Did a lazy day

I'm stuck with a bad diamond belt and though the day was nice and cool for cabbing I have to wait until I can get another one, soooo since Bobbi has been working on her new website Imaginations-Jewelry.com I decided to fix mine. Oh it still needs (mine) some work, it looks better than it did - SpikesStoneWorks. Some of the front page text has to be changed and her gallery page will just be her contact page and I need to add some new pictures and, and, and. Ha! This kind of work drags me down now, where I used to enjoy it. Today I went over to Clam Bayou and made a new friend you see him (or her) above. I did some searching and found it to be a Yellow Crowned Night Heron, it was not very concerned about me and since we seemed to be searching for mostly the same things we enjoyed each others company for awhile. I was looking for some of the tens of thousands of "glass fish" you know the ones with transparent skin and you can see their insides and eyes. I suspect the heron was also, since we met where they usually hang out.

I also saw my first wild pink flamingo, it was in flight and though I had camera in hand I was too astonished to get a picture in time. I go to "the park" on a regular basis and have gotten some decent pictures of Osprey and Conures but I am still waiting for a Manatee sighting, there are new buoys up prohibiting motorized boats in the inlet so maybe that's a sign they are coming around.

If you would like to see more of these kinds of pictures, I put them up on my Flickr page but make them available just for friends, since not everyone is interested in my trivial exploits. If you are, feel free to make me a contact and then let me know you would like to be a friend.

Spike

Lapidary and pricing

I am getting lax again, it just seems there are not enough hours in a day any more. I had planned to tell of some of my adventures during the move to Florida but that seems kind of late now. Most of this one will be about Lapidary, I have some ideas in my head that I need to follow up on. One is the ring cab I came up with several months ago, the hard part is done now I just need to figure out millimeters to ring size ratio. I also want to polish the outside of some rocks, not smooth but with all its bumps and ridges intact, never seen that done but I know how I will do it: by hand and very time consuming but they would make great display at shows not to mention at the house.

The last thing on my mind is pricing, basically I sell at wholesale or lower just enough to keep this going. That will not stop but I know I have to quit taking a loss, not much will change while I wrestle with this issue or after except that I will offer "some" pieces that I might not have because they were out of my usual price range. I won't go into all details tonight about what it costs me to do this but I will before too much longer in a article on JL and or here. Here is one of the eye openers though, not long ago for laughs I googled myself, a few links came up I didn't know about one was titled "Worlds best Laguna" well I didn't call it that though it was pretty damn good, someone connected with flickr did and posted it that way. I sold that cab for $18.00 (prior to the posting) and every day laguna cabs sell for $50 and $60 just so so run of the mill cabs.

Not whining just venting

Spike