Another Gem Expo put to bed...

An awful cold hit me like a freight train late Monday afternoon -- but Thursday the 19th found me bombing down the highway on a sunny day: well, first a pit stop at Peridot Hair Salon in Paris to get my hair done -- the day before I'd hacked off almost 18 inches of hair. This is the shortest it's been in almost 20 years. Now for four days of glorious freedom from typing. Wheeee!

I met Ruth at the St. Lawrence Market where we stocked up on bags of chocolate-coated ginger (really great brain food) and tanked up on hot sweet and sour soup. It seemed to help my cold, at any rate. We walked around until it was time to head over to the Hyatt Regency to set up at 8:00.

Our tables were smack dab in the centre of the ballroom, rather than the usual spot off in a corner. Location, location, location, right? Last March, I can't tell you the number of people who arrived at my table in the corner farthest from the doors only to tell me that between the doors and my table they'd spent all their money.

What with this head cold and cough (which got worse and worse through the weekend), I was pretty brain dead, but Ruth and I got the van unloaded and things more or less set up around 10:30 p.m. This was the sight that greeted me when I arrived at 8:00 a.m. Friday morning. Only three and a half hours 'til showtime. Surely we'd got more done last night????

But I methodically persevered, fueled by a second medium Tim's latte (by Saturday, I'd graduated to large lattes, anything to cut through the brain fog), and by 11:30 the November 2015 Gem Expo was open for business:

One of my very first customers at The Gem Expo two and a half years ago, Kate Laidlaw, came to visit Friday afternoon and brought one of her necklaces that she'd made with my beads.

She does such beautifully clean but bold work. You've got to check her out.

Saturday night, Ruth took five of us out to the Thai Princess for a really nice meal. I was grateful that whatever this horrible nastiness I had was, it hadn't affected my appetite. I love Thai food, and it was so nice to sit down and share plate after plate of wonderful food with new and old friends.

Meanwhile, I finished wire-weaving a turquoise pendant. I'm not too sure about it, but here it is.

I restrung a bracelet I'd given to Ruth, which needed shortening. She added some turquoise and deleted one of the skulls. Here 'tis, with her asymmetric tweaks:

I managed to drop a string of lodalite, which is a gorgeous greenish phantom quartz, and broke one of the beads, so I decided to put some with the third of my bird necklace designs. Lodalite, hand-cut Afghanistan turquoise heishi and shell birds:

Friday had dragged... but then all of a sudden the show was over.  Took a lot less time to pack up than to set up.Yes, the contents of all those bins and bags had been on two 6-foot tables and two 2x6 foot grids only one hour and 45 minutes before. I think the packing this time was a record. But then we had to find a functioning elevator...

Ruth convinced me to accompany her to the Elephant & Castle for a good meal before attempting the drive back to Woodstock. Good plan. Good food. Actually, really good food -- it cut through the brain fog and I could even taste their version of French onion soup, made with beer. Yum! Just wish I could've had a beer.

And that was it. A fast drive home. I pulled into my driveway around midnight -- and promptly spent the following week in bed. An enormous thank you to Ruth's parents for hosting me this weekend and putting up with my infernal coughing. Her mom sent me downtown every morning with jars of steeped raw ginger tea, to which I am now addicted.

See you all in March 2016!

Matte Lapis Lazuli at the GRBS Show & Sale in Guelph this weekend...

Yikes, time is sure ticking: here it is Wednesday afternoon already, and Saturday and Sunday, October 5th and 6th I will be joining 25 vendors at the Grand River Bead Society Bead Show & Sale in Guelph. I have heard that the same great cafe as last year will be in operation, so there'll be no need to leave the show to get food and coffee. Plan to stay all day.

Here is a sneak peek of some of the natural colour matte lapis lazuli I will have for you at the show, all from Afghanistan. I will have full strings, as well as more affordable partial strings. There are tiny 2mm x 1mm saucer beads, lots of strings of 2mm and 3mm heishi, to quite large (over 2.5mm/1 inch) tubular and rice shapes both plain and grooved, and chunky trapezoids, these with spacers of Afghanistan jade saucer beads. These are all hand-cut, so sizes will vary, many beads with larger 1-2mm holes, great for stringing on leather.

Thanks for looking -- and see you at the show!

