Recent Jewelry Productions

I have discovered recently that the path of an artist in the throes of a design dilemma is not a straight one. I'm working on the beaded collar that I'm hoping to enter into competition this year. I have the 'centerpiece' of the design done, I think. Unless I get too picky and rip a part of it out again and redo it better. Now I'm working on the supporting designs. And after a few attempts at a flower design, I ripped out all traces of the flower and went for paisley instead. Then I looked at it, and thought to myself, "Almost!" And I ripped it out again, one last time, and redid the paisley with a bit of a tweak. And I liked it so much, I'm almost done with the corresponding one on the other side of the collar!

Disaster Averted! (for a price)

Just about the worst thing that could happen to me computer-wise happened. My relatively new hard-drive went, shall we say delicately, feet up, deader than a door nail, mechanically non-functional, and impossible for my guru Dave to do anything with at all. Oh, and did I mention that I hadn't backed up anything since 2006? Which professionally speaking wasn't too bad, although I did lose a couple of great newer shots. (A lot of my pro stuff was backed up onto CDs.) However, most of the family photos were gone. And then I realized how much of Cody's sports I'd lost, and animal photos of pets no longer with us, etc, etc etc I collapsed into a pile of mush on the couch, and cried and cried and cried and ...Well, you get the ugly picture. And to my rescue, my hubby came roaring in on his white charger. He had a plan! There was hope! I calmed down. First, the hard-drive went to a local guy that does data recovery, one of these twenty-something whizz kids. It was a no-go with him too, but he had another plan as well. He sent the hard-drive off to a clean room in Milwaukie, Wisconsin; we don't have any here in Oregon for data recovery. I was in luck, because my problem was entirely a mechanical failure, with no data corruption of any kind. Sooo.... for a fee, a rather large fee, I got all of my photos back. And at less than $1 per photo, I'm very grateful to have all of our memories back!

And backed up!