glad news

The last post was supposed to be sad news and glad news, but I ran out of time or energy or something.

So here's the glad news: the crafts fair was monstrously successful, both for the school and for me personally. I sold way more jewelry at than I ever had before in a single day, and made a big pile of money. Almost everything I sell is sold to friends, so it's always at a low-end price. But at the fair, I sold at a more real price - more than I would ask from Robin or Jannah, but a price that was still a decent bargain for handmade.

Of course, most of the buyers were faculty and candidates with whom I've been friendly, who have seen some of my work on me for a year and a half. But I actually tend to wear more staid examples of my work, except for earrings. (I often tell people that the reason I began making jewelry is that I could never ever afford to buy all the earrings I want. And that's somewhat true. Plus I always have the luxury of special jewelry for special occasions, often something made for a particular occasion or outfit.) The point is that a lot of people showed up with the firm intention of buying something from me, and I think some of them were surprised by how much they ended up buying. (Luckily, we accepted checks and credit cards.) Judy also decided to continue selling some items out of the office until the end of the term, and I've sold about half again as much since the fair.

It was also a successful day as far as my job; I was co-chair of the event, and Judy was good enough to mention that it raised more than the last two fundraisers combined. My measure of the success is that we're doing it again next year.

I kept 60% and gave 40% to the school, and even so, I made a pretty good sum of money. And now it's nearly all spent. I was of course thinking about what to do with my money before the fair, depending on what I earned. I actually managed to buy pretty much everything I wanted:

A Galaxy Lightray (Galaxy ii) smartphone. A 32" Vizio TV. A pair of jeans and some undies for Barry. Jewelry supplies: 25 feet of wire in three gauges. Headpins in two gauges. Five hook clasps. A string of jade beads, two of lapis, one of baroque pearls. Three different gauges of beading wire (in additional to the metal wire).

I'm waiting on an auction for some black Morrocan cotton pants, and if I win those, I'm also buying a tunic that goes well with black. (If I don't win the pants, I'll probably buy the tunic anyway and wear it with my grey pants, and spend the rest on some good cologne.)

It's a very mixed feeling, being able to buy so much stuff that I've wanted and needed, but also seeing so much money disappear so fast. When the idea of the fair was first floated, all I really thought about was being able to replenish my supplies. As it ramped up, I was hoping to be able to buy the TV and maybe a lesser-model smartphone.

I ended up with the exact TV I wanted, within a reasonable price range (under $400), and ending up with a Galaxy ii rather than a Galaxy iii was not such a big deal. (Especially since I bought it slightly used, at $160 below retail.) I figured, with the TV and phone, that I didn't want to outgrow the tech in a hurry. The TV can stream from the computer wirelessly, and can even do 3D. I did a lot of homework on both.

Now, the phone has a pretty good camera with flash, and if I can get get reasonable photos of my jewelry, I'll set up a website or Etsy store pronto. I suppose the fair has also increased my confidence, and all of the new pieces I made for the fair have given me a pretty good appetite for the work.

I made the decision to try to move to using some silver-filled materials rather than sterling. Silver-filled is coated with sterling, and the coating is 500 times thicker than silver-plate. Silver-filled basically looks and behaves exactly like sterling, and costs what sterling did five years ago. I don't like working without a good stash of materials; I absolutely hate being in the middle of making something and running out of chain or wire, or having to change a design because I don't have what I really want. It's much better to have the luxury of all materials at hand than to have to be miserly because of the price of sterling. For now, I still intend to use all sterling clasps. I'll use sterling where it makes a difference. But it's too expensive to use sterling exclusively.

I've always used gold-filled, when I work with gold. For one thing, gold wire is way too soft to use for most of what I do; even 10K is mushy. Gold clasps are just plain ridiculously expensive, except for the occasional small lobster-claw or box clasp for pearls. I use vermeil clasps when I can (silver heavily plated with 22K gold). But I really prefer silver for the kind of work I do. I don't wear that much gold myself.

It seems I have a lot of cheerleaders and support when it comes to making jewelry. I've never done that well with consignment, but I sell pretty well in person. And I'm finally carving out something of a visual profile, a handful of styles I repeat with variations on details like size and stones, that has my fingerprint. That's taken a long time, given that I'm self-taught and have experimented pretty widely. It's kind of a big thing for me. It's like handwriting. It's like the way all Stephen Dweck pieces look like Stephen Dweck, the way you can always tell an Elsa Peretti or a Chan Luu.

