Hearts

I have been making more in the last week and have changed the featured listing on my Etsy shop for February. My theme, unsurprisingly for Valentine's month is 'hearts.' Like this:

Gem Trivia:

The largest diamond ever found was The Cullinan Diamond on 26^th January 1905 at the Premier Mine in Pretoria. (Now known as South Africa) It weighed a huge 1 1/3 pounds and was 3.106 carats. Sadly, the diamond has now been cut into nine parts.

How about this little quote:

Love is the absence of judgement – Dalai Lama XIV

Quick joke time

I heard a good joke today! It goes:

'Marriage is like a deck of cards. In the beginning all you need is two hearts and a diamond. By the end, you wish you had a club and a spade.'

Have a good weekend, everyone. Stay warm!

This post is mine!

I have reinstated the 'featured items' panel at the top of my Etsy shop. It is fun to do these sometimes as I can choose a theme to play with, and the one I have chosen for this is 'Dinosaurs'. As a taster, how about this amusing necklace that I call 'Mine!”

I have made some more earrings and a summer bracelet today, and once we get some pictures taken of the new items I can see about posting them!

Stones trivia:

Sapphires are generally regarded as being blue, but they can in fact be lots of different colours. However, technically, there is no such thing as a red sapphire – that would be called a ruby.

I'm told that my poem went down well on my last post! I would like to do more of them, and I also love quotes of all kinds, so expect to see those popping up too!

I'm off now but I'll leave you with a really well-known quote from my favourite film:

“I'll be back!”

Still cold!

It's still cold, but at least I have been able to make some earrings, so that's an improvement. This time of year is always awkward, but I'm hoping that things will improve as the year gets going and starts to warm up. Before Christmas it was quite mild for the time of year and our daffodils were starting to appear above ground. I bet they're regretting that now!

Bead trivia: Two cobalt blue glass beads found in bronze age burial sites in Denmark from around 3,400 years ago were originally from Egypt, experts believe, and arrived there via ancient trade routes. You can read the article here

I'll leave you today with John Updike's poem, called January. Enjoy!

January

By John Updike

The days are short,

The sun a spark,
Hung thin between
The dark and dark.

Fat snowy footsteps
Track the floor.
Milk bottles burst
Outside the door.

The river is
A frozen place
Held still beneath
The trees of lace.

The sky is low.
The wind is gray.
The radiator
Purrs all day.

 

And now for something ancient...

Good grief is it cold today! I intended to make some new jewellery but it was so cold that my hands didn’t want to work properly, so I ended up tidying up and organising things for tomorrow. I will put the heating on if its cold, I can’t work when its like this. So those of you who are enjoying hot days or summer sunshine – enjoy it!

I thought it might be fun to share some jewellery or bead related facts and trivia with you, so to kick things off, how about this:

The oldest known beads are around 90,000-100,000 years old and were found in Israel and Algeria. The beads were made of shell and were roughly the size of a pea. It is believed that a flint tool was used to make the stringing holes… so I guess there is nothing new under the sun, is there?

Also, I have been asked about the area where I live, and I thought you might like some little peeks at it from time to time. For our first look at Rosebay country, how about this old ruin that dates all the way back to around 43AD and was built by the Romans?

It also makes a really nice walk along the beach. As you can see, we have shingle shores around here.

Lets hope its warmer tomorrow…

Happy 2016!

Happy New Year!

I hope you all had a great Christmas? I had some lovely presents, including some jewellery-related ones. Unusually for a box-aholic, there were no new plastic boxes(!) but I did have some smashing books and tools, so that should oil my inspiration wheels! 

My Etsy shop is back up after the short pre-christmas break, and I will soon start updating my Instagram page as well.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

Watch this space!