Contrariwise ramblings

This beautiful Graveyard Point Plume agate!

I just got it this week from Gemcutter, a lapidarist who has a shop on Etsy.  Right as I type this I have a couple of sketches for pendants, for this cab and a Morrisonite Jasper,  sitting on the desk and I will be heading to my workshop to create!

I haven't made ANYTHING all week.  I had a huge deadline at work that kept me busy and stressed - but it's over now.  It's Saturday morning and no one's home  -  which means I can play!

Check back later to see what I've made.  This is the first time I'm setting a freeform cab like this, so this should be interesting.

I was buying a few cabs from StonesInMotion, one of my favorite lapidarists and, in a last minute decision, I decided to pick up this laguna agate.  Although I don't generally pick up pastel-colored stones, I thought the banding throughout the stone was lovely.  What a surprise when it arrived.  Out of all the cabs I bought, I think I liked this one the best!

The stone is lavender and pink, and the natural formations seem to be reminiscent of clouds.  Coupled with the crystalline center, it's a truely exceptional stone.  When I designed the setting for it, I tried to make it reflect the cloud-like designs of the stone.

This is the first time I made a setting like this.  I don't know what you call the technique, but I soldered sterling plates upon each other.  This ended up making the ring quite substantial.

Since I got this first laguna agate, I've been trying to buy others.  I've discovered that they come in so many different colors.  (Yes, I do have more now.  A couple of red-banded ones can be seen here.)

It's amazing to me that many types of beautiful stones used in jewelry can be found in only tiny areas on this planet.  For example, I've learned that these laguna agates are only found in mountains on the border of El Paso Texas and Mexico.  Most of these areas are in the top third elevation of the mountain. Many of the claims don't have roads to them and have been worked entirely by hand.  The areas comprise a distance of only 4 miles or so.  And this is considered to be quite large compared to other Mexcian agate deposits!

If you'd like to see  more pictures of this ring, they can be found here.

I'm a little behind.  Last week was absolutely crazy.   In one day, I had a ton of orders and commissions in my Etsy shop.  I had no idea what was going on!  It turned out that one of my rings got featured on Etsy Finds, something I'd never known about.  Each day they feature a dozen items that revolve around a theme.   Wow - talk about exposure!

Then I my daughter had a gymnastics meet last Friday.  (WHY do they do these on a school day???)  After it was over, I immediately I turned around and headed out to IU for Mother's Weekend with my older daughter.

(BTW, I learned something new.  Mother's Weekend with a female college freshman requires that you go to over-priced clothing stores where your daughter would not normally be able to shop on her own AND purchase items for her which make you wonder WHERE THE HECK WILL SHE BE WEARING THIS SKIMPY OVERPRICED PIECE OF $#**???   But from what I've heard, Mother's Weekend with a MALE college freshman can be an eye-opening and life-changing experience that give you a whole different perspective on your offspring.  So. overall, I consider myself pretty lucky.)

Anyway.  I got back home last night, so it's time for me to get back to my blog and letting you know what's new.

I have so much new stuff that I've been working on.  I recently purchased some cabochons from Lost Sierra.  He has some great stuff and whenever he lists new items, they go so fast.  So I felt very fortunate to acquire some of his Oolite stones.  I'd never seen these before but I really like the contrast of burgundy against a grayish-green background.  The look is rustic, yet modern.

While I purchased several of these, only one was ring-sized.  I felt that the flower-like orbs of the stone were quite busy, so I thought a simple setting would be appropriate.   (More photos can be found here.)

More new jewelry to come this week!

I had lots of plans for today.  I 'd finished several new rings over the weekend and I was going to list them in my shop.  The photos were taken, the descriptions written, all I had to do was get on line and click a few little buttons.

But then I got into work and found that I had SEVEN HOURS OF MEETINGS on my calendar.  (Aren't there OSHA laws against that?!?)

So I never got around to listing my new rings, ended up working late, and now am finally logging on after dinner.

Sigh.

Anyway,  I just listed this Ocean Jasper Ring.

This is becoming one of my favorite stones.  I love each piece of Ocean Jasper because they're all unusual and unique.  This one has peach colored eyes surrounded by green lacework.  The background is white but it's even got little swirls in it!

