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I mentioned in one of my previous comments that I had a project on the go. Here it is. The main body of the necklace is of triangular bluish beds with a sheen and matte finish. It's a rope with wire threaded through to keep it from bunching. The chunky beads were deliberately made in an irregular shape but in graduated sizes because the pattern itself used polished chunks of semi-precious stone.

Ndebele necklace: Triangular seed beads with large chunky lampwork ones.

The triangular seed beads felt a little odd to work with at first but the rope soon grew.

I've been playing with my new computer, marvelling at the speed that it now stitches panoramas compared to my old clunky steam driven one and getting used to getting a stitch in less than half a day. I put this panorama together today for which I would welcome comment. I am also interested in whether the colours look ok as I invested in a new monitor to replace my old CRT.

One of my friends from University recently got married. I took my camera along as he'd requested people bring them as they'd not got a paid phoographer but on the day there were three 'official' photographers and many many cameras in the audience so I took the view that I would enjoy the experience rather than trying to capture it. I must admit that I didn't get many good photos. The light was bad in the church and I wasn't really seated in a good position for photos. I've uploaded three of my non-blurred ones for you to look at.

The ceremony for Andy and Andrea took place on the 17 March 2007 in London.

I'm experimenting with a new way to display a panoramic when I want to upload a full-size or extremely large version. I thought I'd give Zoomify a try and a stained glass window panorama seemed the perfect pano to try it on first. I'm intersted in putting up the larger version for stained glass as I know my mum will be interested in the details of the painting. I spent this weekend and some of tonight stitching and Photoshopping the pano which consists of 3x3 images taken some time ago in St. Mary's Church in Berkley.

My brother recently came to stay for a weekend in order to photograph his hobby. He likes painting minatures from Games Workshop, more specifically the Space Wolves series of minatures from the game Warhammer 40,000. My brother is not the best painter but he enjoys painting and modifying the models as is his want. After taking individual shots of each of the models I persuaded him to let me photograph a panorama version of his whole Space Wolf army. It was good fun as we constructed a white backdrop of a couple of levels in order to get more of them visible in the picture. We both tried to get all of them facing the camera but just like real people some of them are still stubbornly looking away! ;-)

Over Christmas, I couldn't drag Kat from the sofa to visit Old Leigh so I went on 22 January to try out some more panorama shots without using a tripod. The day was dull and raining but nevertheless I decided that I would go and forget about the rain. I forgot to look at the tide times so arrived at high tide when none of the beach was showing, the area was deserted and I could wander round in the rain.
Leigh is an ancient small port so the streets are narrow and cobbled. Cars have to be parked a few hundred yards away near the train station on higher ground. I paid my 70p for one hour of parking, grabbed the camera and walked down to the sea front. Some of the houses and pubs look as if they date from the 16th or 17th century. There are the usual art galleries, boat yards, rock shops and sea food bars, mostly shut in the winter but teeming with visitors in the summer months. Here's a shot of the boats and mounds of empty cockle shells looking from the road which curves up to the higher ground and the newer part of Leigh and it's shops along the Broadway.

I mentioned dismal failures in my post about the new bracelet. Here is a clear heart that went terribly wrong. I tried the heart off mandrell using Spectrum Clear fusing COE 96, got it half right then messed it up whilst trying to put a glass hook onto it.
Clear heart bead

I've been wanting to buy a new torch for a few months but had to buy a new computer instead at Christmas because the old one was slowly failing. It would work for about ten minutes, experience an error and tell me it had to shut itself down. As you can guess, this made transferring the data and programs a little problematic, even with the computer operating in safe mode. So buying the torch will have to wait till the end of February. It's not just the cost of the torch but all the ancillary stuff like an oxygen compressor that will allow me to work with a cleaner and hotter flame. I've been biding my time and doing some other things as well as making smaller beads as my tank of propane gas slowly runs out.

By the time that this is finished and posted it'll probably be Christmas day. As the last child returning to my parent's house I have the unfortunate honour of sleeping on the lounge floor. This is not too bad as at least my parents own a camp bed so it should be reasonably comfortable. I m currently holding the laptop in one hand while typing with the other as I lie in my sleeping bag. Unfortunately my typing hand is my left, non-dominant one so if there are some strange spelling / typing errors in this post that might be why.

My parents own three cats which used to sleep on the family's beds but have since been relegated to non-bedroom areas of the house. Now a prime bed opportunity has been given to them in the shape of one slightly drowsy person in a sleeping bag, co-incidently also called Kat, they have all decided that they need to take up residence on it / me for the night. There's one by my feet at the moment while another waits by the side of me. Its eyes are glowing green in the light from the laptop while it waits for a moment of in-atention when it will pounce, trying to nest on my chest. I feel like an antelope that knows that the lions have singled it out as the one they will chase and is just waiting for the staring to stop and the running to begin.

The cats have now flanked me...It'll all kick off soon...I just have to hope that my ability to fend them off has been naturally selected to be superior to their ability to snuggle.

The Silicon Folly Glass site fusing forum in USA has recently had a glass exchange where each person taking part makes a number of 2x2 inch pieces of fused glass with a different theme each year. These are then sent to a central collection point and that person then repacks the individual pieces so that each person that has taken part recieves one of each of the pieces made by the other people. When the images are available, I'll put in a link so that you can see all this Christmas' efforts.
I didn't take part but have been doing some fusing tests of my own.