Dead Man's Cave / Native Land

We took a family hike last Sunday... All the mosses were bright green and poking out from the leaves packed down from the winter's snow fall.

The moss and lichen were really beautiful and stood out a lot compared to other times of the year. Soon there will be leaves on the trees and more ferns on the ground and the lichens will fade a bit with warmer weather.

I love moss. Rich soft pillow-like moss, feathering up in mini fern leaves. Things have been really busy around my family, and we took the day to just be together in our native land :-) We all needed to leave the to-do list for a few hours, and go climb the mountain.

Some of you might remember me talking about needing to get away and to take in other landscapes..... It was a few months ago. Well, life presented a need. I am so happy about that!

I will be driving from Los Angeles to Philadelphia in a few weeks! I am so excited! I am going to drink in all the fabulous natural beauty I can find in this wide wide country! I love road trips!

Ok, back to Dead Man's Cave--- My husband is in this picture. He is the little guy (no so little really) on the right of the tree at center. This cave is at the top of Haycock Mountain. A friend from work says that people a long time ago used to call this area Dead man's Cave because a civil war deserter made it his home during the war. He was a Dead Man if he was caught. That is such a cool story that we psyched up the kids with a hike to "Dead Man's Cave" ...... and you know what, we could have lost our kids in some of the boulders, it was pretty dangerous for them, so we did the buddy thing and boosted them across the really tricky parts. Bringing a rope to tie around their waists would have been a good idea!

It turns out that dead man's cave is the home of a bunch of vultures. It was really creepy coming up to the cave and there being a creature inside. Then when it got out, a dozen vultures circled me and the kids while Josh checked for the best route for us to follow. It was a totally cool vulture hide out!

It was a really fun time!

This week I am putting in new flooring in the attic and moving a lot of my studio equipment back up there. There are 2 rooms in the attic and I used to use one of them for my studio when we first moved, but now things have taken over the entire house. I would like to get working in a "work space" again now that my home dynamic is changing and my Mother-in-Law is joining the household.

So... all this is why I have been a distant blogger lately. I still haven't blogged about my slip workshop last month! Yikes! Maybe I'll get to it in June ;-) Life keeps bringing me all kinds of excitement, I just can't keep up. :-)

-k


PS. I feel like having a sale. I will need to close my shop for my trip, so up until I close my shop (@ the 15th of April) I will give a free item for every item purchased in my shop. That will probably be a bead if you buy a bead, and that will probably be a jewelry item of some kind if you buy jewelry. The free item will be a good one, made by me, and completely decided by in the moment! :-)