In order to play off the orbs in the stone, I added some solid silver orbs of my own in the setting. I textured the ring band with various sizes of "circles" in a pattern, and the cut-out circles in the back of the setting are supposed to be orbs in reverse.  Then everything's been oxidized and polished to bring out the highlights.

(And there's that contrariwise dragonfly again!)

More photos can be found in the listing.

I'll just have to list my other rings tomorrow -  I'm tired but I still have the kitchen to pick up!  (Hubby is off picking Emma up at gymnastics, so I'm not complaining.)    

I ended up finishing quite a few projects this Saturday AND even taking photos. 

Here's the first piece, which will be listed in my shop this evening.  It's a piece of Candelaria Hills Variscite surrounded by leaves and fronds - and even a flower!

I probably made that little silver flower last fall, when I was playing with my disc cutter.  It ended up in a jar where I put odds and ends.  I suddenly remembered it just as I was deciding where to place the leaves around the setting and thought it with fit right in.  (If you look at the variscite and use your imagination, I can see a couple of flowers in the patterns of the stone.)

And as a final touch, I added a little contrariwise dragonfly on the underside.

UPDATE:  If you want to see more photos, here's the listing.

A few of my current projects that I've been working on during the evenings for the past week.

Right now it's Saturday morning and the house is quiet.  I'm off to sneak a few hours at my workshop.  These rings are almost done and I hope to have them finished this weekend and listed in my shop over the next several days.

I spend a lot of time searching for unusual cabochons. Set stones you buy in most stores are pretty run-of-the-mill and were cut from slabs of rock to maximize the number of cabs without much artistry.  Designer cabs are carefully cut to bring out the best from the rock. Personally, I'd rather spend a little extra money to have something that is unique, unusual, and beautiful.

Here are just a few of the cabs that I have that are the right size for mid to larger sized rings. 

Hello.  My name is Contrariwise and I have an addiction.

If you see one that you like, let me know. Also check out my shop (and my recent sales) for examples of my work.

Look to my next post where I'll feature larger cabs that would be perfect for cocktail rings or small pendants.


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Do you want to subscribe to my blog by email? Click here!.
Would you like to be a Contrariwise follower? (I love having more friends!) All you have to do is click on the link on the left in my side bar.

Squirrels and I have a love/hate relationship - they love my birdfeeder and I hate the cheeky little thieves.  With spring imminent, they are starting to show themselves.   The following is by Daniel Meyer~ From "Life is a Road, Get on it and Ride". I think it's one of the funniest things I've ever read.

I never dreamed slowly cruising on my motorcycle through a residential neighborhood could be so incredibly dangerous!

Little did I suspect. I was on Brice Street - a very nice neighborhood with perfect lawns and slow traffic. As I passed an oncoming car, a brown furry missile suddenly shot out from under it and tumbled to a stop immediately in front of me.
It was a squirrel, and must have been trying to run across the road when it encountered the car. I really was not going very fast, but there was no time to brake or avoid it -- it was that close. I hate to run over animals, and I really hate it on a motorcycle, but a squirrel should pose no danger to me.

I barely had time to brace for the impact. Animal lovers, never fear. Squirrels, I discovered, can take care of themselves!

Inches before impact, the squirrel flipped to his feet. He was standing on his hind legs and facing my oncoming Valkyrie with steadfast resolve in his beady little eyes.

His mouth opened, and at the last possible second, he screamed and leaped!

I am sure the scream was squirrel for "Bonzai !" or maybe "Die you gravy-sucking, heathen scum!" The leap was nothing short of spectacular...

He shot straight up, flew over my windshield, and impacted me squarely in the chest. Instantly, he set upon me. If I did not know better, I would have sworn he brought 20 of his little buddies along for the attack.

Snarling, hissing, and tearing at my clothes, he was a frenzy of activity.

As I was dressed only in a light T-shirt, summer riding gloves, and jeans, this was a bit of a cause for concern. This furry little tornado was doing some damage!

Picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and leather gloves, puttering at maybe 25 mph down a quiet residential street, and in the fight of his life with a squirrel.

And losing ...

I grabbed for him with my left hand. After a few misses, I finally managed to snag his tail. With all my strength, I flung the evil little rodent off to the left of the bike, almost running into the right curb as I recoiled from the throw. That should have done it. The matter should have ended right there.

