Kay Lodahl Glass Art and Watercolor Painting

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on. At a recent computer expo (COMDEX),Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, 'If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.' In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part ): 1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash........ Twice a day. 2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car. 3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason y

Could figure out what to do with this gorgeous piece of glass.. It now filters the morning sunshine toward my shop.. You can see it in the "snowy piles" picture here. Indy, "Mr. Studly" just can't stand it when someone goes out into the field without him.. He got as far as the gate and decided it wasn't worth it. He is always the first to the dinner table too.. Hard to see here but this set of moose tracks crosses the field. She must have been huge. It took me 60 years to figure the next picture out. I was examining the tracks and noticed some small black things inside a few of them that just looked a little out of character for moose tracks. After further study, they are mouse droppings. I figure the mice tunnel along on top of the ground, under the snow and meander around inside the moose tracks. In the second picture, if you look close, you can see the little tunnels inside the track.. Aren't they smart. Now I know why the coyotes

Self portrait. I can't ever get anyone to take my picture! It was beautiful out. Blue skies and sparkling snow. It begged me to put on the snowshoes and enjoy life. Something I noticed is how the sun heats up objects and causes the surrounding snow around it to melt. Rocks and metal would be obvious. Interesting enough, even feathers had this affect on the snow as did this small fir branch. And what about this nice spot of color among all the white. Can't wait to use this shovel again. But only in my garden! And now we can speak of textures and designs. Don't you just love old boards like this! The following pictures are taken at the farm way out back behind our house.. Good neighbors.. they don't live there! This farm has a lot of history. You don't see many foundations such as this any more.. And how about this old road grader you drag behind a tractor. Now when he does show up at the farm, this is his snow plow. I will bore you with more pictures later...

We woke up to minus 6 degrees windchill factor yesterday morning. Brrr. One top of that, our neighbor's horses decided they wanted to visit our horses. That is all well and good except, because of the snow, our electric fence is not on!! Our horses respect the web fencing, but the neighbor's horses have no clue what it is about... Total chaos when they started their fence fighting... our four and their three. Now, mind you, it is COLD outside!! I am in my jammies trying to shoo them back from the fence before it is destroyed to prevent our horses from running around in the fields (unfenced) surrounding our property. Panic can set in as there is a major highway not far from here. I enjoy riding in these fields normally but having a horse running loose there is not a fun thought. Poor Mike is inside the barn trying to get our critters into their stalls but I am sure you horse people can relate to what an issue that can be when there are strange horses trying to get a pec

My way, that is. My friend, Janelle, helped me with the pics and then I put it all together in a word document and she formatted it into a pdf file for me to mail to every one... They have been selling quite well. These are so easy to make actually and lots of fun. A great way to go when you get tired of making glass beads! It is on my Etsy site... somewhere on this blog is a link you can follow... I am busy now selling optic molds for a friend of mine that makes them... A glass manipulating device, this tool allows for more precision in your canes, filigranas and twisties. Saves a lot of time, also. A very well made lampworking tool.

I haven't seen Mike for awhile. Hmmmm... He went out to plow one day....

I am in pain! I see this about one of the biggest bead shows in the US in Tucson, Arizona and I just cry because I can't go this year. My best friend is on her way down to stay in Arizona for the next three months and another friend is already there. How much fun it would be to go gem hunting out in the desert!! I here about all the lampwork artists on the LampworkEtc forum, that are going to be there and go ooohhhhh. Having been there several times already, just makes me want to go again because I had sooo much fun there. Tucson Gem, Bead and Mineral Show.

This poor guy.. all he was doing was his job and one of my dear friends got this shot before they pulled him out. Having driven a truck for 28 years for a living, I can't even imagine how hard it was to call his boss to say he "goofed". This is on a road right near our house. Longing to see this picture again. A rainbow from our front door, yup. I am always showing off my beads that I enjoy making but I have to admit that sometimes I get bored making them. So I venture off into some sculptural work of sorts, sometimes. Here are a couple of pictures of the results my venturing out of the box has created. The wheat grass and glass berries are glass torched to the end of copper wires. Glass sticks to copper. I plan to attach some hanging crystals to the little windswept tree. Someone said it would make a neat display for earrings but it topples too easy upon removing the earrings even though it is glued to the mirror base. Maybe I can work on that issue.

