I just wanted to mention that Patty Larkinsmith has a poll for her next tutorial on her blog. Personally I love Patty's beads...& her blog.

Now I don't 'know' Patty apart from having occasionally seen her posts on LE, & more recently following her blog, but to me she seems a sweety.
She has fabulous beads in her Etsy Store & it is well worth a visit. Recently she had a number of beads in her "Tortuga" series listed, 100% of the profit of those beads was to donated to Wildcoast.net.

Patty Larkinsmith - Tortuga Verde

This was in aid of their fight to help preserve marine life along the California & Latin America Coast - in particular the sea turtles.

Now I love turtles, but have never seen one in reality .... even though we share that same ocean, it is way too cold for those wonderful creatures this far south! Whilst I would have loved to have pounced on one of Patty's beads when they were listed - at the time I just couldn't do it.

Back to her poll - it is taking a vote for the bead style in her next tutorial. It saddens me that so far I am the only voter & it has been up for 10 days. Of course I am biased because I would love for her to choose to do her next tutorial on the Tortuga series beads. If she does, I fully intend to donate the proceeds of the sale of my first successful bead from this tutorial to the same sort of organization that Patty did. Turtle have been around for millions of years ....& I want some turtles to still be around if I ever get anywhere to see some!

There is some great information here:

Sea Turtles

"B" is for....(wait for it)

Tah dah!...

and you thought I was going to show you a bead!!!
Gotta say folks that I never liked chewing gum.... until a certain 'ex', in pre 'ex' days, brought some of this stuff back from the USA. Of course he only bought back 3 small packets - but it was enough to get me wanting more!
But not that desperately, that I was going to stay with him until he went back again.

Fortunately the 'ex is still the 'ex' - but the friends I have that travel, remain. One recently went back over to the USA for a week or so & came back awfully excited about the new packaging of Big Red gum - they've increased the size since the last time she was grabbing some for me when there in January. I must be completely predictable!

But what is it with no gum wrappers any more??? Oh boy - I had only recently learned to make gum wrapper chains. Well ok - since I saw Sandra Bullock do it in 28 days & I just had to know how to do that for myself -lol. That is still 'recent to me ;o)

Anyway I have a nice wee stash of Big Red - well sort of, because it seems my kids love it too. Bugger!


I suppose... while I'm at it I could show a bead as well ;o)

"Tortuga"