The fact that I make most of what I wear has cut down considerable on my lust to buy other jewelry.

Rings excepted; I can't make the kind of rings I want to wear. Over the years, I've bought two rings that I consider really good and valuable, including The Ring That Waited For Me.

I used to work a couple of blocks from an antique jewelry store with a very friendly owner, who would spend a lot of time with me and let me try on anything without being the least bit huffy if I didn't buy, which was most of the time. And to backtrack a bit - for a lot of my life, I thought that men should be buying me good jewelry, with no prompting, which meant that I had very little good jewelry. (Having boyfriends who weren't too well-off didn't help.) But after I got clean and sober, I realized that I could get myself gifts - and since I was no longer putting a lot of money up my nose, I could afford to do so. I bought a lot of reasonable rings, silver and garnet or silver and amethyst, and lots and lots of baseball cards. (I think I've mentioned that I have the collecting gene.) Then I upgraded a bit and bought a white gold art deco rung with a big amethyst (though a light one), at the aforementioned store. Then I traded up a little, swapped the ring and more cash for a gold, peridot and amethyst ring (better amethyst this time).

But I was in love with a ring in the window that cost about three times as much as the then-current ring. It was also deco, yellow gold with red enamel and three rose-cut diamonds. It always reminded me a little of a cigar band. It was right there in the window. I visited it often. I tried it on. I'm not sure if I remember this correctly, but it stayed in the window for eight years; it may have been five years, but no less than that. It just waited and waited. So I finally turned in the peridot and amethyst ring, and started paying around $20 a week toward the new ring. It took me about a year, including a payment of $100 provided by a then-close friend for my birthday. I've had it for nearly 20 years now.

I also made a more impulsive, less costly buy at the same store not long after, almost equally beautiful and a lot more rare: a small tsavorite garnet in gold. A tsavorite is a green garnet that looks exactly like an unaffordably good emerald. They're rare and only found in one place on earth, and they're usually small. They're also a lot sturdier than emeralds. Emeralds can chip, as easily as opals can, but garnets are good and hard. I don't know the weight of the stone in my ring, but it's about the size of a 1/4 carat diamond. The photo in this article is about the same color as mine; like amethysts, the darker ones are better, and mine is an excellent color. A lot of them look like peridots, so what's the point?

A note: a lot of jewelers sell pale amethysts as "rose amethyst," but that's kind of horseshit to me. An amethyst is just quartz; the color makes it an amethyst, and the color you're looking for is purple. Yellow quartz is citrine; you wouldn't call it "yellow amethyst." (This is different from stones like diamonds; even the color variants are still diamonds, and often rare and desirable. Tourmaline is most often seen in pink or green, but there is blue tourmaline and red tourmaline...I do kind of call bullshit on black tourmaline, which doesn't do much for me. Sapphires, also, are most commonly seen in blue but come in a lot of colors. Most of the topaz you see is blue, and heat-treated to get that color. Really, natural yellow-orange topaz is called imperial topaz, and that's the good stuff. I have a killer pair of topaz earrings that belonged to my mother. Even good citrine doesn't come close, in my opinion.)

Anyway, enough yakking about rocks. I clearly have rocks in my head - and a hobby that's stuck for longer than any of the others.

sad news

Sad news: http://www.dailycamera.com/obits/ci_20541341/diane-robin-hammer. Diane Hammer was something of a Mean Girl, but was also my favorite friend when I was 8, 9, 10 years old. We went to the same bungalow colony, and then to the same summer camp, although by the time we were at the same camp, she was blowing me off. Still, I hero-worshipped her when we were friends, and was fascinated by her even after. I loved her family; her father introduced me to the Marx Brothers. I watched the first moon landing at her family's bungalow (we didn't have a TV in ours).

I ran into her mother about 20 years ago, and she gave me Diane's address, but I couldn't figure out how to start writing a letter to her. Diane was very unsentimental. Five or so years ago, I saw her father's obit in the Times (he was a fairly well-known psychoanalyst), and a couple of years ago, I found her brother Cary on Facebook. Cary was not speaking to Diane; apparently they had clashed over their mother, Lila's, care and property, and according to Cary, Diane had threatened him.

