A friend of mine in the Houston area rescued a pregnant cat who had kittens in my friend’s bathroom. ML, my friend, already has 2 cats (the limit where she lives), so she can’t keep the Momma cat or the kittens. Learn all about the kittens from day 1 on their blog. Yes, they have a blog!

The adorable babies are old enough to be ready for homes now. They’re FIV and FeLV negative, healthy and happy little kitties. And they can fly! ML and friend Deb have helped kittens fly all over the US using Continental — so no matter where you are, you can get a cute lil furrball.  Between my mother and I, we already have 5 cats, so we’re maxed out or I’d take one or two of these cuties myself.

Please, if you can care for one of these adorable kittens, please let me or my friend know. They desperately need homes — rescued once when Momma cat was pregnant with them, they need homes to rescue them now.

If you can’t give a kitten a home, will you help get the word out about them? Link to http://dinahandthemites.blogspot.com/ to let folks know. Thanks

Eni Oken has a new wire jewelry tutorial up: Border for Net Bezel Pendant.  So go get it already. ;)  No, Eni doesn’t pay me for telling you about her tutorials. Sheesh. Someone actually asked me that.  I just think they’re great, and I think you will too.

Know of other jewelry making tutorials?  Let me know. I’m always interested in learning more. And I can share the info with folks here too.

And again, I have to say: Pay for your tutorials if Eni and others sell them. They can make this huge amount of work inexpensive for each of us only if we each do our part. Respect the artists who share their talent with these inexpensive tutorials: buy yours and don’t share it or sell it to others.  If we had to go the traditional route and buy these in a book, they’d cost more and we’d have to wait for a whole book-worth to be ready. Ugh. I’d not like that.

Well, the nutty sidebar there won’t show any of the new goodies put up since August 18th. I sort of hate to tell it, but there have been new goodies since then. hehehe I’ll mess with the technical stuff and play with the blog innards soon. But for the time being, you can check out new goodies here:

9/18/07: New Handmade Jewelry including Tibetan “Black” Quartz, Green Kyanite and more.

9/5/07: New Individual Quartz Crystals, Specialty Crystals, and Unique Specimens, woo! And, International ordering with the shopping cart is back! And I have a September 2007 Contest for you!

9/4/07: The office and studio are open! We’ll be shipping out orders and answering emails just as fast as we can.

8/29/07: New & Back in Stock Cabochons including Seraphinite!

8/24/07: New stone and jewelry goodies added to the August Sale!

YAY!!!

The brave “Man in Green” who inspired the “Special for our guys and gals in US Military Service and Allied Military Services” of half-price Protection Comfort Beads made it home safely from Iraq after deployment of over a year. He’s a member of Co. C, 2nd Battalion, 147th Aviation of the Iowa National Guard. (News coverage here)

QUESTION: I broke a small piece off the tip of my black jasper pendulum when I was trying to hang it on the door of my home office. Does that diminish its properties, or is it still just as effective?

MY ANSWER: My feeling from experience, is that a pendulum can work just as well with a broken tip. Particularly in the case of Black Jasper, which is a type of microcrystalline quartz, meaning its crystals are microscopic; so by breaking the pendulum tip you’re reducing the number of microscopic crystals in the pendulum, but not significantly interrupting the crystal structure itself. With single larger crystals, the size and pattern of the break would make more difference, but even then most could work as well as they did before the tip being broken.