A Black Bear and a Beautiful Gem!

Two good stories, but which to tell you first? Well let's start at the beginning. You know how when you see something that takes your breath away you know you just have to have it? Well, I was in the bead store the other day (Thursday) and as soon as I walked in the door I saw them. The seed beads. Ugh, you know how much I hate them. But I'm getting more used to using them because they are just so pretty in certain designs. Anyway, I saw a tube of this color mixture. I just knew what I wanted to do. So they came home with me. I pulled out this awesome glass Sand Dollar made by Jenelle of SFD (I used it's mate in a previous post in another killer bracelet!). I sat down and made one of my kitchen sink bracelets, but added the sand dollar bead to the middle and hand wrapped each seed bead one at a time into this beautiful gem colored masterpiece! There were a few silver heishi spacers thrown in the mix here and there too to give it some shine, but these colors together just blew me away! There were a few little spaces that needed to be filled in so I went back to the bead store to buy more seed beads (I now own 5 tubes of that combination!) and it's all filled in nicely now.

On to the bear... I was sitting on my sidewalk this morning taking pictures of this beautiful bracelet and my neighbor was walking over to talk to me. On her way over she very calmly said to me, "Kristen, there's a bear behind you". I kind of turned my head, as anyone would if someone told you that, and when I turned back to say to her "Are you kidding me", I did a double take! THERE WAS A BEAR! A BLACK BEAR!! By the time I had turned my head the second time around, it was running into my other neighbor's backyard. Mind you, we live on the corner of a pretty busy street. We are not supposed to have bears in Bristol! Holy cow! I grabbed my cat immediately and threw her in the house, she was keeping me company basking in the sun while I was taking pictures. She is still in the house now. No way she's going out that way! :)

We called animal control and they said they were aware of it, but couldn't catch it. The elementary school called and said that they were keeping all the kids inside for recess today due to a black bear sighting (too bad, it's a beautiful day!). I'll say there's a bear sighting, he was less than 50 feet away from me. I hate to think what would have happened if my neighbor did not come to talk to me. I hear bears are afraid of people, but if this bear was in my backyard, then there was something wrong to begin with.

The beautiful Gem... "Beach Treasures" will be posted on Etsy tonight! Enjoy!