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Sunday, October 16, 2005

Hope

This bottle of hope was designed for the Bead Society of New Orleans. To welcome us back home after the storms. To give us hope for rebuilding our lives and our city. The design is simple but the meaning is big. "Hope" Something to build on. Make your own bottle of hope. Keep it simple or build it into a master piece filled with embellishments. (click here for the directions)
You will need adobe reader to view the file. The second thing you will need is a small insulin bottle to bead around. We had our first bead society at Planc's Coffee & Tea Saturday. Thank you Steve and Deb for letting us use the coffee shop and a special thanks to Shannon and Tammye for taking care of us.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Asymmetrical

I started this bracelet while in Michigan watching Fox news and getting hurricane updates. It is very hard for me not to be symmetrical with my beading. I like both sides to look the same. I just went for it and this is the end results. The focal point is a humblebead made by daughter Heather. She sent me this bead along with some others for my birthday. Set your VCR, Heather will be on HGTV "Crafters Coast to Coast" October 28th. Check your local listing for times. My thistle is almost finished and I couldn't wait until I had the leaves done to scan it. I used a felted bead for the center and a felted stem. The pattern for the thistle is from Diane Fitzgerald's The Beaded Garden. The bead in the picture is felted with bead netting on it. Today was a computer day. After four years of running smoothly my computer developed a hiccup. A while back Art and I went to Best Buy and got a Firelite Scan Disk. It is a portable 40 gig hard drive. You can plug it into any UBS port and access the files. We use it as back up for our computer files. Thank goodness I had all my files backed up before I handed the computer over to be reformatted. Mission was accomplished and my computer is back up and running. Now if they could just fix the internet so it would work all the time instead of part of the time. We would be in business.

Saturday, October 01, 2005

The City that never sleeps

The lights are out and it is dark. The City that never sleeps has turned out the lights. We arrived home to a much different place than what we left a month ago. I started noticing the difference as we neared the Mississippi-Louisiana border. Trees were uprooted and other were snapped in half like toothpicks. We thought it would be a good idea to fill up the gas tank before crossing the swamps. We stopped in Hammond for gas. The gas station was full of cars. Hand written signs on plain white paper said "Out of Gas". We left and hoped our half of tank of gas would be enough until tomorrow. We crossed the Bonny Carre' Spillways and I saw the lights from a refinery. I looked for the city lights of New Orleans. It was dark. We got off at the I-610 spilt and headed down Airline Hwy towards Williams Blvd. Piles of debris lined the side of the road along with refrigerators that had gray duck tape around them locking the smell and mold inside. The smell of things rotting was overwhelming. We continued on knowing our apartment complex would be a mess also. We were prepared. Home was just a few blocks away. We walked into our apartment and it looked just like it did when we left it. No water damage, no mold on the walls and no trees through our walls. We were the lucky ones. Our internet access is sparatic and the cell phones always have a busy signal. I wanted to get a dial up service but Art said "no" just be patient. That just about cuts me off from the rest of the world and my friends. That is the part of all of this I dislike the most. This morning I took a few pictures of the storm damage outside of our apartment. This is the sidewalk that leads to our apartment. These Cypress trees fell behind the complex next to ours. This Cypress tree fell right in front of our patio. We were so lucky it fell along side of the apartment. Otherwise we would not have had much to come home too. It ripped up the cement patio by the pool and crushed the wrought iron fence. I can't imagine the damage we did not see as clean up has been going for a couple of weeks. We took a ride this morning to the post office to see about getting our mail. The lobby was open but the counter was closed. I brought my camera a long to take more pictures. Instead I just looked in awe at the damage in the process of being cleaned up. Trees on roofs and laying in yards. Not just trees but very large trees. Fences were down everywhere. Like someone had come along and stepped on them here and there. I saw a tent city set up by the national guard and a church parking lot with a sign giving out food and water. There is only one Wal-Mart opened and that is in Kenner. You have to stand in line with a number and wait your turn to go in and shop. The Super Wal-Mart on Jefferson Hwy by my house is closed. Small signs line the side of the road with stores that are open and others saying help wanted. Big pieces of plywood spray painted saying "Open for Business" in other places. You see the path the hurricane took as she passed by. The telephone poles are bent and the street signs are pointing in the wrong direction. Everything looks like it has been tilted in the wrong direction. A trip the grocery store to replace food in the house meant long lines. Not everything was in stock. We learned quickly that you get your errands done before dark. We came home to quite a few U-hauls in the parking lot with people packing up and leaving for good. I wish we were back in Michigan.