Ornament Thursday - Insectica

Back from trip, extremely disoriented, what day is it?

Well, I wouldn't buy that one either. Sigh. My apologies to my Ornament Thursday friends - I had less access to the Internet than I expected while I was traveling and was unable to post the links as promised on Thursday. Regardless of the day of the week, however, these projects are wonderful! The theme this month is Insectica. I did not participate myself, as I was too busy coming to grips with middle age (more on this later), but please do follow the links below - or visit the Ornament Thursday blog - to our group's wonderful projects. As for me, I'm back home and will resume the usual drivel on Monday. I hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Art Bead Scene
Dragonflies are all the rage, art beads & brass combine in a 1920's inspired necklace.

Beading Help Web's DragonFly Anklet
Make this cute anklet for summer in just minutes!

Hali Chambers

Humblebeads
Flying to a fashionable ear near you, a free project from Humblebeads.

Katie's Beading Blog
Make a fun little winged thing from a handful of wire and beads.

Linda at Make It Mine magazine
Make your own dragonfly top--check out the instructions and video!

Savvy Crafter-
See some cute as a bug pins over on Candie's blog....

Swelldesigner
You'll get butterflies when you see this summer-inspired necklace with butterfly pendant

The Insects are out
Insects are crawling out and about at http design this month as Helen and Michelle get clay happy with some cool designs.

fromichelle
Insectica

Gone Fishin'

I'm not addicted to the Internet - I can quit any time I want to. Yeah, the Husband guffaws when I say that, too. I just finished reviewing a contract for one of my projects, and I thought I'd give myself a break and do a little last-minute blogging.

The advance copy for the July issue of BeadStyle arrived in the mail today, and I've been sitting here admiring myself in it all afternoon. Okay, maybe it's not quite that bad, but I must say that BeadStyle gave me the royal treatment in this issue. I have the entire Gallery section to myself - a two-page spread with three of my necklaces, including the one containing the focal piece, above. (The gorgeous ceramic shell beads I used in the focal are Terra Trinkets by Earthenwood Studio.)

The issue also arrived with the actual necklaces, at least one of which has been at the BeadStyle offices for almost a year. It feels good to get them back. Of course, because the Short One believes that all packages arriving at the house are presents for him, I did have to do a little negotiating over everything when I opened it, but ultimately the SO, in his usual capacity as my stylist, simply demanded that I try on all of the necklaces and offered color commentary.

The necklaces in this issue of the magazine are three of the first six necklaces I ever made from PMC. I was so excited when I finished each one of them (let's face it, given my current finishing rate, I'm still excited when I finish anything). Although I like to think that my work has been evolving over the past year, I am still proud of these pieces. I hope you will take a look at them once the issue is available on newsstands, starting June 3rd. Thanks very much to the editors of BeadStyle Magazine for giving me such a wonderful opportunity. And thank you for your continuing support.

The Short One's nose has been dripping copiously all day, but he doesn't have a fever, and he's been quite cheerful. I gave him a new box of crayons as a consolation and he descended upon them with cries of joy, happily spending most of the afternoon, on and off, coloring with them, arranging them in piles, taking them out of piles, stuffing them back in their box, taking them out of their box, etc., etc. They are currently scattered all over the living room (the SO is reasonably good at picking up and clean up time, but some days are better than others). I suppose I should go pick them up myself and put them in order for playtime tomorrow morning.

Okay, that's it from me for May - I am officially out to lunch. I just closed down my Etsy store (to re-open June 1st), and I'm signing off here. Toodle-loo! Have a great Memorial Day weekend. See you in June.

Brainstorming

The theme for the Art Bead Scene Challenge this month is "Mother Earth." I decided to sit down tonight with a pile of beads and brainstorm for a bit. I'd love to get one new stringing project completed to enter the challenge before the end of the month and, as you can see, I have some beautiful materials in my stash that meet the theme (or at least I think they do). The ceramic art beads were made by two artists. The gorgeous organic round pendant (feel free to click on the photo above for a close-up of any of these beads) was made by Mary Harding. The extremely powerful animal spirit beads were made by Diane Hawkey. These beads have been sitting in my stash for way too long - I'm dying to do something with them. Initially, at least, I've set out a strand of petrified wood slices, some faceted prehnite and two beautiful strands of amber that my Dad gave me for my birthday last year. Color and texture-wise, I think these stones work quite well, but I may end up having trouble with scale if I try to combine these beads. I'll have to think a bit about the best way to tackle this.

