summer solstice

I am the Queen of Procrastination.  Two - ok, maybe more like three - years ago, I decided that I needed to expand my repertoire and branch out into making my own components.   I thought about lampworking, but I am not a big fan of open flames.  This is also why soldering seemed like a poor choice for me.  I ordered a packet of silver clay and a creme brulee torch, but the expense involved was daunting, as was trying to find a place in my small house to do torch work of any kind.  The silver felt too precious to allow me to make mistakes with it.  I need to make LOTS of mistakes.  It's how I grow and how my work grows too.

Sooooo, I decided to go for broke and ordered this baby:

opening the box

 
A Paragon metal clay kiln, metal clay in copper, bronze, and - - - something else I can't quite remember right now.  The clay is not exactly cheap, but not so precious that I wasn't able to get into fooling around with it and making enough thingies for a firing.  I will post some photos when they are done.  I am sooo excited!

And here are some pieces I haven't blogged before:

A Tibetan turquoise earring, deer antler tip, copper spiral, red jasper for strength and courage, vintage inlaid bone beads from a Buddhist prayer mala.

Lucky Ancestor flower earrings.  Horseshoes, skulls, blue evil eyes - and hearts.

This piece features three large, hand faceted rutilated quartz beads, a raku scarab, mother-of-pearl bar, glass beads from Indonesia and the Czech Republic. A couple of really old African trade beads framing the scarab and some smokey quartz too, I believe. I haven't listed this one on Etsy yet - can't seem to figure out what to say about it.

And another large ceremonial piece because people kept asking if I was ever going to make another one and I just happened to have bought two of the (alleged) Song Dynasty bronze coins and had one just hanging around.

another turn of the wheel ...

The wheel of the seasons turns again into the dark and the cold in this Hemisphere.  I wish you all radiant health, happiness, balance, and above all - peace in the New Year.  I am grateful for the ongoing interest in my work and for your support.

ancestors and skull beads ...

I just got back home after being away for the last four weeks and as usual, am having a challenge getting back into the groove and the rhythm of making, photographing, editing, blogging, listing.

I may be rambling just a teeny bit, so please be patient.  I'll get there eventually.  Or not.

I know I've written about the ancestors before.  About how shamans live with one foot in ordinary reality and one foot in the world of spirit and energy.  We usually access that unseen world through trance/drug/drumbeat induced journeys.  In some instances when we have been doing a lot of journeying, we flip back and forth - sometimes unexpectedly for some of us less experienced travelers.  It can lead one to doubt her sanity.  The great benefit is that it enlarges our personal definition of "reality".  Quantum physics bears out the shamanic experience again and again.  

But I'm seriously digressing here.  I just wanted to explain my use of the skull as a symbol of the protection of the ancestors.  I use it as an invocation of the spirits and guides who I believe have our backs as we make our way through our lives.  Some traditions say that they are not allowed to help us unless we specifically ask them for it.  I use the skull beads as a reminder that there is more than can be seen with the naked eye - that we do not walk alone.  The bead I used in this necklace is made of pyrite.

See: Properties of pyrite for more information on this powerful stone.

I've also used a couple of vintage coins, one from West Africa with a six-pointed star on the back (the union of the Divine masculine and the Divine Feminine) and one from Nepal with an image of Mt. Kailash, sacred to both Hindu and Buddhist traditions.  Coins are my shorthand for invoking abundance and wealth in all things.  There is a Hamsa for protection; a Thai Buddhist amulet, blessed by monks, again for protection, good luck and wealth; a Chinese jade cicada bead, to remind you that you can always reinvent yourself like the cicada sheds her old skin; a little bronze heart - for love, of course!  An Ethiopian cattle amulet, a quartz crystal point to amplify all the good mojo; some Labradorite beads (supposed to help facilitate self discovery and is a powerful protective stone).

I love the ancient feel that the soft grey/greens give this piece.  It has a powerful presence.

time traveler

Time traveler.

Way back in the 1970's, I used to watch Dr.Who.  I was a fan of the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, with his unruly scarf and unrulier hair.  (I watch it on BBC America now too and am very impressed with the last three doctors, but I may just be watching so that my grandchildren think I'm hip.)  The idea of time travel has always intrigued me.  If I had access to a Tardis, the first thing I'd do is visit Broadway in the 1920's and catch the Marx Brothers live on stage.  The second thing is attend a ritual at Stonehenge when that culture was at its height.  When I hold one of these beautiful Russian fossilized ammonites in my hand, I am transported 60 million years (give or take a few million) back in time.  It's incomprehensible.  The quartz crystal bead above it is from Mali and I am told that children sift these beads from the sands of the Sahara, string them, and sell them to tourists.  Since there is no way of dating them, they may be anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand years old or more.

