wildrose

Those are really nice! Love the variety and designs.

Here's where you'll show off what you got!

I'm going to start a thread for 'em under the Special Events, Contests and Classes heading.

Mine's in the works. I'd love to see a separate thread, under this section, for the pictures.

Okay, we're now seriously planning to be there. When I found out how close it is to Chicago, that was a big draw. My son has been frantically trying to get us to take him to the Museum of Science and Industry every since he saw the dvd "The Great Train Story". Plus, it'd be his first ride on a plane to get there. How much better could it get for a 4 yr old!

okay, I know the area you're talking about now. I used to pass through the Honey Brook region on my way down from PA to DE.

Uh Oh! Now I'm going to start in the begging dept. that you please not tell him I said he's good looking..... He'd likely laugh his head off, knowing him... Ahhhh Cabela's - I used to work there, actually. Did you know that's the biggest one in the country? The average visitor time is 4 HOURS. Amazing store. Not a great place to work though. At least not the dept. I was in. Some really nice people though. I don't know that smorgasbord though?

That makes me think of Maggie and the Ferocious Beast (great googly moogly!)...LOL! I'll show my hubby the info and see what's what. ps do you need to be a member of a guild to compete?

Chris! Gosh I've not talked to her in ages. Yup, she's great. I dealt with her a few times when I lived in that area. Mostly I went to the Allentown Tandy store. My vote (since I can only pick one) is going to Jeff Oakford at the new Allentown store. Great guy, always helpful, great sense of humor - and not bad looking either!!! (lol, I likely shouldn't have added that part....but couldn't resist) I remember he and Talina had just gotten there from TX and we had a bad snow/ice storm. It was like a "welcome to PA" for them! Now I have to mail order everything, since there's nothing down here in Southwest VA.

I did one for my brother in law and didn't have a shape to form it on. He dampened it and shaped it to his gun when he got it, and was perfectly satisfied. I used the Gormley pattern pack.

The moderators had a discussion on having some sort of "masters" thread, but (I'm generalizing here) one of the concerns is the whole comparison thing. Already we have to deal with it at shows - where I myself have heard people say things like "I'll never be that good". We don't want to scare people away from posting who are beginners. That said, I myself like the idea of finding some way for maybe an "amazing work of the month" or some such thing to be voted on by members and posted somewhere special. It would be nice to have it done as a vote like that because, at least to me, it's nice to be recognized by the group. I just don't know if it can be done technology-wise. Again, the above is my .02, with my own recollections.

You could also argue it was "C" for conch (the shell in her hand), but still I'd think it would be with "M" for Mermaid - LOL! That's gorgeous work. Personally, I'd like to see the "H"...I'm always looking for good "H"s

Bevelling is one thing that will take alot of practice and time. I used to HATE it, but enough doing it made it less despicable to me....LOL! Anyhow, those are very nice and I'll bet your nieces will carry them with pride!

I did this for the manager at the coffee shop where I work - it turns out he and I grew up not far from each other, yet are now both working in the same place in Virginia! ps anyone wants the project pattern, I'll scan it and send it along.

I'm still learning on this one, so let me tell you my experience, using a binder/folio project as an example: Previously, I would do all the tooling and hole punching, then stain it, hole punch the lining (praying they matched up), glue it to the lining, and then stitch. Now, the last batch I did, I tooled, stained, glued together, hole punched, trimmed the lining, and edge-koted it (colored the edges). Then sewed. That worked much better. The problem I found the one time I glued before staining was that the glue (in that case, contact cement) prevented the stain from absorbing properly. My .02 (or more) cents...

Here is the finished piece. Thank you all for your advice. I was THRILLED with the outcome. There was a tiny bit of cracking on the fold, but I stained it a second time and that covered it. I think I would use this process more on flat pieces.

I'm with David!

I finally got a chance to try mine today (got it for Christmas) and WOW! I'm in love! I actually used it to chop up some shoe sole leather for a girl I know who's getting into leatherwork (some practice scraps for her). It went through it just fine!

You might look into resources on bookbinding. Years back, at one of the shows in the PA region, there was a woman from that area named Sharon Smith (if memory serves me right) and she did a demo on it. I found it easier to understand than I'd imagined.

Nothing wrong with Fords (contrary to my husband's beliefs - LOL!) I have a 1966 Mustang and my family has had Fords all the time (mostly 'cuz my aunt and uncle were executives with the company...love a family discount!) Dad has a king cab pickup, and it's like his "baby". Of the truck in the pic, my little guy says "WHOAH! that's muddy!"

