This is the final batch of my Come Home Necklaces in sterling and lapis lazuli — they’ll be in the shop this evening at 7PM (mountain time zone).  Thanks to everyone who claimed an iteration of this motif over the past two years, you made this design a wild success and I’ll retire it with gladness in my heart knowing so many of you are out there enjoying it.

As an extra thanks, I am giving away one of these necklaces over on my Instagram account if you’d like to enter your name in the drawing for it, please proceed to that space.

XX

The tiniest anatomical heart for you to wear at your throat in true milagro style — as a reminder of a particular hope, goal, dream or prayer or in gratitude for a prayer answered, a hope redeemed, a goal met or a dream made reality.

This piece is made even more powerful if given as a gift…I have twenty and I’ll make them available tomorrow in my shop at noon, mountain time zone.

I’ve meditated so much, this winter, on the idea that courage is not the absence of fear but choosing to act despite the presence of fear.  I apply this notion to my life on a daily basis when I am trail running, creating in my studio or working in partnership with Robert on the flaws within the realm of our marriage.  You name the thing and I assure you, there is fear there for me, in some shape or form, but I go forth and I meet my fears head on, every single day, and the clash you hear is of steel on steel, spirit on flesh, heart on heart…

…and but for the grace of God go I.

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2017/02/23/12597/

Bound for my Etsy shop tomorrow are six pairs of earrings, some are the same, some are the same but different.

Built with: sterling silver, 23K gold, green amethyst, prehnite, turquoise and chrysoprase.

Check in at noon my time (mountain time) and I’ll try to have them listed and ready for you!
(pardon that twisted earring chain…didn’t notice it until I started building this blog post…oops)

So much of my inspiration of late stems directly from the chaotic surface of my workbench in the studio where half finished thoughts are splayed out in every direction like sun-wounded jellyfish on a beach.  Unrelated components lay there as testimonials of interruptions that have stopped me and the metal mid-sentence…a phone call from my mum, a text from a friend, a gaggle of house shopping folks to view the strawbale house and stare at my weird collection of skulls, turtle shells and houseplants…a dog barking at the UPS man, the insane daily scramble to get to the post office before it closes (it’s only open from 9-12:30 — excluding Saturdays) (mail delivery on Saturdays is one of the most beautiful things about America to me, since I am a true epistle-ophile) (not a real thing but you know what I mean).

There’s the litter of half formed thoughts on my bench top, the detritus of everything that almost made it into something bigger than itself.  This is the time of year I feel a self-induced pressure to button up the studio, gather all these broken thoughts and inturrupted ideas and complete them so I can end the year with a clean slate…time stamp the designs of this past year and move beyond them into newness.

I don’t think I ever have a sense of ‘Christmas Rush’ — I think I suffer dearly a strong sense of the tail end of a creative year and the need to clearly catalogue what happened and when in my creative life.  I want it all finished.  This year, there is the added complication of needing to pack up the studio and move it into the new house which is a notoriously discombobulating deed.  Things go missing even if I’m only moving my workspace a square mile to the left…things go awry.  It’s like socks and washing machines.  There are some mysteries we humans will never solve.

I am going to keep working up until the moment I have to put my tools in boxes and move them to my new light-riddled workspace at the farm but these are my final offerings for 2016.  They’ll be in the shop tonight, at some point…or if I suffer sudden fatigue (which happens every day now), tomorrow morning.  Oh dear.  Sudden fatigue just happened.  Tomorrow morning then…

Thank you all for your support in 2016.  I have a holiday giveaway for you that I will post in a couple of days.  I look forward to popping the cork on 2017, settling into work and life and a new home, feeling some of this unsettledness fizz away, delving deeper…going beyond-er…tending to my wee family which is still suffering from post fire season frazzle…

Eggnog.

*clink*

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2016/12/17/12428/