Here's another necklace that I wasn't satisfied with and decided to rework.  I added some more quartz crystal to the Labradorite and one of my copper wire DNA charms.  Now it makes me happy.  Just wish I could get the colors in the Labradorite to photograph better.  I have a cool new photo prop though - a nice little piece of driftwood with an interesting shape.

And one more new piece - this one feels so earthy - like the way that the woods smell in Spring.

february

The picnic table where I usually take my jewelry photos has about a foot of snow on it.  The temperature hasn't gotten above freezing in ages and I've had to resort to using a set up near a north window.  We cope.  It's not ideal, but it'll have to do for now.

Shoulder duster earrings with bone flowers, wooden skull beads and beautiful amber colored horn beads.  I wish I didn't have such a short fat neck and I could wear them myself.

Leather, copper, abalone shell and a bronze Thai Buddhist amulet.  Great casual piece.

Milagros earrings.  Praying for true love.

Another variation on the abalone and leather theme - this time with a fossilized ammonite shell, a fancy copper wire bead and a recycled glass bead that makes me think of a root beer bottle.

And oh - this one. 

 This one I may have to keep.  I love the brown and the green together.  The fossilized ammonite shell with its slight iridescence, the carved horn spike.  Oh yeah. I may need to keep this.

 

of whales and fairytales

A lot of the time when I'm working on a piece, I reach a point when I need something I don't already have, I run out of patinated wire, or I just don't know for sure which direction it wants to take.  I don't want to force it.  I want to midwife it gently - no forceps deliveries on my worktable.  Taking a break from the work usually means pulling up some weeds, loading the dishwasher, having a little lie-down ... but I especially like to read other people's blogs.  My favorites are on the left.  I'm so impressed when artists can coherently describe their processes.  It really makes me feel inadequate.  I love the blogs where an entire tutorial is presented. Words and photos.  How do they do it?  How would I ever become organized enough?  Would a photo showing the state of my cuticles make readers gag?

Here's the finished piece - Labradorite, bone, black garnet.  The Czech glass tube beads that make up the rosary chain are an iridescent grey that almost looks like the Labradorite.  There's the whale bone again in photo three.  Every time I move it, it leaves a little pile of calcium behind.  I wonder what kind of whale it was.  A humpback was sighted off the South Shore here this past week.  Every once in while one beaches and dies out on the East End of the Island.  When my kids were small, a young whale managed to find its way into the Inlet and then couldn't find its way back out into the Atlantic again.  We went down to the Bay to try to see him.  I think I remember that he was lured out by some fishing boats and my kids believed the story had a happy ending, but what happened to him in the wide Atlantic, I just don't know.  Was his mama able to find him?  I dearly would love to believe so.  I'm a sucker for happy endings.

the wheel of the year

"Every year at this time, I slap myself in the head and think, "Doh!  Why didn't I pot those bulbs that I wanted to have blooming in the dark cold winter?"  The reason of course is that I am the Queen of Procrastination and one basically Very Lazy Person.  And in spite of that handicap, I've managed to identify and begin to overcome some of my fears.  In 2014, I want to deal with my fear of fire issues and learn how to use a torch (for soldering) and a kiln (for metal clay charms and beads)."  

This was the post that I started to write a few days after Christmas.  I never finished it because I was feeling a bit under the weather and despite dosing myself with vitamin C and various herbal concoctions, I managed to develop a serious case of pneumonia.  Breath is so fundamental to being alive that I really freak out when it's a struggle to get oxygen.  All creative endeavors were left to fend for themselves during the last four weeks, but I'm starting to feel almost human again and this afternoon took photos of an ambitious piece I finished just before the holidays.

The amulet pouch is made of a vintage piece of Hmong applique.  I sewed it into a pocket with a little piece of velcro to close it and hung it on a beaded necklace.  I started with one strand, but it looked too unbalanced, so I added strands until it felt right.  Labor intensive.