LOL! Think he might miss it! Honestly though, I have an antler tip glued onto what looks like the ball end of a pool cue, and I got it at a show from Roz Kaohn (the Dragon Lady). Works great.

Those are sooooo beautiful. I better not let my folks see 'em or they'll want some for their horsey stuff too (Arabians). I'd only echo about the edging. My take is though that I use EdgeKote, which has a built in applicator. Makers marks are great things, and I scold myself for not having one. I really need to get one made this year.

That basketweave is what I affectionately call the "basketweave from Hell" !! And man did your team do an awesome work on that and the piece as a whole. That is simply gorgeous.

I love the name!!! Very catchy. It did take me a second read to catch it though. While I like the overall design personally, I agree that spacing the letters differently might help with legibility. As to the "floweriness" (is that a word? It is now!) of the lettering, well, you get that alot in the Rennie circles, so I'd not worry about that as much as the spacing.

This story made me laugh yesterday when I read it in our local paper. I found the full copy online. It's just one of those times when I wonder why POPULATION CONTROL isn't implemented, rather than total elimination (i.e. messing with an established ecology). Let's face it, you remove the predators, you've got a problem! : "It seemed like a good idea at the time: Remove all the feral cats from a famous Australian island to save the native seabirds.But the decision to eradicate the felines from Macquarie island allowed the rabbit population to explode and, in turn, destroy much of its fragile vegetation that birds depend on for cover, researchers said Tuesday. Removing the cats from Macquarie "caused environmental devastation" that will cost authorities 24 million Australian dollars ($16.2 million) to remedy, Dana Bergstrom of the Australian Antarctic Division and her colleagues wrote in the British Ecological Society's Journal of Applied Ecology. "Our study shows that between 2000 and 2007, there has been widespread ecosystem devastation and decades of conservation effort compromised," Bergstrom said in a statement. The unintended consequences of the cat-removal project show the dangers of meddling with an ecosystem — even with the best of intentions — without thinking long and hard, the study said. "The lessons for conservation agencies globally is that interventions should be comprehensive, and include risk assessments to explicitly consider and plan for indirect effects, or face substantial subsequent costs," Bergstrom said. Located about halfway between Australia and the Antarctic continent, Macquarie was designated a World Heritage site in 1997 as the world's only island composed entirely of oceanic crust. It is known for its wind-swept landscape, and about 3.5 million seabirds and 80,000 elephant seals arrive there each year to breed. The cats, rabbits, rats and mice are all nonnative species to Macquarie, probably introduced in the past 100 years by passing ships. Authorities have struggled for decades to remove them. The invader predators menaced the native seabirds, some of them threatened species. So in 1995, the Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania that manages Macquarie tried to undo the damage by removing most of the cats. Several conservation groups including the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Birds Australia said the problem was not the original eradication effort itself — but that it didn't go far enough. They said the project should have taken aim at all the invasive mammals on the island at once. "What was wrong was that the rabbits were not eradicated at the same time as the cats," University of Auckland Prof. Mick Clout, who also is a member of the Union's invasive species specialist group. "It would have been ideal if the cats and rabbits were eradicated at the same time, or the rabbits first and the cats subsequently." Liz Wren, a spokeswoman for the Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania, said authorities were aware from the beginning that removing the feral cats would increase the rabbit population. But at the time, researchers argued it was worth the risk considering the damage the cats were doing to the seabird populations. "The alternative was to accept the known and extensive impacts of cats and not do anything for fear of other unknown impacts," Wren said. "Since cats were eradicated, the grey petrel successfully bred on the island for the first time in a century and the recovery of Antarctic prions has continued since the eradication of feral cats." Now, the parks service has a new plan to finish the job, using technology and poisons that weren't available a decade ago. Wren said plans to eradicate both rabbits as well as rats and mice from the island will begin in 2010. Helicopters using global positioning systems will drop poisonous bait that targets all three pests. Later, teams will shoot, fumigate and trap the remaining rabbits, she said. Some of the earlier critics are now behind this latest eradication effort, saying it should help the island's ecosystem fully recover because it would remove the last remaining invasive species. "Without this action, there will be serious long-term consequences for the majestic seabirds which nest on the island including the four threatened albatross species, and for the health of the island ecosystem as a whole," said Dean Ingwersen, Bird Australia's threatened bird network coordinator. "We believe that the process they are going to follow uses best practice for this type of work," Ingwersen said. "And that all possible ramifications have now been considered."