I'm not all that patriotic these days, but the fireworks are fun.    As long as there aren't any destructive fires.  And I hate hate HATE those really loud firecrackers that serve no visual purpose, and are just.....well, loud. Like m-500's.  Yuck. But our neighbors had some really pretty fireworks that we all watched earlier this evening.  Fun!  The weather is perfect for this sort of thing.  It finally cooled down here. 

In other news....I just got my hands on some of the much-coveted Double Helix glass - some Kronos and a rod of each of a bunch of other colors.  It's really pretty glass - has inclusions of silver and aventurine in some of the rods.  It's reactive glass and is compatible with most of the other glass I use.  I will be playing around with it as soon as I catch up on orders.  It's so gorgeous in rod form - I almost want to just keep it as it is!  Let's see - I have some of the Nebula, Dark Star, Northern Lights, Olympia Rain, and Pacific Mist.  Most of the colors aren't being made anymore, but Kronos and Olympia Rain are still sold in very limited quantities on their website.  It's glass that's handmade by flameworkers, so it's really very limited, and very expensive.  I got extremely lucky to get some from someone who isn't using 104 COE soft glass anymore.  It's got quite the learning curve according to the experts, so it may not be something you see in many of my beads quite yet.  But it's a little present from me to me for working so hard!! 

Hmmmmm what else?  Not much is going on that would be interesting to write about.   Oh, I finally finished submitting my tutorial for the new Purples and Pinks book being written - and I sent in the beads for the cover photo.  I'll be in the tutorial section and the eye candy section, and maybe on the cover.  I am excited about that, and really glad to have it finished! 

Hope you all had a safe and fun 4th!