I can't believe how busy life has been the past couple days. I've actually had a kiln load of silver ready to fire for a couple days, and I simply haven't found enough time to do it (I don't like to work in the garage this late at night, if you're wondering why I'm not doing it now). We took the Short One to the local children's museum on Saturday and, sure enough, he's started coming down with a cold tonight. As much as I try to keep his hands clean when we visit places like this, it just doesn't seem to help all that much. The first night is always the worst, and he's definitely not sleeping well right now. Sigh.

Starting at the end of the week, I'm going to be taking a vacation until June 1st. I decided that I would relax and enjoy my official entry into middle-age. I will be posting links for Ornament Thursday on the appropriate day but, other than that, I'll be kicking my feet back a bit. I will definitely be back at the beginning of June, though. I'll try to come back tomorrow to post, but there is always the possibility that I'll be too busy twitting the Husband about being 40. I don't have much longer to hold the high ground on this issue, so I feel that I have to make the most of it while I can!

Thanks for visiting.

A Little Mischief

Well, it's technically Monday where I live, and I actually did manage to finish something new tonight, so I thought I'd go ahead and post it. Although I've used quotations in my jewelry before (eg, "Something wicked this way comes"), I've been wanting to create some individual word charms. I'm a big fan of word charms and beads generally and have a short list of favorites. You can find lovely ceramic word beads and links at Earthenwood Studio and Jangles, for example.

When I sat down to think about what I would want to express in a word charm, I had some difficulty settling on a topic. I thought about doing a set of tranquil, abstract words, like "Truth" and "Beauty", but these didn't seem to jibe with the type of pieces I've been making lately (and frankly, with the Short One getting more active by the day, "tranquil" doesn't really describe our house very well, at the moment). So, in the end I just had to be me. Well, actually, these were slightly inspired by one of the people I live with (I'll leave you to guess which one). Here's a little set of Mischief charms. I decided to add some color to these by coating the charms with a thin layer of tinted resin. I have a list of other words and short phrases I'd like to try, but these three seemed to want to go together, so I made them first.

By the way, "wag" is not intended to mean the back and forth motion one associates with a dog's tail (although it certainly could be used that way, I suppose). It's a reference to an older use of "wag" to refer to a prankster or a wit. The word shows up in Shakespeare at intervals. I believe that Falstaff refers to Prince Hal as "sweet wag" in Henry IV, Part 1.

Happy Monday everyone! Thanks for visiting.

A Word about Links and my Blog Policies

Hi, I'm just dropping in for a quick administrative message. I had to delete a comment from a nice reader earlier today, who was telling me about a great idea for a treasure hunt for young kids. She included a hot link in her comment to a website with which I was unfamiliar. Unfortunately, I've had a problem with people leaving bad or dubious links in my comments recently, and I've decided to ban hot-linking in the comments for the time being. I am terribly sorry about this. 99% of the comments I receive are wonderful, legitimate messages, including the ones with links, and I love to hear from readers (I sometimes feel that I'm writing into a void - it's ALWAYS nice to receive comments. I used to be a chronic lurker, but now that I know how important they are to bloggers, I'm afraid I tend to blabber on too much on other people's blogs). However, the 1% bothers me, and I would hate for anyone else to have problems with their computer because they clicked on a bad link in my blog.

I hope you will all understand. To Jennifer, who left the comment earlier today, please accept my apologies. I know that if I left a sincere comment on someone else's blog and found that they summarily deleted it, I would feel hurt. I really do appreciate your comment, and I love your clever idea for a children's game. I used to do treasure hunts with my father all of the time when I was a kid, and I loved them.

Thanks so much. I hope everyone is having a great weekend.

Green Girl Studios

I've been meaning to show this piece off for ages and keep forgetting to take a photograph. This is from my personal collection. A while back (last year), Cynthia Thornton held a giveaway on her blog at Green Girl Studios, and I actually won. This Green Girl necklace was created by Cynthia's brother, Andrew Thornton. You may be familiar with his work from the various lovely pieces he publishes in publications such as Stringing Magazine. I've always loved his style, but one of the things that impressed me in particular was how delicate this piece is in person. It's extremely hard to convey that through photography. Anyway, I tend to be a person who enters but never wins random drawings, so I was quite excited to have the opportunity to add this necklace to my collection. (I have not yet worn it, as, given the Short One's great love for and great taste in and great desire to play with nice jewelry, I have felt it best to keep it out of the way of temptation. One of these days, though.) Oh, and I'm assuming that most of you are already familiar with Green Girl Studios, but if not, for goodness sake, stop reading this and click on that link above! The pewter and silver beads they create are simply fantastic. I have a number of Green Girl Beads in my stash and hope to acquire more next month at Bead & Button.

