Departing Penland

We took a little detour for some bad news posts there, sorry for that. I have a final round of photos from my time at the Penland School of Crafts to share with you, though - a little more up-beat, no?!

We spent many and long hours in the studio, each following our own direction - trying and failing and trying again. But we also spent many hours socializing, laughing, and generally embracing the whole "camp" thing. Except this time there was booze.

On the final full day of the session, there's always an auction to benefit the scholarship fund at the school. I created this ring to be auctioned off. The glass piece was made by a student in the stained glass studio: white with an etched arrow. I created a double band - sterling inside, copper outside, then made a two-tone bezel (sterling and copper) for the arrow. Finally, I affixed the arrow to the band using a rivet, which allowed the arrow to spin. NICE. The piece sold for $160, which I was super happy about. I felt like I really went out on a high note, after all the frustrations I encountered midway through. All in all, it was an exhausting, overwhelming, amazing experience.

Flash Flood

 It poured in buckets yesterday. Torrential barely begins to describe it. I talked to a neighbor who said she measured 14 inches of rain in 12 hours. So that would explain the flash floods we experienced. It explains them, but it doesn't begin to describe them. It was like something you watch on the news, mudslides in Chile or sink holes in Guatemala. The epic power of mother nature to deposit an unfathomable amount of water in just minutes. The road here was washed out in both directions. (that photo above shows my road being washed out from right to left, an enormous amount of rainwater that had nowhere to go but down). You can see a couple videos I took during the storm here and here. And today, all that's left is the damage; all that water is just gone. So bizarre!

Some ingenious neighbors (who happen to own a logging company) built a bridge from timbers to cover the gaping hole left after the flooding subsided. And yay! We're officially accessible again.

Good Dog.

My sweet boy Tucker is gone. He was struck by a car and killed on Saturday morning. I went to find the post I'd written when he first arrived almost a year ago, but it looks like it got eaten in the great Blogger Erasure of 2011. Tucker was a challenge and a total joy. He came as a stray from Texas, covered in tick marks and underfed. He carried the streets with him in the way he ate—he would snarl at any dog who came too close to his food. But he had a carefree joy and and an incredible athleticism that was just astonishing. And he was such a snuggler! He'd recently started making nice with the cats, and Tess even let him on the bed with her just a couple days ago.

He was the Jimi Hendrix/Jim Morrison/Amy Winehouse of dogs. His drug was speed—literally. Live fast, die young. I miss him terribly.

portraits from penland

I hit a bit of a wall this weekend and into this week- an intricate prong setting collapsed on the final solder and two flush setting bands went all wrong. Thank god for sparkling spanish cava and new friends with whom to drink it.