sign of any animated conversation.
That was my day.

Gorgeous crusties from shipwreckdandy.

This was an incense holder. I spent 5 hours cutting off the top and bottom so I can use them for bead caps while making the center thing small enough to use somewhere. Best-smelling dremeling I've ever done.

More Kuchi to maybe make bracelets.

Pile of Indonesian babies. And on top you can see some scutes Janet made. She molded them from real alligator scutes (an external bony or horny plate or large scale. Yeah, I didn't know what that meant either.)

Winner, winner chicken appetizers!

Having collected a total of $1725, the raffle is now closed. The runners-up are:

All photos from Sparrow's amazing flickr.

1. BloodMilk Jewelry 
2. Deborah Rubin 
3. CabariBeads.com 
4. Alice Peterson 
5. Lauren Faulk 
6. Renate Starke-Krammer 
7. Mary Newton 
8. Anne Lichtenstein 
9. Cindy's Wicked Good Beads 
10. Lori Anderson 

You can convo or email me to give me your address and request a specific lot. I'll do my best, but no promises. And no fancy wrapping. It's going to come to you in old cereal boxes and you're gonna like it!
And the grand prize goes to Paula Bonhomme. Again, convo or email me your address.

I haven't been properly addressing your lovely comments- first, numinosity, the kitty was part of the image on the kvlt images thread. It's funny, see? Oy vey, joke failure.
Stregata- you're viewing the cat from above. It's not totally off.
All the rest- yeah, I've been convoing with her everyday. Sometimes, the pain meds make her pass out while she's writing and it looks like this: "Oh I liked that one neckkkkkkkkkkkkkkk" so that's been entertaining.
When it 1st happened, a broken rib punctured her lung but that's mostly fixed.

Now she has a bunch of bones to heal and some movement to regain. From her last convo:"i've gone to rehab instead of home, so i'm still technically in hospital. it's a fancier, more quiet hospital though, with better food and carpet on the floor, so going for walks is nicer. I'm hoping to only be here for 3 days cause i really don't want to be here on christmas day. "
Her brothers are preparing her home for her arrival by bringing in a big ol' lazyboy armchair. Her older brother came home from the UK to take care of her while she heals up. In Australia, the government pays people who have to leave work to care for an invalid (doesn't that make you feel like this place sucks, oh fellow Americans? Sheesh.).

But it's going to take several months for that to kick in so the $ we've raised will greatly help with groceries, cab rides (since they don't have a car now) physical therapy sessions and bills.

Also, she is completely stunned by all the love and outpouring of goodwill. And me too! All you goofballs saying how amazing I am for doing this- I just googled how to stick a donate button in your blog, stuck up some pictures I'd already taken of a necklace that never sold, and basically watched agog as the dollas rolled in. Raffles are the tits! I want to do everything in my life in raffle format from now on. Don't know how that'll apply to cleaning the house and listing new items, but I'll figure something out.

I just don't know how to thank you guys. This whole community is the 1st group of people I've ever truly identified with, the first group I've been 100% happy to be a part of, virtual as it may be.  And now this experience has warmed my black and shriveled heart. 

Now it's just grey and limp! (Groans from the audience.)