Before and after I got in touch with Cary, I frequently Googled Diane just to find out about her. Too many Diane Hammers out there, and none was the right one. I was doing it again yesterday, and took a look at Manny's obit again, and noticed the mention of his "daughter-in-law, Patty" (this was in addition to the name of Cary's wife, so I knew it had to be Diane's partner). So I Googled "Diane Hammer Patty" and got smacked with Diane's obit. I messaged Cary on Facebook (we really haven't kept in touch); don't know if he'll have anything to say.

Having said all that - I'm still sad that I'll never see Diane again, no chance to re-meet, reconcile, talk about days gone by.

Knowing the Hammer family changed the lives of all of my family in a lot of ways, but that's for another day...

...and then there was a hurricane

What lifted the burnout was some serious jewelry-making time. Making that shift from verbal to visual language readjusts me drastically. And if I keep at it, amazing things start to happen.

Usually, I have about half a dozen designs in mind at any given time. When I first sit down to work, I almost always start with one of them. And maybe three or four of those ideas actually get made (some more successfully than others), I start to get better ideas as I make those first couple of pieces, and once in a while, something totally unexpected gets created. Last night, from out of nowhere, I made a big amethyst necklace, with some faceted black labradorite (leftover stones with no glow, but a beautifully faceted black oval nonetheless). Have to remake it though: the crimp didn't hold. I think I have to redo it on strong thread with clamshells or knot cups, and I really want to do it before Saturday. But weeknights are so sucky for for doing jewelry. Not much time, and tired time at that.

One necklace that was planned and amazing was a choker of huge, very clear blue apatite chunks knotted on blue silk, with an elongated toggle. (I found a treasure trove of old forgotten necklaces recently, and took the clasps off almost every one of them, giving me once again a decent selection of good-sized toggles and s-clasps.) I rarely make chokers because I don't wear them. Most of the jewelry I make is something I would and could wear myself, even when I'm not making it for myself. I made three chokers by request for the Village Scandal (more on that later), and there was nothing else to be done with 15" of outrageous stones that had to be knotted and could not share a necklace with any other stone. (Apatite is quite soft and needs to be knotted.) It is the most spectacular necklace, and one I would surely wear.

I still haven't made the necklace I want to wear to the Crafts Fair. Which is Saturday. Plus I have things to schlep to work like a brand-new earring carousel and gift boxes. I decided to buy the carousel when I realized that my space will be limited, and I had a whole passel of old, simple earrings that I wanted to sell at $10, 3 for $25. So they go on the carousel. I have three little one-pair earring stands for a few fancier pair of earrings, and two busts for the two best necklaces.

There was a hurricane last week. Enough parts of New York City got clobbered so that Barry and I were both home for a week. I did a little work from home, and all kind of work things had to be canceled and postponed and pushed back. So it's the same hellish crush that the rest of the fall term was going to be, but with a week less to get everything done. And the crafts fair is coming up on us fast.

We were lucky in that we did not lose power or have flood conditions in our neighborhood. Lower Manhattan lost power for days, Staten Island got clobbered, and so did Coney Island and the Rockaways. I'm still a little too dazed to register it. Most of the people I know had some power loss or no problems at all. But I'm hearing that at least 20,000 people need shelter (some have intact homes but no heat), and it's horrifying. Obama and Romney are in a dead heat the day before the election, and that's horrifying too. I feel like I'm moving by remote control...I'm functioning but deadened. And feeling kind of cut off from people.

The Village Scandal has had three chokers (made at the owner's request) and two pair of earrings on consignment for six months. I have been trying to contact the owner for two months to get my money or my goods. She doesn't answer voice mails to the store (and no one ever answers the store phone), her cell phone has no voice mail, she's never there when I go to the store, and doesn't respond to messages I leave there. Last time I was there, I took a good look, and the chokers are in her showcase, but I don't know where the earrings are. I would like to show those pieces on Saturday. But then there was a hurricane. I'm going to have to try to stop down there this week; maybe I can catch her on a lunch hour.I'm seriously pissed off, which is how consignment deals so often end.

I'm very scattered, I guess, and I'm glad to have my routine back even if it is horrendously busy.

I am so burnt out

I am so burnt out. It's the money squeeze as usual, plus an extraordinarily full plate at work. The number of events and projects I am juggling is staggering, and I'm worried that I'm a little short on organization. Also, two of my interns are just not up to snuff, and the third, who is wonderful, is now barely available due to her paying job.