On a final note, you may have noticed I missed blogging yesterday again. I've decided to stop mentioning these instances, as I feel it's probably tedious to keep reading my lame apologies about my failure to keep up my end of the blogging contract. Henceforth, I will do my best to continue blogging M-F as was my original intent, but on those days when life gets in the way, I hope you will excuse me. Thanks! And thanks for visiting!

Ideal Motherhood

When my father was visiting last weekend, he gave the Short One among other things, a Mr. Potato Head. Before the SO was born, I had actually picked up a Mr. PH and stashed it away in the closet as an emergency children's birthday gift. I'm the kind of person who hoards gifts and cards in the event they will be unexpectedly needed. I have the feeling that most women do this to some extent though, no? It makes the Husband tear his hair out - he hates the additional clutter. (We will graciously pass over those instances where H. has raided my hoard in need of a birthday card or anniversary card at the last minute.)

Anyway, as with so much else in the house, the SO has gradually annexed all of the children's toys I had stashed away and has been happily playing with most of them for some months, including Mr. PH Senior. Sadly, when we opened up Senior earlier this year, we were disappointed to discover that the box contained only one set of eyes, ears, nose, mouth and arms. There was basically no choice for a child to make when assembling his potato, except for placement of the various features. Apparently, I had picked up the Potato Head Lite version, without realizing it.

With the arrival of Mr. PH Junior, who was accompanied by a whole suitcase of features and accessories, our days of woe have come to an end, though. The SO has been happily creating original works of potato art on a daily basis. Although he had mostly subscribed dutifully to realism in designing his pals, after I mentioned that he didn't have to stick to two arms and ears, etc., he ended up letting loose his creative spirit. Most versions of Junior now come with additional arms. Frankly, I feel that the SO has created a picture of ideal motherhood with this potato. Many a day have I thought to myself that I could really use a pair of extra arms. This one even prudently has a second spare on top of the other four, just in case. I feel that this Ms. PH can probably handle an active toddler and vacuum the house, wash the dishes and do laundry all at the same time, without breaking a sweat. I'm envious.

Seriously, though, one of the fun parts of being Mama is having the opportunity to play with toys again. Perhaps it says more about my level of maturity than anything else, but I really enjoy rediscovering childhood favorites with the SO. It is also a great source of inspiration, both directly and indirectly, for my jewelry design. I was inspired to create my dragon beads after the SO and I spent time reading fairy tales and stories about dragons.

As far as Mr. PH goes - I suspect that, over the long haul, I will start finding little plastic ears and colorful noses in odd parts of the house, but for now we're having a fun time reinventing your basic potato.

Have a great day.

ps. Did you notice how I cleverly managed to work in jewelry-making in this otherwise completely non-jewelry or knitting post? I have a couple more catch-up projects to handle until I get to new work... In the meantime, the SO is always a favorite topic of conversation at our house...

Yawn

I'm afraid my discussion of Mr. Potato Head will have to wait. I spent the evening writing up a project for one of the beading magazines. What I thought would take about an hour to finish took closer to five, due to technical difficulties (printer going off-line, losing data due to a computer lock-up, yada, yada). Sometimes I think the so-called modern conveniences are simply additional challenges to getting through the day sane. It never fails that whenever I have a deadline our network fails (after the Husband is in bed, of course, and I never wake him for stuff like this, no matter how much I'm tempted), and I spend hours rummaging around the computer trying to figure out what's wrong and ruminating on the good old days of MS-DOS, when I could actually understand how an operating system, well, operated. Or perhaps this is simply part of my about-to-turn-40 mentality.

But I digress. Anyway, this is also the first time I've had to take stepped out photos. Stepped out photos, for the uninitiated, are the little close-up shots you see in a beading magazine that clarify a certain difficult step in the instructions. My pieces really don't have difficult steps, but after discussing the issue with the editor, I took a couple stepped out shots of the piece, just in case. It'll be interesting to see if the magazine ends up using them.

