Kay Lodahl Glass Art and Watercolor Painting

I am guessing everyone is tired of hearing about snow and can't say as I blame them. Having been dumped on for a total of five feet since about the middle of December, I am a little tired of it myself... The quad? Yes, I have been running it and actually still like it doing it. This machine will barrel along without a hitch and the snow flies. The neighbors can't believe we don't have chains on it. Okay, now for the enlightening part of this post... Tucson, Arizona. Yup, looking mighty fine about now. If you look close, though, they did get a dusting on the far hills. We have some good friends that live there and they just had to rub it in! I love Tucson, up in the hills on the west side.. Yup Yup Yup Here are some pics of some new swizzle sticks I put up on my Etsy site. I love the green ones. One set is with a citron green and another is with the same green but I added some of Momka's Purple Haze to it for more character. Turns out that I like them both... And here

A Christmas gift from a friend. I love it. How much fun it must have been to make. And searching for all the glassware had to be the best part.... If you look close, my dichroic bead is inside the base. I placed some amber colored glass stones in the top and I can burn a votive in there if I desire.. . A couple of beads I made yesterday. We had a power outage for about six hours yesterday. The worse part of this event is my kiln was going so I thought I might loose these beads. Glad they were made of borosilicate glass.

Finally got cabin fever. Took advantage of a wee break in the weather and did my share of contributing to the chaos at the shopping malls yesterday. A couple friends joined me and we were gone all day. Managed to pick up some great bargains and, of course, it was things I really needed.. ha ha. My best treasure find was an old world St. Nick. For only $12.50, he wouldn't let me pass him up. My favorite Christmas decor is poinsettas and old Santas, with snowmen right along the line. My DH showed me how to run the quad with the snowplow today. I am not too sure I will be glad about that later, but today it was fun. Some friends came over with a Christmas gift that just the best.. I think they call it a glass tower and that is the first I have heard of them. It is glass plates, vases, or any type of glass all put together to form a tower. I will take a picture of it tomorrow. She even put one of my big dichro beads inside it to personalize this unique object. It is just really special

And just imagine this... it's snowing. I mean REALLY snowing!!! Notice Mike's little helper by his feet..... I see this picture a lot lately. Mike spent all day, I could swear, plowing and shoveling snow. I did put my two cents worth in and did all the sidewalk areas and porch but after coming in to dry out and warm up for a bit, I noticed all that was in vain. Seems when Mike removed the snow from the roof (for load baring purposes), he had no where to put it except on my shoveled decks and sidewalks.. Guess I know what I'll be doing today. Sure am longing to see this picture again!..... Woke up in the middle of the night last night to a sound outside. You are going to laugh at this.. It was a crunching sound as though someone was walking outside in the snow. Seems as it was Christmas, I just assumed it was a Reindeer. :-) Upon inspection, allowed by the porch light on at the shop, I did see a silhouette.. and yup, I was right. It was a deer. Mike was stirring and w

I think everyone and their brother is posting pictures of the weather in their area. I am no different, I suppose. I went out with my camera in pocket to clean the stalls and dig out some gates only to find out that "great shot" didn't have any juice left in the battery! Sheez. Was not going to "undress" to come back in for batteries.. We had Old Man Winter drop about another six to eight inches on us during last night and today. Mike managed to get down to the post office and feed store as treacherous as it was. All four lane roads where down to two lanes and not plowed. We need a new snow shovel and guess what, the stores are out! Imagine that... Once the outdoor projects were done, I just honkered down in the house and worked on some glass projects. I am trying to sell off a bunch of my glass that I don't think I would ever use in my lifetime.. Cleaned up some beads that I made yesterday and put together this pendant for sale on my Etsy site . And here ar

The warmth of the flame in my shop, surrounded outside with snow, must all be an inspiration. Either that, or lampworking is just my passion.. This pendant is of borosilicate glass. Great spring colors. The blue down the middle has a reflective quality provided by the silver in that color... I was real please how this turned out. It is a lot brighter in person. This picture doesn't do it justice.. These have lots of variety of color about them.. Fun to make.