I got sick as hell a week ago. I felt really worn out in the morning, and decided to nap during my lunch hour in a free treatment room; I asked someone to bang on the door at 1:00. I didn't wake up until 2:30; didn't hear the knocking. I was over an hour let for a meeting where I was supposed to set up food and take minutes. Someone had already covering my meeting responsibilities, and I went home. I was exhausted and had a dreadful cough. And that went on for days. The coughing was so bad that my stomach muscles got sore. I couldn't go into work on Monday - and Mondays, and Friday afternoons when there are meetings, are the two days I can't miss. I didn't get a hard time for it, but I was upset.

The pharmacist gave me something for the cough a couple of days ago, but it makes me very drowsy. And I still have the cough.

I need a break of some sort, a windfall, some fun.

My birthday is next month, and one particular relative usually sends a generous check, about $150. If he does so this year, I'm getting a 4G smartphone. I have been using a free stupid little brick that I got when I was on welfare. I am looking forward to having a good phone.

Also, I am hoping to make some decent money at the crafts fair. I actually might plow some of it back into materials, as I may acquire new customers, and it's good for me to make jewelry. I've been doing some every weekend for the past couple of months, except for this past weekend, when I was too damn sick. But it's hard to say what I'd do if I get a couple hundred dollars, because I need another pair of shoes, at least one top and one pair of pants, a decent desk chair, and crave things like another bottle of Mitsouko, a massage, a flat-screen TV. There's just never enough money, and when I do things for myself, I feel guilty because the household needs so much.

I did, however, get a food order from Fresh Direct this week, and I like having a decent amount of food in the house. We don't have a supermarket in the neighborhood (except one that's so crappy that I wouldn't buy anything fresh, refrigerated, or frozen there). We used to use one a few subway stops away, but they stopped delivering to this area. With Fresh Direct, you order online and they deliver. They're kind of the opposite of the crappy market: they're excellent on fresh and refrigerated items. And if you shop carefully, the prices are OK. In fact, I believe I will now watch the latest episode of Boss and have a grapefruit or some yogurt and blackberries.

you asked for it: jewelry pix

Lapis, azurite-malachite, kyanite, rhodochrosite, Thai silver clasp.

Sleeping beauty turquoise. Fine American turquoise is named for the mine where it was found. Sleeping beauty has no veining and a very beautiful color.

Three kinds of jasper, bullseye agate, silver beads. I made the clasp myself.

I may have mentioned that until puberty, I was a big science nerd, and it became somewhat reawakened when I began making jewelry. I always wanted to know exactly what materials I was using, and I've become pretty familiar with semi-precious stones.

(Though I must admit, I can never remember the names of all of the jaspers I've used. In the past several years, a lot more types of jasper have turned up, with a lot of different names. I've bought some where neither I nor anyone in the store knew the name. I'm familiar with most of the usual suspects: poppy jasper, brecciated jasper, Indian jasper - also called "fancy jasper" - ocean jasper - found only in Madesgascar - and so on. So a certain level of geology has followed and developed with jewelry-making. In fact, when I used to spend a lot of time at bead stores in the city, there was only one guy in one store who knew stones better than I did. The jasper thing was a huge pain in the ass when I worked at Dweck - Stephen would pick up some odd jasper in the bead room and design with it, then ask me to source it...and neither of us knew the name of it. I'd sometimes have to take a bead to a wholesale bead shop and try to match it.)

I just bought myself some colored aluminum wire, which is pretty thick and soft, and I'm going to see what I can do with it. It's just too fucking expensive to work entirely in sterling silver any more. A nice toggle clasp that used to cost $4-6 is now $10-12 or more. I'm going to have to make more of my own clasps. Any tiny bit of money I have to spend now on supplies goes to silver headpins and wire. I've been cannibalizing older necklaces for the clasps. Luckily, I have a decent stash of earring hooks and a ridiculous stash of beads and pearls and Swarovski crystal. I used to find crystal too loud and obvious compared to natural stone, but started to use it a few years ago...I'm kind of a sucker for the colors. I've even managed here and there to mix a little in with stone.

These pictures are all items I've made for the crafts fair coming up - have I mentioned that I'm co-chairing a fundraising crafts fair at work next month? I have about ten other people making knits, pottery, paintings, gift cards, etc. Each crafter is giving part or all of the sales to PPSC. I actually started making my goods in July, just in case I started having finger problems. I'm digging out some really nice beads from my hoard, so I can charge at the high end of my price range. I'm keeping 60%.