It really should have. The squirrel could have sailed into one of the pristinely kept yards and gone on about his business, and I could have headed home. No one would have been the wiser. But this was no ordinary squirrel. This was not even an ordinary angry squirrel. This was an EVIL MUTANT ATTACK SQUIRREL OF DEATH!

Somehow he caught my gloved finger with one of his little hands and, with the force of the throw, swung around and with a resounding thump and an amazing impact, he landed squarely on my BACK and resumed his rather antisocial and extremely distracting activities. He also managed to take my left glove with him! The situation was not improved. Not improved at all.

His attacks were continuing, and now I could not reach him. I was startled, to say the least. The combination of the force of the throw, only having one hand (the throttle hand) on the handlebars, and my jerking back unfortunately put a healthy twist through my right hand and into the throttle. A healthy twist on the throttle of a Valkyrie can only have one result.

Torque.

This is what the Valkyrie is made for, and she is very good at it.

The engine roared and the front wheel left the pavement.

The squirrel screamed in anger.

The Valkyrie screamed in ecstasy.

I screamed in ... well ... I just plain screamed.

Now picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a slightly squirrel-torn T-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, and roaring at maye 50 mph and rapidly accelerating down a quiet residential street on one wheel, with a demonic squirrel of death on his back.

The man and the squirrel are both screaming bloody murder.

With the sudden acceleration I was forced to put my other hand back on the handlebars and try to get control of the bike.

This was leaving the mutant squirrel to his own devices, but I really did not want to crash into somebody's tree, house or parked car. Also, I had not yet figured out how to release the throttle ... my brain was just simply overloaded. I did manage to mash the back brake, but it had little effect against the massive power of the big cruiser.

About this time the squirrel decided that I was not paying sufficient attention to this very serious battle (maybe he was an evil mutant NAZI attack squirrel of death), and he came around my neck and got INSIDE my full-face helmet with me.

As the faceplate closed part way, he began hissing in my face. I am quite sure my screaming changed intensity. It had little effect on the squirrel, however. The RPMs on the Valkyrie Dragon maxed out (since I was not bothering with shifting at the moment), so her front end started to drop.

Now picture a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a very raggedly torn T-shirt, wearing only one leather glove, roaring at probably 80 mph, still on one wheel, with a large puffy squirrel's tail sticking out of the mostly closed full-face helmet. By now the screams are probably getting a little hoarse.

Finally I got the upper hand ... I managed to grab his tail again, pulled him out of my helmet, and slung him to the left as hard as I could. This time it worked ... sort of.

Spectacularly sort of ... so to speak.

Picture a new scene. You are a cop. You and your partner have pulled off on a quiet residential street and parked with your windows down to do some paperwork. Suddenly a large man on a huge black and chrome cruiser, dressed in jeans, a torn T-shirt flapping in the breeze, and wearing only one leather glove, moving at probably 80 mph on one wheel, and screaming bloody murder roars by, and with all his strength throws a live squirrel grenade directly into your police car.

I heard screams.

They weren't mine...

I managed to get the big motorcycle under control and dropped the front wheel to the ground. I then used maximum braking and skidded to a stop in a cloud of tire smoke at the stop sign of a busy cross street. I would have returned to 'fess up (and to get my glove back). I really would have. Really ... Except for two things.

First, the cops did not seem interested or the slightest bit concerned about me at the moment. When I looked back, the doors on both sides of the patrol car were flung wide open. The cop from the passenger side was on his back, doing a crab walk into somebody's front yard, quickly moving away from the car. The cop who had been in the driver's seat was standing in the street, aiming a riot shotgun at his own police car.

So, the cops were not interested in me. They often insist to "let the professionals handle it" anyway.

That was one thing. The other?

Well, I could clearly see shredded and flying pieces of foam and upholstery from the back seat. But I could also swear I saw the squirrel in the back window, shaking his little fist at me. That is one dangerous squirrel. AND NOW HE HAS A PATROL CAR. A somewhat shredded patrol car ... but it was all his.

I took a deep breath, turned on my turn-signal, made a gentle right turn off of Brice Street, and sedately left the neighborhood. I decided it was best to just buy myself a new pair of gloves. And a whole lot of Band-Aids.