My eyes are crossing, so I should probably finish the dishes and stagger up to bed. I can't remember whether I've shown this photo or not. As you can see, I've used the whole dragon heart motif on pretty much every kind of component I've been able to think of...

Thanks for stopping by!

There's Treasure Everywhere

A few weeks ago, I managed to cajole the family into letting me visiting a rock shop that's located near the condo I owned when I was single. It's a great store - I could easily spend hours in there admiring the fossils and minerals.

When I was a child, I had a huge rock collection, filled with pieces of iron pyrite, amethyst, rose quartz, galena, mica, obisidan, etc., etc,. etc. The father of a friend of mine was a collector and he took us out with him occasionally. I would give a lot to know where we went now - it must have been a quarry, but I was only 6 and really don't remember the details (and would you really take a couple of 6 year olds to a quarry? I don't know...). We were living in Rochester, New York at the time. If anyone has the foggiest idea where this might have been, I would love to hear from you. I had aspirations to become a geologist back then. I actually came across a paper I wrote for the third grade about ten years ago. It contained a detailed discussion of the Mohs scale (a scale for mineral hardness) and the properties of various minerals in detail that made my eyes cross. I can only wonder what my teacher must have thought of all of this. Clearly, I've forgotten much more than I know now. Sigh. This early childhood obsession may explain why I'm so committed to using semiprecious stone in my jewelry design now, though.

Anyway, I found a lot of treasure at the shop when I visited, including some really lovely slices of amethyst crystal. The top of the slice is the crystal and the bottom is banded agate. The slice is thin enough that the agate is transparent. It's the perfect size to set in a pendant. Nice, don't you think? Now if only I can figure out the best way to set this... More on this later. Hopefully.

I'm a little behind on finishing up a couple projects right now, so there probably won't be any new work to show in the next couple days. If you are interested in my thoughts on such profound topics as Mr. Potato Head, though, feel free to stop in tomorrow.

Thanks for visiting!

Fireworks

I was rooting around in one of my "pending" drawers and came across this prototype. Last summer, I was trying to make a firecracker pendant with Czech glass strung on fine silver wire. This piece isn't terribly durable, but I still like the concept. It's one of the many ideas I hope to get back to this summer. (I feel terribly clever that I've procrastinated long enough on this project that I now look early for the summer, rather than hideously late.)

We have family arriving tomorrow, so I've spent the day tidying up a bit and generally getting ready. As I vacuumed, the Short One followed me around and covered whatever he could reach of me (posterior and legs, mostly) in stickers. I suppose it says something about how well the SO has me trained that I merely checked to see that the stickers were at the right height to be covered by my windbreaker upon leaving the house, rather than attemping to pull them all off (the latter course of action always results in vocal complaints from the artist/designer). One of the magazines in which I will have a couple projects this year publishes color photos of its designers and requires submission of a head shot with each project. I seriously considered sending in a photo of what I really look like - Portrait of a Mother in Stickers - but decided that it wouldn't suit the aura of professionalism and creativity that the magazine cultivates, so I ended up sending in a completely misleading, plain photo of me standing in front of a serious-looking bookcase, instead, which was the most professional-looking photograph I could muster up at 2am using Photo Booth (a sad statement on my level of procrastination, I suppose...).

I'm going to be taking a break from blogging tomorrow, since we have a house guest. I hope everyone has a great weekend!

I scream, you scream, we all scream for...

With the warmer weather seemingly here (I say "seemingly" as I don't want to tempt fate and bring the snow back), my mind has been increasingly turning to thoughts of the above. Yep, this is one of my earlier PMC and lampworked necklaces. I was just starting to get a handle on making these blasted banana split beads when it became too cold around here to work in an unheated garage. Also, those PMC spoons and the clasp are just looking incredibly crude to me now. I think I need another whack at them. I certainly never seem to get tired of an homage to my favorite food. (In case you're wondering, my current favorite flavor is Ben & Jerry's "Cake Batter". Truthfully, it borders on being disgustingly sweet, but, oh, how I love it so. And I wonder why I haven't been able to lose any weight lately...) On the other hand, I haven't so much as made a glass spacer in over 8 months - I wonder if I still remember how to do it...