The entire crafts fair came put of an idea of Judy's, to help me make some money. I'd given her earrings for the holidays and a necklace for her birthday, and she asked me one day if I ever sell my jewelry. She proposed that I do a fundraising sale with my jewelry, which the Board expanded into a crafts fair. Because fundraising is starved for committee members, Judy and I ended up co-chairing it. It's the most responsibility I've had in fundraising, although I do the lion's share of writing the twice-annual fundraising letter.

I've been keeping a particular eye on the jewelry worn by the faculty, in particular, and there's a real taste for natural stones and ethnic-looking jewelry; it's exactly the customer base for my stone jewelry, at healthy prices. It looks like my center pieces are two Y-necklaces: one in gold rutilated quartz, and one in cape amethyst. Most of the materials in the pieces pictured are fairly premium stones, except for the jasper/agate (although I don't often make double-strands).

For the past few months, I've pretty much made two pieces of jewelry each weekend. I had a bunch of fairly simple stuff (earrings in particular) that I'll sell relatively cheaply, and I'm making fancier stuff for higher prices. I'm still trying to figure out prices. I want things to fetch a good price, but I don't want to ask so much that it won't sell well. I'm going to sell the simple earrings at $10, $25 for three, which will get the bargain shoppers, but I want some of the fancier necklaces to go to $150 or a little more.

Must leave the computer...my neck is hurting today.

love and kisses and music

Do you ever get a mild crush on your boyfriend or husband's bestie? There's always that zone of common territory; there are always things all three people respond to in each other. And yet, there's that fascinating otherness. The bestie is somewhat like your partner but also exotically different. I wouldn't say it's something that always happens to me, but it has and does happen. In one case, I was dating a guy and he and his friend and I hung out a lot - these were AA days in the late 80s, when you often hung out with a friend or a few after a meeting. Anyway, the guy I was dating turned out to be a shithead as far as his relations with women, and kind of unceremoniously dumped me (he later claimed that we hadn't actually had a relationship). Meanwhile, I was still talking to his friend, and realized that I had totally picked the wrong guy.

And it actually had been a binary choice: I met both of them one night at the same meeting, both offered me a ride home, and I accepted the ride from the younger, more handsome guy. Actually, when I think about it, I didn't find myself attracted to Joe (older guy) because of some ways that he was like Larry; in this case, it was pretty much only the differences.

But that guy who's sorta like the guy you love...as I said, it's happened, and still does. It's just that little what-if head-scratch, and fortunately, very out-of-sight, out-of-mind. I actually chat with him quite often when he phones here, but when we see each other, there's a little click.

As I may have mentioned, I'm from a generation that hugs and kisses a lot. We're just like that. And like my earlier musings on changing from signing a letter (well, an email) "best regards" to signing "love," there is that certain point with an opposite-sex friend where you move from kissing on the cheek to kissing on the lips. I'm not talking about making out, here, just about kissing hello and goodbye. It's small but also significant. (I actually tried to go the opposite way, at one point, with V., trying to move from kissing on the lips to kissing on the cheek. He would have none of it. It was all non-verbal, but he still made it pretty clear.)

So the last time I saw Bestie, a couple of months back, I decided it was high time to kiss him on the lips. At "hello," he seemed a little surprised, but by "goodbye," he was there. In between, we had a very interesting conversation where it came out that we had both read the Richard Rhodes book on the development of the atomic bomb. Since we rarely talk anything but music, it was a nice surprise for the both of us. (Barry is not at all a reader, so it was kind of extra-nice.)

All of this, of course, happens in plain sight, except what happens in my head and maybe his. And it's coming up now because I saw him tonight. He and Barry had met up to hang out for a bit, and Barry called me just before five to ask if I wanted to meet up with them. I really hadn't thought about the whole thing much, but Bestie planted a good one on me, and a better one when we said goodbye. It's just a little, warm thing.

I haven't really hung out with men friends too much since I stopped hanging out with V. Don't get kissed much outside of the home...which is not to say that I haven't encountered some men a little too willing to kiss me. (One of the perils of reconnecting with old bfs on Facebook is that sometimes they get a little too wishful. It hasn't yet proven tempting.)

Although...there is Chuck. It's really hard to describe Chuck; he's very nutty and silly and hyper, and also incredibly sweet and thoughtful. When he stops mugging, he's quite handsome. He also has some emotional issues and some bad chemicals - he's way too much of a handful to get involved with, though I gave it a try in the early 80s. But we've always retained a lot of affection for each other, and he's a really affectionate guy.

