[Lycaenidae Stacking Rings :: sterling with 23 karat gold accents]

Oh!  The beauty of the delicate.  I’m feeling delicate this week so I’ve been making delicate things.  These little stacking ring sets are inspired by the edges of my creek in springtime.  On warm afternoons, where the sun hits full and warms the tack of the dirt paths, the smallest butterflies will congregate in flittering jamborees, sip their swamp water with fluted tongues and start the winds whirling with their placid flutterings (somewhere in the distance a hurricane is born).  Anytime I catch them pooling and spooling in the spring sunshine, I stop running for a while, crouch there with them on the ground, and coax one or two to land on my finger tips.  Oh.  The beauty of the delicate.

Besides feeling pretty and delicate and small this week, I think my heart of winter loving hearts may be yearning for a thaw, hoping for a ribbon of warmth to sneak its way into my life and wrap every good thing up with a turquoise bow.

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Last night when I was running with Farley, I was chugging up a steep hill and as I crested it, my entire being met the full glory of the sun as it crowned the West bench on the other side of the valley — it was hung up on a mountain peak and the world was swimming in pink haze, snow blush and wild fire.  I thought every single warm, beautiful, generously giving light on our fair planet was shining directly in my face.  I opened up my mouth and sang one pure, long note, held my arms out wide, and the light poured itself down my throat, like a hot drink, and settled somewhere inside my ribcage.  Now my heart beats with alpenglow and I know I’m not forsaken.  It was holytastic.  And I felt loved.  Loved by the Light.

[Babe On The Rock Ring ::: sterling silver & a river rock from the South Fork of the Snake River, Idaho]

I was daydreaming about this design before Christmas and finally was able to craft this piece today.  When I look at it, I’m reminded of Northern Saskatchewan where the land is carpeted in thick mosses and rooted with birch, alder and jackpine forests.  Precambrian shield rises up out of the lakes and rivers there (and there are many, many lakes and rivers, chained together into a massive waterway), black in the noon day sun, blacker by night when the moon and stars numb the sharp edges of the forest and the Northern lights glitter and hum electric in the sky.  It’s a beautiful, desolate, wild place.  I spent much of my youth exploring the Saskatchewan North by canoe.  The lakes can be fearfully wide there and on windy days the waves rise up into white capped rages.  I’ve paddled through fierce weather.  Vicious thunderstorms.  Sleet storms.  Blizzards.  I have been lost.  I have had to find my way.

On the lakes and in the rivers, outcroppings of domed granite, schist or gneiss lay silent beneath the waves and sometimes rise up out of the water forming tiny islands big enough for a single clump of moss or a scrawny jack pine to barely grow.  I always imagined, while paddling my canoe, that if I were to capsize in the middle of one of those wild lakes, I would swim for the nearest tiny island, climb atop it, plant my feet on the black rock and get my bearings before swimming for the next piece of land.

A small island.

A resting place.

A halfway point.

A vantage.

A stronghold to keep me above the white teeth of the waters that would seek to pull me down.

Maybe this little ring is meant to remind a gal of The Rock that will get her through stormy weather, that will rest her when her arms and heart grow weary.  That steady and constant foundation in a world that moves, sways and trickles in every direction.  I don’t know.  When I look at this ring, I feel these things:  lonesomeness, strength, waiting, faith…endurance…and perhaps the knowing and trust that in the distance there is a good land where the forest unfolds endlessly and I can walk and not be afraid.

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I hope you all have a beautiful weekend!

XX

[Pod & Brambles Locket ::: sterling silver, copper, enamel, coral, silk ::: inspired by the winter world]

https://www.thenoisyplume.com/blog/2013/01/17/5646/