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I made so much jewelry over the Christmas break, that I'm still way behind posting about it in my blog and listing it in in my online shop.  And here's another piece that I finally got around to photographing.

I made the band of this ring by fusing silver. Fusing silver is a method of joining it without solder.  The metal melts only on the surface, leaving the center unchanged.  As you can imagine it's pretty unpredictable.

This ring was an experiment that somehow worked.

I originally planned to antique the silver, but after seeing the result I couldn't.   I just loved the way the silver curliques are incredibly shiny and crisp against the background of the band.  And because of the extreme heat I used to fuse the metal, the silver on the band reticulated, leaving it with a wonderful soft sheen.

Only after I made the band, did I decide upon the stone.  I had a chunky square amethyst and thought it contrasted nicely, so I bezel set it on the band.  (For those of you who do silversmithing, I think you can appreciate how hard it is to bezel-set a stone on an uneven texture.)

I was so pleased with the way this ring worked out, that I decided to try fusing silver again.

Guess what.  It was a complete and frustrating failure.

After the abysmal failure at my second attempt at fusing, I think that this ring may end up being a one-of-a-kind Contrariwise creation.

If you want to see more photos of this ring, click here.



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Here's a pair of earrings that I thought I sold but I just relisted in my shop.

I bought these cabs earlier this year and I fell in love the set you see on the right and stayed up very late making the mountings for new earrings. I just couldn't resist working with my new purchases!

By 1 AM I'd finished 2 bezel settings and was trying to solder on some decorative bits. Then in an awkward moment, I dropped a mounting.

Awk!

I could hear it hit the concrete floor of my garage. A quick search didn't lead me to find anything -other than the realization that I really should clean under my soldering station. So I got a flashlight and searched everywhere!

Drat! I couldn't find it. Half an hour later, I gave up, thinking I could look more thoroughly after a good night's sleep.

The next morning, I must have spend over an hour searching for the missing mounting, and cleaning up in the garage as I went along . There was all kinds of crap under my soldering table - boxes from purchases, plastic bags, chemicals, stored stuff I might use some day - but no more.

I didn't want to give up. I'd spent too much time on the setting -as well as the time I spent searching for it- and it had to be somewhere.

After going through every inch of the floor, through the trash, underneath the cars, I decided to search my trash can once again. Maybe in my frenzy it got thrown away with the trash.

I looked through it, unfolding the little bits of paper and small plastic bags I'd crumbled and thrown away. Then finally, when opening up an old plastic bag, something fell out and I heard the sound of metal hitting the floor. THERE IT WAS!

Yes, now I could finish those earrings. FINALLY.

And here there are!

I'm pretty pleased with how these earrings turned out. They're different than anything I've ever made before. The stones are bezel-set with a decorative "frame" around the bezels. I also antiqued the silver to highlight the stones and the settings. These earrings have a real hand-crafted artsy look to them.

They not demure little earrings. At about an inch and 1/4 in height, they're are large and make quite a statement. The photo on the left gives you some idea of the perspective.



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Yes, Mooshu will be cheering for the Colts this Sunday.  As a Hoosier, how could he not???

We've been living on and off again in Indiana for the past 30 years.  (No, not MooShu. He's only a puppy.)  So it's obvious that we're rooting for the  Colts.  But about 10 years ago, we briefly made Maryland our home.

I'm really not a huge football fan.  So it was a surprise to me that, whenever I was asked where I'd moved from, the immediate somewhat disgruntled response was inevitably, "Oh.   Indiana.  Yeah, you stole our Colts from us."

OK.  Dead pause in conversation. 

This happened every single time I mentioned that our family had moved from Indianapolis. EVERY SINGLE TIME. Obviously people in Maryland take their football very seriously and can hold a  grudge.

As you can imagine, this got tiring pretty quickly.  After a while, I decided that, rather than taking the defensive, I had to do the opposite.

So, whenever I got asked where I was I was from, I took the offensive:  " Oh, we just moved from Indianapolis.  You know, HOME OF THE COLTS."

This also resulted in a dead pause in the conversation.  At least it wasn't DIRECTLY due to me.


(Oh, and if you couldn't tell, MooShu's a Peyton Manning fan.)






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