Mood:
a-okTopic: I need a topic?
Something really cool happened on Saturday. My hubby and I had to take his mom to the vehicle licence place and it's boring waiting in a long line so I decided to take a walk along the trail along forwell creek, beside the building. There were signs of a receded spring flood, tufts of dead dry grass coagulated in the Y's of tree branches all facing the same way, the ends pointing in the direction of the rushing water. The path was rimed with ice and the tracks of people and dogs were frozen in high relief. Among the tracks were the hoof prints of a deer, cracked through the frost. Aha! A deer had been through very recently! I looked around for more deer signs. In the underbrush was a clear low path, the brush bent backwards making a tunnel through the thin undergrowth. I followed this trail to a spot on the south facing side of an esker and found the deer beds. Deer beds are unmistakable once you know what to look for, patches of ice, the wrinkled skin pattern in the ice, the little bits of fur, it's quite obvious.
Meanwhile as i am observing the deer signs, I am oblivious to the fact that I am being observed myself. When I finally became aware that i was being watched I turned to the sound of clattering hoofs. I was just in time to briefly look face to face with a big old buck with large antler buds. He turned and ran just as i saw him.
This isn't the first time I've been face to face with a deer. They are quite active in the early spring. The entire walk reminded me of the song by Gordon Lightfoot, Pussywillows, cattails, water in the woodland...it was cool and damp and smelled of mud and green growing things. There was some barbarae vulgaris, or wintercress growing in the meadow, just past the bridge beyond the eaves of the forest. On the meadow side I saw a skunk wandering through not more than twenty feet in front of me. I don't know which got my heart racing faster, the big old buck or the skunk! The skunk ambled into the hummocks and tussocks beyond the edge of the path.
Friday was very warm, up to 18C according to one Time and temp sign. Shaggy...I mean BEN got his haircut! We did a lot of puddle jumping! Much of the snow is gone and what's left is mostly black and muddy.
Another sign of spring: I have gone bead-crazy again. My muse hit me on the head and forced me into making the crystal and geode necklace. I'm now working on a piece made with a big heart shaped blue goldstone, blue crystals, canary crystals and blue goldstone beads. Blue goldstone looks like a rock filled with stars. The heart is full of stars and I want the piece to be like a heart full of stars. When people look at it I can tell them I am wearing a heart of stars and that will be poetic and evocative. Or lame, one of the two.
I also have some butterflies made of carved moonstones. Moonstones are a milky opal. They aren't full of fire, like australian opals, but they have a milky multicolour aurora in them. I'm going to place the butterflies on some ballpins and have them floating away from a thicker chain with crystal bead intervals. I want tit to look like the butterflies are escaping the necklace, flying away from the chain.
I also have a some tektites. No, not THOSE tektites, these aren't the bad guys from some retro video game, the tektites I'm talking about are are volcanic rocks, they are from the magma that splashes up with an asteroid crashes into the earth and breaks through the crust. They are a matte black and have little holes and tunnels in them. They aren't sharp edged and foamy like pumice, these holes are irregular. I'm not sure what I will do with these, maybe combine them with some black and gold leafed fimo beads.
Lastly, I have a few crystal wands. These are slightly turquoise, about an inch long and a quarter inch wide. They have traces of their growing matrix on the one end and the other end is sharply pointed. I think I will use epoxy glue to attach bails and then use them to make matching earrings and a pendant necklace.
And that's all for today. Later!
