The Countdown Begins

Hello readers, thank you so much for joining me on the blog today. I have been ever so busy over the last couple of days packing away all the jewellery I intend to show at my exhibition - I'd rather do it now, when I have the time and am in a calm frame of mind, than at the last moment, as I did last time. However, to be fair to me, the decision to have the show last year was taken at the last moment, so I just threw everything into a suitcase and hoped for the best - not a good way to chillax while on holiday, I can assure you.  

Please consider yourselves invited to my exhibition, if you are in Bangalore on the 6th or 7th of February. Come up and talk to me - I would love to chat with you. Please tell your friends in Bangalore as well - Caprilicious could do with the support. If you are thinking of making a trip to Bangalore, why not kill two birds with one stone and make your trip at the time when I am around - I would love to see you.

I've been so exhausted with all the packing that I haven't actually had time to make much in the way of jewellery this week. A friend of mine in Mumbai bought a necklace, but wanted it altered, and a bracelet and earrings made to go with it, so I remade the jewellery to her specifications. In my opinion, statement jewellery should really be worn singly - each piece stands alone quite easily, but hey, she's the customer - and the customer is always right!

And then of course, I played with wire, which is my fall back/go to plaything of choice. I was watching my kittens play with a ball, and made what I thought was a reasonable facsimile of a stylised cat. When I showed it to Mike, he thought it was a chameleon!! I was shocked speechless - and that only happens once in a very long while, so he made the most of that phenomenon.

I was so surprised by his lack of imagination that I didn't even name the piece -and ended up just calling it 'Cat Playing with a Ball' as if it were a painting by an old master. I still think it  looks like a cat  - what do you say??

Améthyste

I had two strings of nuggets of Lodolite Quartz - this gemstone comes all the way from Brazil. A friend of mine was sorting through my bead stash when she came across them and went into raptures - apparently Lodolite quartz, also called Landscape or Garden quartz has inclusions of many colors and types, often having the look of gardens, landscapes, or underwater scenes. It is a stone associated with intense spirituality and meditation. It is thought to bring strong healing energies and  is used mystically to increase ESP - and is also known as the 'Shaman's dream stone'.

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 My friend took one of the strand's of Lodolite off me, and pleaded that I made up the other strand into a finished piece - to her mind it was nothing short of a criminal act to keep it locked away in my stash. 

Oh well, who am I to argue with someone who makes such an impassioned plea to release the spirituality bubbling out of the Shaman's Dream Stone? 
I put the lodolite with an amethyst geode, which itself is said to have many beneficial metaphysical attributes - but above all, is very beautiful. Now the necklace is ready to go out to someone who was meant all along to own and love it, and receive it's mystical powers. I wonder who that will be??

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I spent my evenings slumped in front of the telly, exhausted from all the packing and a few pairs of earrings appeared from the lengths of wire I idly played with. I didn't bother to list them on my website - I thought I'd just put them towards the exhibition. Out of habit, I photographed them and when I showed them on Facebook, to my great surprise, two pairs were snapped up within the first ten minutes. The triangles were inspired by a design by Nicole Hanna, and the other two by a design by an Indonesian friend, Corinne.

Mike has a birthday this week and we're off to stay at Coombe Abbey - someone kindly gave us a voucher for a night's stay and I've saved it up towards the birthday celebration. I'll tell you all about it next week.
That's it folks, that's all I had time for. Stay warm and dry, have a lovely week, and I'll catch you next Friday, same time, same place
xx