Doesn't look like my old blue Ford is going anywhere soon!! We call this guy the Eloika Lake Snowman. This is the "Snowman" and me at our Christmas party. Dennis Jaeger is his name and he is just the nicest Snowman I know, next to my Mike. The neighbor is out plowing already. Mike was out there from 8 am to dark yesterday, trying to stay ahead of it before it all freezes. This is my Mike, my snowman. One of the horses was wondering what I was doing. Note the frozen whiskers on Indy's otherwise, soft muzzle. . He is the most curious one of the bunch. Get a load of all this snow out our front door!! Remember the picture in an earlier post with the cat on the oak barrel? Well, this is the oak barrel again.. No the cat isn't under the snow! After I go out and shovel frozen "road apples" out of the stalls, I just might hide myself in the shop again, surround myself with the comforts of glass, reruns of NCIS, JAG, and Hous

Bring on the snow .... !! I want an excuse to make more of these beads. They were loads of fun!! All borosilicate glass with a multitude mix of colors... I call them the MardiGras set.. mostly all cubed.

I think this might be an appropriate picture representing the weather lately!! I am a great fan of ornamental grasses and I love how the snow makes graceful arches. But as of last night, you can't even see the grasses!! Remember my xmas pyramid tree? While this is what it looks like now. My shop and the PU which we can't even get out right now till Mike plows.

Here are some new ones I posted. The story behind these are I never make the same bead twice!! Ha... Pressure. Have you heard the phrase in a song.."They've come to take her away, hey, hey. They've come to take her away...." And now I make reference to the sign on my shop door.. My husband and I went to see "Lord of the Dance" last night in downtown Spokane.. Oh my. What an invigorating show. You leave there feeling so unfit as these dancers just go and go. They must sleep good at night!! We had seen River Dance in Seattle so this show had to be on our list. Here is a link to some videos on the show.. Hopefully you have high speed internet. AWESOME.. enjoy.

Wind was howling last night preventing a good nights sleep. For some reason, it all came from the East which is quite unusual for this area. Had things rattling and rolling all around. Poor Mike had a unique watering setup for the horses but found out he needs to fine tune it. It just couldn't handle the cold -20 winds. Guess we will have to dig out the snowsled so we can haul some hot water out to the horses. And to think it is predicted to be colder yet!! Well off now, to break ice in Maggie's water trough.....

It is zero .. that's a big 0 degrees out and the wind chill is 13 below, yup, BELOW 0. Drove over to the trainer's house to check on his horses only to find that the trough heater isn't working.. Had to break up the ice for them. Predictions are temperatures into the teens Below 0 for the next few days. I love the play of snow on the ornamental grasses. This pyramid of lights is outside our front room window. Was torching some in the shop and with the window cracked to produce airflow, the heater couldn't keep up. It started getting too cold. Guess I will have to do some fusing instead. No fan required. Our Christmas party turned out really quite nice last night. Good food, good friends, lots of atmosphere and cheer in spite of the six inches of snow outside. Actually added to the atmosphere.

Well, I managed to get this little set posted today. I love making this style of bead. They have been looking for a home now for awhile. We are expecting a big snow storm tomorrow...they say maybe 2 inches an hour and then on Monday they say -9 degrees... whoa!!! Mike put up all the Xmas lights and it looks so warm around here now. Some inside and some outside. Our tree is a live one we have in a pot outside on the deck by the big picture window in the dining room. Guess I should take a picture. We are having a wine (whine) and cheese party tomorrow so looks like house cleaning is in order. Yuk.. would rather be torching. But it will be fun having all our friends over.

My friend, Nancy, has a Tennesee Walker that looks just like my Danny Boy. Our traine r is going to the Rodeo Finals in Las Vegas for the rest of the week. Nancy boards at his place so we figured "Molly" needed a sleepover at our place so Jerry brought her over. Well, the weather was really good today...surprise. So Nancy and I went for a ride, yup!! Was cool and crisp but sunny. I rode my husband's horse, Indy, since he was the first one to the gate and he hadn't been ridden for awhile. Found out that Indy likes to jump over logs instead of walk.. wahoo. About ended up on my nose. Too funny. Maggie's happy. We turned her out in the field and she took off like a race horse, bucking and kicking. She was so happy to be loose in a field. Makes you feel good to see them act like a horse . Our horses looked at her like she was some kind of lunatic or something, "like what's all the excitement about!". Nancy's gonna kill me for posting this picture. W

It snowed today.... Well, maybe not this much but I am betting it could be like this by Christmas. This is our front yard last winter...

Had a great little coffee clash yesterday with my horse buddies. Was fun because Kim (check out Kim's website) also does jewelry and when I told her Janelle was having a 50 % off sale, she went gahgah.. so off we went to her store. Sarah and Kim may come over today to do some wire work or whatever. If they do, I will post pictures of their treasures... In the meantime, here is what I put up on Etsy this am. BTW. I bought these blog designs from a lady on Etsy . Sweet gal, great designs and VERY easy to work with.