Viking, Adorned!

I thought I was going to post this yesterday .. had several other photos of the process all uploaded: the wire knit while it was still on the dowel, the rosewood drawplate, the weave being drawn through - looking down on it from above - so you could see the segment before and after it's pulled through the holes. But just about the time when I finally had all the photos placed just right, and the text that went with them was exactly where it should be, it all just disappeared. Poof. I swear I didn't touch a thing. The great cosmic blogger in the sky just decided it didn't work and took it all away.

So .. I thought I'd try again and keep it simple this time. I'll try the whole show n tell thing another time when I've completed another bracelet. Easier to photograph anyway, as the weave is so much shorter. I actually got a little carried away with the necklace and went just a little bit longer than I should have ... it's a bit big for me; but I know it'll be just right for someone else. Besides, this just means I have to make another one ... or two. Just to have some size variations. I know I should have taken a solo shot of the necklace - the handmade clasp is just a little different - but it's that time of year. Show time. Not so much the schleppin' to shows part, but the jumpin' through hoops part where you have to come up with x number of slides of your work, and one, or more, of your booth, and take out a second mortgage on your house for jury fees, application fees and all the overnight stays in far away places. One show insists that nothing at all will be allowed in a booth that isn't represented on the slides .. and you only get four shots at it! I get a brain cramp reading those kinds of applications. Almost makes me wistful for the wholesale customers who used to ask, "ya got anything else?"

So, I got a little extravagant. Couldn't help myself. Props are us.

Oh .. and I learned something today that I knew, but had forgotten. You know how it is, there's only so much room up there. If ya aren't using it, it gets pushed to the back of the bus. Anyway, found a whole rack of those laminated reference sheets at the UPS Store after mailing a package, and bought the one for PhotoShop. Huge segment on resolution .. the whole pixels or dots per square inch thing .. affects clarity and quality of the image. Important for things like printing ... and blog images. A computer monitor can only represent 72 dpi. This might explain why all my high-resolution images were looking kinda blurry. I have PhotoShop on my laptop; but it's a bit of a resource piggy. You have to shut down virtually all other programs to use it.

But, I'm thinking it might be a good idea to get a grip on tweaking photos with it for that time when I've actually got a real web site and have to put up a professional front .. make visitors think there's a whole crew of folks working in the background making jewelry, posting photos, making coffee for everybody ... when it's just me. Kidding! Well, not about the professional part; but I hope you'll all poke me in the eye if I EVER start speaking about myself in the third person, or refer to The Wild Inside as "us" or "we", or pretend that I actually have a customer service department. I'm the customer service department, I make the coffee, the jewelry and everything. Things could be a whole lot worse though. Did I mention I live on six acres ... on a river, with an adorable dog and a great life companion? It's our anniversary today .. been hanging out together for 30 years. Life is good.