On other fronts, a couple of pans that my Mom ordered for me as a gift arrived yesterday, and the Short One (who believes that all packages arriving at the house are gifts for him) descended upon them with cries of rapture. I had to remove the large pan - it's so heavy, I was worried that the SO would drop it on his toe and Bad Things would happen - but he spent a happy hour (really a very long time for him - his attention span is still pretty short) "cooking" with it. I showed him how to crack an egg with a couple of plastic eggs left over from Easter, and he meticulously cracked each egg open before putting it in the pan. Then we gathered up his set of plastic fruits and veggies that the Easter Bunny brought him and made stir fry.

As a result of all of this, I have been spending today surfing the 'Net looking at toy cooking sets for him. I find it interesting, although not surprising, that the sets are largely all marketed to little girls. Curiously enough, though, reading the parent reviews on Amazon and the like, it's clear that many of them were purchased for little boys. I once knew a woman whose husband used to get upset if their son even watched the Food Network, because he felt that cooking was "sissy" and he wanted his manly little man to have no part of it. We don't remotely adhere to that principle chez SO - the Husband is an excellent chef and actually did almost all of the cooking at our house before the SO arrived. Now I cheerfully burn things on a nightly basis, as I try to keep one eye on the food and the other on the SO, but the fact is that we both think that cooking is an essential skill for the SO to acquire. Hence, my sudden interest in plastic pots and pans and play condiments. I'm staggered by the sheer variety of sets on the market these days. The same company that makes the fruit and veggie set that we bought for the SO also has dim sum and sushi sets. You can buy anything from cake and pizza making play sets to ice cream banana splits etc., etc. There are also tons of wonderful play food sets available on Etsy. I'm lovin' it! The only difficulty for me is deciding which one will be the best for the SO. Stay tuned...

Thanks for visiting!

True Love

Well, okay, okay, I actually designed this to be a winter piece, but I've decided not to wait until next year to post this, so I'm going to pretend it's a wedding piece, instead. It could work like that, right? Right? I'm quite fond of petal-shaped freshwater pearls. I think they fit a floral theme pretty well, here. My own wedding was so untraditional - barefoot on the beach in Hawaii (we also managed to schedule it the same weekend as the Iron Man competition, but that's another story) - I like to imagine a young bride wearing this with complete regalia: beaded white gown, veil, something borrowed, something blue, etc., etc.

As I run around tonight trying to get a bunch of chores done, I wonder for the nth time - HOW CAN SOMEONE SO SMALL GENERATE SO MUCH LAUNDRY? I think the SO went through five pairs of pants today, for various reasons. Hmmm. Looking at it that way, I suppose it's not such a mystery as to why I keep having loads-full of small socks, shirts and pants going in the wash. I'm still surprised by it, though. We had a nice warm day in the mid-70s today, and I let the SO wander around wearing a short-sleeved shirt for the first time this spring. He kept trying to pull the sleeves down to cover his arms and was completely puzzled as to why they wouldn't come down. It's a sad statement on how chilly it's been around here.

Thanks for stopping by!

Heart Like a...??

Hi, there. Happy Monday, everyone. Here's a new necklace I designed with a teenager in mind. What do you think? Is it hip enough for a teen to wear? The kind of teen who has a lot of black in her (or even his, although the heart in the pendant could be an issue, I suppose) wardrobe? The cube beads are lava. I understand from the beading magazines that this is a fairly hot material (no pun intended), but I'd never actually seen a strand in person - I ended up ordering these from Fire Mountain Gems. I love it - the lava is pitted, is terribly tactile, has a lot of character and isn't terribly "girly".

Speaking of the 'zines, I've had the two earring designs I raced around to put together last week, as well as a necklace incorporating one of my koi pendants, accepted for publication next year. The earrings will be published next February and the necklace is slated for next April. I felt awful after staying up until all hours putting those projects together at the last minute, but in the end I'm glad I made the effort to meet the deadline. Every time I pull a late night like that, I swear up and down that it will be the last time. I guess I'm just a born procrastinator. And you already know what a short memory I have. Sigh.

The Short One and I have been playing charades a lot, lately. The SO has been practicing his words and letters pretty much non-stop. He's recently undergone a surge of new ones, and I'm having a hard time keeping up and keeping them sorted. This morning, I could have sworn he told me he wanted some "juice", when he was really commenting on having "two" boats. I thought he was "yowling" like a cat, when in fact he was commenting that his toy piano has a "yellow" musical note painted on the side. Needless to say, it has all been very frustrating for the SO that Mama can't seem to keep up. While part of me knows that, if I weren't his Mama, I'd probably be understanding less than 2% of what he says, another part of me thinks that the old adage that mothers always know what their babies are saying is a bunch of hooey. The SO's pronunciation and diction improve daily, but at the moment, it's kind of like hosting a little foreign exchange student with extremely high standards of cuisine.