Had several friends over yesterday and had a great time creating jewelry pieces. A couple of necklaces, bracelets and a pair of earrings. It is a fun way to socialize and be creative. We all share and if they don't have it, they laugh when they say I probably do. They love my "stash" and I have to admit, this is a great way to help me unload my extras. There were five of us all total so the picture doesn't show us all but gives you an idea of the mess we can make. This is a necklace I had created the night before and Kathy just had to make one and did a pretty good job of it. In fact, she made two of them a little different from each other and Peggy made one also. They decided to call these "Egyptian Slave Neckaces" Drop a note and let us know what you think of this design. Would love some feedback.

Snowshoes, yup. I suppose now all the snow will melt away and we won't have enough to play in.. Decided to test them out and took a walk in the woods around our place.. It was a learning curve but thank goodness he also bought poles which help a lot. This should give me an edge on my weight loss program. I would like to think anyway. Now when I got back from my "excercise", figured it was time to take one of the critters out of the corral for a change of scenery. If you look in his eye, you can see the scenery he got to look at!! Ha. This is Indy, my hubby's sweetheart of a horse... And just going to blow my whistle for a second and let you know that I made it into the " treasury" on the Etsy website.. Wahoo... my heart swizzle sticks. Valentine's Day promotions, I suppose.

Great mix of colors in the set..

No snow pictures but I have to share this with you. A friend over here took a drive north on Hiway 395. Phenomenal sight!! Somewhere under all that fog is a town called Chewelah.

I love making these little organic cubes.. Am working at keeping them on a small scale which can be a challenge since you are working with so many colors. And I still want to keep the depth in these so I have to allow for the clear encasement. This set I fondly refer to as Southwest. I bought a new color from Glass Alchemy called Butternut and between it and Blue Carmel, and one of Momka's colors called Stormy Weather, you can come up with great color schemes.... And don't you just love the shape. Pressed into a tabular shape, it provides some comfort in bracelets. "Nubbins", I call them. I plan to make some more today. Now this set is very popular for the jewelry designer. They use these as spacers. I had no purpose in colors here, just started working glass but these, though I refer to them as "orphans", actually go quite well as a set. Lots of clear and lots of character.

Well the day was full yesterday. A good friend recommended we go to a movie. Well, mind you, Mike and I have yet to go to any theater movie since we have move here two and a half years ago. Dragging Mike away from the tractor is like getting our mule to pull a drag! Nancy and I thought, well what the heck. We would go. But, low and behold, Mike decided to join us! This is a good thing in so many ways.. like he can be our handsome escort and chauffeur. Yup. And give him a rest from plowing all that snow.. The movie, "Australia", was awesome. About 130 minutes long, it kept you not wanting to leave your seat. Story content was the proverbial land baron wanting to buy/own some small time rancher's land but it really had unique circumstances surrounding the theme. Time line was during WWII and had some historical value about it that I understand to be true but what I liked most was trying to figure out how the old Aboriginal native played a role in all this. Hugh Jackman was

A friend of mine sent these pictures that are making the Internet rounds. I find these cloud formations quite fascinating and want to share with you in case you were not in the link.. I understand all these pictures were taken by different people from different locales surrounding the mountain. The last picture with the rolling fog, I just found comforting.. yes, the sun!!! For all my friends back on the west side, check out my friend and previous neighbor's photographs of the flood waters where Mike and I used to live in Monroe. All those pictures bring back memories for us as we had to deal with these type of waters "back home". flood pictures We don't miss that part of Monroe but what we do miss is the excitement it usually generated.... namely when some "courageous" (being tactful here) sole ventured across swiftly flowing waters. I remember one night, myself, coming home from work at midnight only to find I couldn't get there, spent several hours

These seem to be selling quite well on my Etsy site. So just had to make some more. Besides that, they are just plain fun to make. Lots of colors and depth. The organic texture seems to be a big hit also.

Okay, here is some soaps I made in the last couple of days. The round ones are the hand soap. Made with cracked wheat and calendula. Um, um, they smell so good. The others are lavender and I sprinkled real lavender herbs on top only to realize how I forgot that they just turn black in the fresh soap. Oh well. Good usuable soaps but not the prettiest I have ever made. Made a castile soap of pure olive oil for my daughter but it is such a soft soap, though, gentle, that I added one ounce of fresh, pure, beeswax to harden it it some. It looks pretty good, thus far. In fact, it is gorgeous. Just hope it has a nice texture and suds. Time will tell... This is fun. I am making smaller batches which enables a lot of variations in recipes so I plan to make more soon. Speaking of daughter, my granddaughter received a camera for Christmas and she took some shots for me of her and her mother.. and her new little sister... The expression on the baby's face is priceless!! I managed to