Stuff I learned yesterday.

Calamine. It’s a mineral. Did you know that? I learned this while reading about Pierre Curie’s early experiments with the crystalline structure of minerals. One of them being calamine. I just knew it as the stuff that saved my sanity when I had chicken pox. Calamine was the lotion which made those blisters stop itching, at least temporarily, and that was all I cared about. I didn’t know what went into the making of calamine lotion, whether it was named after its contents or after somebody’s daughter.

Dreadful sorry, Calamine.

I also learned that it is possible to be humorously holier-than-thou via one’s license plate. While I was out running errands, I saw a Prius sporting “53 MPG”.

I learned that once again, my mother was right: you always find something in the last place you look. Yesterday I found several knitting magazines, a knitting book, and another two cubic feet of order (as opposed to entropy) in my studio, before finding the box containing my jewelry-making supplies.

I give you BEFORE:



You know that I am excessively fond of rich monochromatic color schemes. I had a necklace that was a little too choker-y for my tastes, which had serendipitously separated itself from its clasp, just before or just after the move. I had tossed it into a snack-sized sandwich bag for safekeeping, and every six months or so it would bubble up to the surface. When it surfaced most recently, I determined to restring it, incorporating semiprecious and/or glass beads to add variety and real value. (I probably paid $15 for the original when one of the vendors came to our office building, four or five years ago.) That carved pendant is plastic, not jade.

Here are the beads which I bought.



And the worktable, also occasionally known as the coffee table.



I wanted to find an old pair of onyx earrings from the mid-80’s. I had two large pairs of gemstone earrings, which dangled from something that looked like a clip from the front, but had a bail that came up over the post in the back. The onyx earrings are now too heavy to wear (my geriatric earlobes would hang nearly to my shoulders if I tried), and I want to make a bead lasso around one [earring, not earlobe] like the one which suspends the original green pendant. So here is where I stopped this morning.



A closeup:



I spent fifteen or twenty minutes rummaging around in the closet in my studio until I found the box which holds the jewelry boxes that Dad made for me, and one which belonged to Mom. But victory is mine! I have the earring I was looking for. After church, and maybe a nap, I will get it properly lassoed and start working on the fifth (perhaps final) strand. I have not used up all the original beads at this point, nor the ones which I bought yesterday. I would like to have few or none of them left when I am done.

Just to show that my world is not all about what goes on inside my head, here are two pictures which I took on Friday night, coming out of The Shabby Sheep.



and