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.

 

on a lighter note ...

My little fashionista is picking out her own outfits these days.  She reminds me that you're not really ready to face the world until you've put on your tutu.

spells and blessings on a grey winter's day

"Binding Spell"

Beannacht (Blessings)

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colors,
indigo, red, green
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
in the curach* of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the water
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,

"Binding Spell"  close up

may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.

- John O'Donohue
Anum Chara (Soul Friend)

"Lucky DNA Charm Earrings"

millimeters

I am metrically challenged.  I'm ashamed to admit it, but it's true.  From many years of cutting fabric freehand for my art quilts, I am very good with inches, but millimeters?  Not so much.  And centimeters?  Fuhgiddiboudit. Even though I have a lovely little brass caliper to check measurements, I am frequently surprised when I get something that I bought on line.

I bought the Chinese coin at the center of this piece on Ebay a while back and did not expect it to be so big.  It's supposed to be an antique bronze coin from the Song Dynasty, but I'm skeptical.   I thought it might be too big and too heavy for a necklace, but I've decided that it's perfect for a ceremonial piece.  I would be proud to lead a ritual wearing this.

And a couple of pair of earrngs.  The first with smokey quartz and blue kyanite, which I love, and the second with faux ivory antler tips, rutilated quartz, and my homage to DNA.  I love DNA too.

into the dark again ...

Do you ever feel like you're in danger of becoming stuck in amber?  Like it's sort of comfortable and safe to be surrounded by that warm honey-sap but you know where this is going to lead and it's not pretty.  You've got a couple of choices: you can wiggle and fight it and maybe get out, or you can just relax and see what happens.  Go deeper.  BE the amber.  Is it just laziness??  Laziness with a hefty dose of fear thrown in?  I prefer (at the moment) to think that I'm not just making the same stuff, I'm making the same stuff a little better.  And after all, does any of it really matter?  Can any piece of jewelry, even if I'm arrogant enough to consider it ART, really matter?

Luann Udell, whose art and words always resonate deeply with me, just had a post about the artist not remaining silent in the face of grave social injustice. She makes, among many other beautiful things, these powerful and evocative little polymer clay horses inspired by prehistoric carvings and cave paintings.  She writes, 

“…And I can do this with my hands, by creating my little horse, which symbolizes the power that comes from our choices, our actions, even in the face of despair.”

https://luannudell.wordpress.com/

Read her posts.  She is wise and eloquent, where I am just stumbling around in the dark, trying to make some sense of this screwed up society and my part in it.  10 years ago I would have been at a vigil or a protest and that would make me feel better.  Today I'm just sitting at my worktable trying to fend off despair.  Here are my latest feeble attempts to put a little love and beauty out into the world:  Just treading water artistically maybe, but still satisfying on some level.  This I can do with MY two hands - my offerings of protection for the darkness.

this post has nothing whatsoever to do with creating ... or maybe it has everything to do with it

I have made a scrambled egg folded over a slice of Muenster cheese and a piece of toast.  I've buttered the toast and cut it into small rectangles, as I've also cut about half of the omelet.  I set my plate down, along with a mug of Trader Joe's orange peach mango juice on the coffee table.  I have a regular fork and a tiny one with a colorful plastic handle.  I sit down on the couch to eat.

She has been dancing in the living room: long dreamy loops, dipping her little shoulders with each rotation.  She is trilling a sweet, tuneless song to accompany herself.  The sound of the plate making contact with the surface of the coffee table interrupts her reverie.  She stops mid-loop with a soft "Whooo" and with tiny staccato steps, her bare feet hardly leaving the floor, sidles over to the coffee table.  She inspects my plate.  Her head is cocked to one side, her lips pursed, her eyelashes lowered.  She knows this renders me virtually helpless to resist her power.  "Mmmmm", She says without looking at me directly.  She taps her chest to sign, "Help".  "Me turn", She says.  I hand her the little fork.  She eats the entire omelet.  She sucks the butter off every piece of toast.   "Mmmmmm", She says, with deep satisfaction.

in my mind I'm goin' to Carolina ...

It's almost time to pack up the old Volvo wagon and head South for a bit.  The baby is talking, the bigger kids growing ... well, bigger.  FaceTime is wonderful, but little Izzy thinks that Grandma Maggie lives in Mama's phone.  There's no place to set up all my wire and beads, so I'm trying to get everything finished, photographed and listed on Etsy before I go.

Can't wait for the AppleFest and the Dixie Classic Fair.  Apple dumplings!  Pig races!  Autumn in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Maybe we can get in a visit to the alpaca farm.  Maybe I can start to look for my dream house ...

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.

SALE!!!!!!!

In honor of all who work with their hearts and with their hands, please use coupon code "LABOR2014" at checkout to get 10% off all purchases in my Etsy shop, "maggiezees".  Good through the end of September.

My first necklace and earring "set".  How bourgeouis of me!  Anyone who has read my feedback on Etsy knows that sometimes, when the mood strikes me, and the Moon is in the Seventh House and Mercury aligns with Mars... and I'm still not done playing with the beads that are all over my work table, I include a matching pair of earrings as a thank you for the purchase of an amulet necklace.  I know that it's hard to find something to "go" with some of my odder pieces.  But on the couple of occasions when someone has tried to make it a condition of the sale that I throw in a free pair ... well, that just gets me annoyed.  Some pieces demanded earrings to be made - some didn't.  It's not up to me. I'm an ahtist, damn it.

apotropaic

Here's my word of the week: apotropaic.  It means having the power to ward off evil.  Three of the most favorite apotropaic amulets that we use in the West are the open hand (hamsa, Hand of Fatima), the mano figa (a hand gesture placing the thumb between the second and third fingers to resemble a vulva); and the Evil Eye.

Here are a couple more eyes I just listed in the shop in copper wire:  The heavy gauge stuff was headed to the scrap yard when I appropriated it for apotropaic purposes.