Germany and the Lil' Fishies

I know what you’re thinkin’ 'bout this title… now that’s just a strange combination. I'll tell you in a minute...

So what’s the Diva been doing lately? Clay’s had to take a back seat for a lil’ while longer. In my few spare moments I’ve been working on mixing custom clay colors and making chips for my clay recipe reference pages. So far I’ve got three color pages pinned down – hopefully this will show up as more vibrant-looking work in the future. Gotta tell you, though, mixing miniature color samples by hand has proven to be a real pain in the…fingers…

I’ve been going thru some of my earlier pieces and hope to have a few more photos for you in the near future. Meanwhile, above is some eye candy by German artist Margit Bohmer , reminiscent of those paper beads we used to make as children.

Finally – I’m kind of a closet tropical fish person. Very relaxing to me – gazing at colorful lil’ fishies flitting here and there. When I was a kid my family lived in West Berlin, Germany where my dad was stationed in the Air Force. He was the fire chief at the Templehof Air Force Base way back in the late 60’s. While there, we had a nice aquarium at home, and there was small koi pond just outside the front door of the firehouse.

So in honor of the lil’ fishies of my youth, I wanted to share another plaything with you – you’ll find it on the left of this page. You can customize the number and color of the fish as well as the color of the food. Have fun feeding them by clicking somewhere on the blue area. The resulting lil' green specs? Lunch!!

Want your own fish for your own blog? Click on the "AB" on the top left of the fish graphic and pay him a visit - cool stuff at his site!!

Ta for now –

Snow Day!!

This is what six inches of snow looks like. (check out the table on the right)

We've only had about two inches this year - thought we weren't going to have any more than that. But I've been wearing my snowflake earrings (thanx, Kathy!) and hoping for one "REAL good snow" before spring arrived ... this'll do. Very cool-looking this morning - as a transplanted Yankee, there's a special place in my heart for the white fluffy stuff. And right now it looks especially nice because the snow has stopped and the sun is peeking in and out of the clouds.

What was NOT cool was the power outage earlier this morning - woke up 'bout 1 am and noticed that it was extremely quiet - and dark - and cold...it took PEPCO about three hours to restore power to the neighborhood. Inside the house - quite chilly...outside - awfully pretty, even without moonlight.

Got a two-hour delay to report to work today - but since I know how Washingtonians behave on the highways in the snow - I think I'll just be safe, take a day of annual leave, stay right here and play with some clay for awhile.

Or mebbe I'll do something else - like laundry, some dusting, my reading assignment, shovel some snow...

(oh,who am I kidding?)