PS: I will be able to take Visa and MasterCard this year.

3mm Lapis Lazuli Heishi & Coin Silver Choker...

Further to yesterday's playing around, this is the first version I came up with. I really do lovelovelove coin silver. This is simple, timeless and elegant, will be great with denim or worn to the office/out to dinner with a simple white shirt.

Hand-cut 3mm lapis lazuli heishi and coin silver flowers and spacer beads, both from Afghanistan, silver-plated flower clasp, 20 inches, $156. Please email me if you are interested in this particular choker (or other variations) or ordering a different length. Shipping and handling will be extra. I take PayPal.

Thanks for looking!

Yikes! 2.5 weeks until...

...the Grand River Bead Society Show on the 27th and 28th in Guelph! Check out the classes here.

I'm busy pricing my new shipment of Kingman turquoise. Please let me know if you want half or one-third strings of these or any of my other turquoise (Sleeping Beauty, Nacozari, Castle Dome, Hubei, Ma'an Shan). I will also have a small selection of individual beads to choose from. I will be posting more pictures as I split them up and I will be happy to reserve them for you to pick up at the show.

Kingman blue mini-nuggets and 5mm blue heishi...

Kingman boulder barrels and rondelles...

Tube heishi (unknown provenance), Kingman blue and green heishi...

Sleeping Beauty, 1/3 string, 13 beads, $35...

Sponge coral, various sizes, shapes, prices...

Thanks for looking and see you at the show!

A simply great Saturday at the market and how my garden grows on Sunday...

Just saw this... http://theflyingtortoise.blogspot.ca/2012/06/beautiful-bohemian-interiors-of.html This is how I want the interior of my (as yet unbought, let alone found) RV to look. Sigh......... 

I had a great day at the market yesterday. I sold my first Kingman turquoise heishi necklace.

As well as an adjustable pipestone choker and bracelet.

These beads were from Titan Beads and yet again I only bought the one string, and a half-string at that. Ditto the pewter saucer beads. I'm almost or completely out of all of the metal beads I bought there in the spring and they don't appear on their website. I have to remember to email them, see if they have any lurking or will be able to get more in. I believe I got the round beads from Arton, my go-to people for so many things. I cannot get over how useful all these metal beads are mixed in with semi-precious beads and the rough-looking beads in particular. The character changes constantly as they're combined and recombined, hence the riffs on just one bead of the previous few weeks. I would have done more variations of this set, but I have no more of the pipestone.

I'm finally remembering to bring my camera every week to the market as a lot of things I make while I'm sitting waiting for customers for some reason will sell on the spot before even hitting the table. I'll show what I'm working on to anybody that stops, "Hey, check this out. What do you think?" and very often they tell me they'll take it. I still find that totally amazing.

I was so pleased with my sales yesterday that I bought three more baskets of flowers from Boris. I now have ten and so far they've managed to survive being drowned in monsoons, sauteed in the humidity and baked every day in the sun, although there is a lot of shadow cast by the building throughout the morning and end up in direct sun for only a few hours until the big maple tree to the west casts its long shadow over all, which helps as well to keep the living room fairly cool if there's no humidity. Humidity is the killer but with the tree blocking the sun I still rarely have my fan on at more than low speed. I am scrupulous about keeping the plants watered multiple times per day this year. I tried to have plants outside the porch door but it's far too hot there with direct sun all day after 10 a.m. or so.

I just went out to take pictures of the deck, got one photo and of course the camera batteries are now out of juice.

...half an hour later...

Max shaking his head over the folly of having so many plants.

Oh, well, I guess She Who Feeds Me could have ten cats instead...

One of the first planters I bought. The wave petunias are really taking off...

The new and super lushly planted wave petunia basket...

Time to get to work and finish another long 7-strand seed bead necklace, this time in turquoise blue with yellowy-oranges and red splotches. I've just discovered that I can't get any more opaque yellow-orange seed beads, or at least no store I've been to in this region carries them. This particular yellow-orange colour was from a 25-plus-year-old stash of seed beads. Ain't it always the case, the most useful item in your arsenal is always guaranteed to be out of stock, if not permanently out of production.

Thanks for looking, and if you want to commission similar items to what I've shown here or elsewhere, please email me.