I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandmother when I was growing up.  She truly believed that "idle hands are the devil's workshop", so from the time I could hold a large, blunt-tipped needle, I was given handiwork to keep me out of trouble.  My favorite things to make were "pockets" out of sewing scraps with the pick of my grandmother's button box as closures and embellished with my own crude embroidered flowers.  I was thinking of those days when I was making this piece.

May the New Year bring us all good health and peace ...

ancestors

Lucky Turquoise Amulet Earrings

Roses For the Ancestors

Other societies all over the world, past and present, honor their ancestors, some to the point of burying them under the hearth, keeping their heads or their mummies around the house.  When my (now) 92 year old mother asked me some time ago what I planned on doing with her when she died, I told her I was going to have her stuffed with a lampshade on her head.  She didn't bat an eyelash.  "Nah", she said.  "You'll never remember to dust me."

Ancestors are not just limited to family members; they can include people whose lives have had a positive impact on us in some way or the spirits that occupy the lands where we live. One of the things shamans all over the world do is open communication channels with the ancestors. I keep a little space in my room for an ancestor altar where I might put a flower, a chocolate kiss, a beautiful seed pod or a pretty shell from the beach. I tell them that I remember them with deep gratitude and that they live in my heart.  I ask them to watch over and protect all those I love.

The earrings above are an expression of that gratitude.

transformation & remembrance ...

I don't think of myself as a packrat, but I have a few things that I've held onto through a number of moves and a house fire, things that have gone from being "new" to being "vintage" and from being "old" to being "antique".  The beaded butterfly on black silk is close to a hundred years old now, so I guess it's entering the realm of "antique".  It belonged to my late father-in-law's mother, Ida Zipkin, known to my husband and me as "Bubbe".  There are four beaded butterflies on a strip of black silk that must have been attached to a dress.  When I was younger, I thought it must have been part of a flapper's dress, but now I wonder if it might have been worn for mourning.  You know, with the butterfly being a symbol of the soul and transformation and all. 

Bubbe came to the US from Odessa as a teenager in the first quarter of the 20th century.  Whether that dress was part of her belongings or she acquired it here, I just don't know.  Maybe she just had that piece of silk trim and never actually wore it on a dress.  There's no one left of her generation - or of my father-in-law's for that matter - to ask.  His family had been in the dress business and when I started making my own clothes in the late sixties, he gave me this remnant because he knew I would appreciate and treasure it.  And so I have.

I used one butterfly on an Altoid box shrine to celebrate my becoming a crone, but it was also to celebrate Bubbe, who had died a few years before in Miami Beach at the age of 94.

I wanted to use another of the butterflies to make an amulet pouch.  It's sewn to a piece of backing fabric so there is minimal stress on the very fragile silk, but I think that it's too delicate to consider seliing.  And maybe too personal as well.

The weight of the hanging elements is all on the copper cross piece and the backing fabric.  I padded it lightly and enclosed a wrapped crystal point from my ancestor altar.  There's also a little pocket on the back to hold something tiny.  

I like the contrast of the lime green beads and embroidery thread with the black silk and beads. Death and rebirth.  It feels right.

beginning all over again

In less than a week I leave for North Carolina where, hopefully, new granddaughter Izzy will be waiting patiently to make her grand entrance.  At this point, her mother says she seems to be trying to kick her way out of the womb.  For months I've been dreaming of her and thinking of how she carries my grandmother's grandmother's grandmother's mitochondrial DNA back more than 40,000 years.  We are the daughters of "Jasmine".  Her clan lived near the Euphrates River in what is now Iraq, and her descendants traveled north through Turkey and Anatolia and Greece, into the Balkans before making a left turn and making their way into Northern Europe more than 8,500 years ago.  According to Brian Sykes in his book, "The Seven Daughters of Eve", her clan brought farming with them to Europe after the last Ice Age.

"Walking on Broken Glass" amulet necklace

 They brought domesticated grasses and sheep and goats.  The women were most assuredly weaving baskets and cloth.  I wonder if they were the people who built homes on the banks of the Danube with shrines for the goddesses of fertility - of life and death.  

Izabel enters a world so different from her Neolithic ancestors that it boggles the mind.  And still she carries in the mitochondria of each cell, the echo of their lives.

Epigenetics

“At the heart of this new field is a simple but contentious idea—that genes have a ‘memory’. That the lives of your grandparents—the air they breathed, the food they ate, even the things they saw—can directly affect you, decades later, despite your never experiencing these things yourself.”

From the BBC television program The Ghost in Your Genes

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-ghost-in-our-genes/