When Barry started going to some blues jams, about a year and a half ago, he started to meet a lot of my friends from the old days (my blues-bar days in the early-mid 80s and then again in the mid-90s), including Chuckie. He found Chuck wacky but lovable, which is how most people see him, except when they all too often start to find him wacky and annoying. Chuck took to Barry, as did my other old friends; Barry is immensely likeable, but I think got some extra points for being married to me.

This is what I figured out about Chuck some years ago: if you're with him one-on-one, he can be quiet, deep, intense, someone you can talk to for hours. But bringing one other person on the scene turns it into Chuck and an audience, and he automatically gets goofy.

So after Chuckie and a couple of other friends asked Barry numerous times to have me come to the jam, I did. It was really nice to see everyone but especially Chuck. I have such a warm spot for him, and he's so open and sweet with me. Now, he behaves very affectionately toward everyone - I mean he hugs and kisses and holds hands with pretty much everyone, including Barry. But with me...we kinda mean it. And in plain sight.

I found a video of him...but it barely relates to any of this. For one thing, he dresses in a lot of black leather and studs, which bears just about zero relationship to his personality. Also, on stage, he projects a lot of sex appeal. He usually acts so wacky that it's hard to notice just how handsome and sexy he is, but in recent years he's less wacky and more sexy on stage.

I also hesitate to post this clip because he's mainly a sax player, but he's singing here. He has a lot of charisma, but not much of a voice.

Having said that...

I don't know who the guitarists or drummer are, but the bass player is Margey Peters and the keyboard player is the extremely talented David Bennett Cohen.

What always kills me about David Bennett Cohen is that he quit Country Joe & the Fish before Woodstock.

For all of you younger and non-American folk...Woodstock was a hugely famous rock festival in 1969, one of the first enormous outdoor rock shows. (No, I wasn't old enough to be there, but I knew about it. And the movie and album, both called Woodstock, are a mainstay of serious rock fans.) Woodstock is a holy-grail sort of thing, and there is something very godly about having played there. (Which David Bennett Cohen didn't.) Country Joe became famous for an anti-Vietnam-War song he performed there. Which is this:

I may have mentioned recently that I ran into Richie Havens near my office. I interviewed Richie in the 90s and he remembered me. Richie not only played Woodstock, he opened the festival. He was the first performer at Woodstock. That's triple godly.Here's what that looked like:

Richie is an amazingly sweet human being.

I had other stuff on my mind, but music stuff leads to other music stuff. (Bestie is a music guy, too, so the ramble really does sort of connect.)

the queen of anxiety

These past few weeks have just been killing me. Students and faculty are back, school is pretty much in session, and I am being crushed by work. This is the time of year when I come in and find 25 or 30 emails waiting for me, some of which I answer right off the bat, others requiring a posting on a to-do list that often has nine or ten items. Then add in the almost constant worry about money. I just have a lot of days when I'm very anxious and a lot of nights where I'm something of a vegetable. I just don't feel like doing much at all.

I did recently watch "Marley," the documentary about Bob Marley, and found it quite wonderful.

I haven't had much to say about old Amitabh lately. The truth is that I'm finding him to be rather pompous, with a lot of rich-guy problems, very insecure and needful of constant praise. And some of the other fans just lather it on way too strong, and I'm talking about straight men, here. The whole thing has gotten a little icky for me, though I still do love his movies.

I've pretty much planned out the necklace I'm going to make from Raghu's popped guitar string. The center bead will be an Indian bead, coral, self-capped with silver which has small coral and turquoise cabs inset. It's actually the first bead I ever bought, before I started making jewelry. I saw it in an Indian store and had to have it. The rest will be chips of green American turquoise I've been hoarding for about 5 or 6 years. And I have some silver-colored ethnic-looking spacers. I've been concerned about the closure because of the nature of the wire, but I'm going to try a loop and button. I have an extremely pretty pearl shank button, about 28 mm, round, and I'll make a loop from the actual wire. My plan is to use a crimp bead and then wrap around it with gold-filled wire for a good hold. Let's see if that works. Then I promise to get a picture taken, somehow.

Saw Tamsir the other day for the first time in eons, maybe since January. He came to the office and fixed something, took a couple of laptops home to work on. Love to hang out with him. Tamsir, if you ever have the time to read this blog again - I love to hang out and talk with you!