I have been home alone pretty much all day today. It's a lovely September day, and I feel great, so I put on some music and went upstairs to play with some clay... and stopped cold at the door to the room. Couldn't even get IN to the room.

Sigh...

It took quite a while, but the light in that room is fantastic, and I was enjoying the music too, so it felt good to clean and it REALLY feels good to be able to move and find things in there again!

I decided to save the face sculpt I had intended to work on for tomorrow, and instead sat down to practice some techniques I have been learning by reading Christi Friesen's books. I admire her style so much!

This red heart just sort of formed under my fingers. It's pretty big -- about 2" square, and has a chunkiness and carved-from-rock feel to it that made me reach for copper wire for the embellishments instead of the gold I usually use.

The small stones are turquoise and carnelian. The central faceted stone is a ruby briolette that I broke yesterday trying to thread it onto a too-large piece of wire. (Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!!!) I had no way of wiring it into the clay, so I made a "cage" for it out of more copper wire. One beautiful ruby saved!

(Whew!)

It must have been one of those things that was Meant To Be, as I very rarely work with red.