Hope all is well where you are. Thanks for stopping by.

Work in Progress

Here's a sneak peak at what I'm working on right now. I have to admit, I'm very excited by this project. I have a small stash of ceramic cabs and a small stash of ceramic buttons from Earthenwood Studio (the latter is for my knitting). I've been waiting for inspiration to strike with the cabs - I wanted to do something different with them, but I wasn't sure what or how. When I was fiddling with a different project a couple months ago, I piled all of the buttons and cabs together and started playing around with them. Melanie Lukacs, the artist who made all of them, has created some really beautiful designs for her beads and cabs. I discovered that by stacking different patterns and sizes of buttons and cabs together, I could create a design with considerable depth in a single piece.

For this pendant, I already owned both the lovely black and white moon cab and the square checkered button and simply ended up placing a special order for the base cab in a coordinating color (I own a large button of the same design, but it's the wrong color for this project). I set the cabs in PMC with a simple hand pressed design around the rim. I really love the way this looks. Also, as you can see, this is a pendant, but I think it would look stunning as a brooch, as well. (Sharp eyes will notice that I have another moon cab in the banner of my blog - thanks, Melanie!)

Well, I ended up finishing five pieces last night. This is probably a record for me, although, in all fairness, I've had most of the designs floating around in my project book for a while now. After photographing them and writing the blurbs for each piece, I stumbled up to bed - at which point the Short One promptly woke up and stayed up for more or less the remainder of the night. Sigh. Our timing could definitely have been better. I managed to nap with him today, but I woke up feeling achy and unwell. I'm hoping a good night's sleep will fix this, though.

I hope everyone has a great weekend. See you on Monday.

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled

Here's the last of the contest pieces I made in March. I'm sure these will all go into new jewelry designs (the big double koi is reserved for that kimono-style sweater, whenever I actually get around to knitting it). I might put one of them up on Etsy - not sure about that yet, though.

I'm sitting here surrounded by a mess of beads, franticallly putting designs together. Once again, I've discovered that I misremembered my deadlines. I thought I had until next week to submit designs for one of the magazines, and, in fact, the deadline is tomorrow. (A second deadline is, in fact, for next week, but because all of the pieces plus instructions have to be at the publishers for consideration by that date, I've decided to cut my losses and skip that one entirely.) It's amazing to me how absent-minded I am these days, especially when I consider how many deadlines I used to juggle when I was working. My work was so date intensive that we had specialized (and extremely expensive) software just to keep track of all of the deadlines. Nowadays, I'm lucky if I remember what day of the week it is. I'd prefer to think that it's simply the result of being out of practice and not an accumulation of "senior moments", but in my heart of hearts I do wonder if perhaps I'm starting to get a little doddery. Oh, well. I suppose I've got to work with what I have and hope that the Short One doesn't start running rings around me once he figures out my weakness (kids are so perceptive that way, don't you think?).

Anyway, I'm sitting here working on earring designs at the moment, which is unusual for me. I actually don't have pierced ears myself. Although my parents raised me in a highly Western fashion, my mother followed the tradition with which she grew up by not piercing my ears (and not allowing me to pierce my ears) when I was young. (One of my female cousins once told me that, in Korea, the saying was that a woman with pierced ears will be unfaithful to her husband. While I find this interesting, I hardly think most people pay it much mind these days, as I know plenty of Korean women with pierced ears. Actually, ironically, my mother now has pierced ears herself. Anyway, where was I?)

I was never terribly bothered by the lack of pierced ears myself. In college I was known for wearing huge, tacky clip-on earrings (it was the 8o's, after all). I had one pair of high-end, enamel and gold electroplate earrings made by a company called Lunch at the Ritz that were basically multiple dangling images of zebra posteriors. I loved them, but they were so jangly, I had trouble hearing anything when I wore them. Oh, what we sacrifice in the name of fashion, eh? I lost the habit of wearing earrings entirely once I started working, as I found it too uncomfortable to talk on the phone all day with even a small stud pressed to the receiver.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone else here not have pierced ears?

I suppose I should get back to my mess of beads. Thanks for stopping by!

ps. Does anyone recognize the quote that's the title of today's entry?