Move-pocalypse now

Moving is the worst thing ever and I don't intend on doing it again for at least 10 years.  But at least the tiny pugs are enjoying their new kingdom:

Alas, I didn't take this photo, the shop monkey sent it to me earlier today.  I am not lounging around my new house, organizing my collection of tiny coffee mugs.  Instead, I am slaving away at work in the heat (which I have to admit, bothers me more as a pregnant lady than as a carefree 20 something).  But soon (maybe next month!!!!) my commute will be 40 feet or so.  Hallelujah!  I'll blog about the studio remodel soon.  Just need to get everything planned.

(On a babies related note, I had an appointment today and heard both heart beats, which was a nice reminder that I'm not getting fat for nothing. :-)

No surprise here...

...I still love 18kt yellow gold. 

This set was for a lovely couple in Georgia.  But I sort of like the way they look paired together as a set:

I know that some people love delicate, airy jewelry.  And I do too, sometimes.  But I'm always afraid I will break it, or wear it out, or something else irrational.  Maybe that is why I am so attracted to a bigger chunky look?  (Or maybe it is because I have sasquatch hands?  And a delicate pavé/filigree ring would look like lipstick on a pig? )

Moving day is this Sunday, my house is in total chaos.  And my mind feels the same.  I don't think I will be able to calm down until the move is over and the glasses are in the cupboard.  And really, I don't think it will be over until the home studio is finished and the studio move is over as well.  I am actually dreading that a bit more than the home move, to be honest.  Moving my workspace is just so stress inducing....trying to keep track of every little tool and all of the paper work.  And having ongoing work happening at the same time is Just. So. Stressful.  Especially at this time of year, when requests for express orders are at a high.  Ugh.  Anyway, I am just aiming to get through this weekend.  Send me your positive brain waves for an easy move. :-)

Where have you been?

Hello, dearest readers.  Where have I been?  Well, I've been sunk into a morass of crazy wedding season business and personal misery.  (And to top it all off,  I found out just now, as I was going to add photos of some of my newest work, that all of my photos from May have disappeared from my iphoto.  WTF?  Fabulous.  Losing photos is really sucky, especially if they were photos of something new that I've already shipped out.  No way to recover that.)

And what has caused me to be incommunicado for the last month and the shop to be closed for the last week or so?  I should probably start at the beginning!

I think I last left you with a hopeful post about our house hunt?  Well, that is progressing, with all of the normal ups and downs and backs and forths that are typical for the house buying process (at least I assume they are, since I have never bought a house before I wouldn't know otherwise).  We had the inspection, which went well, and then the appraisal which went less well.  It didn't appraise for our agreed upon purchase price, so we had been on pins and needles for a while until we found out just yesterday that they have agreed to sell it to us for what it appraised for.  Yay!  We should be moving in around the 10th of next month.  The first order of business is to get the new studio all ready, so I can move everything home.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  No sooner had we put in an offer on the house, and had it accepted and scheduled the inspection, than a fire broke out in our condo building and burned down half of the place.  Luckily (for us) it wasn't the half that we lived in, but we were driven out by the smoke damage and general unpleasantness of being in a building that is half burned down.  I was at work when the Shop Monkey called me to tell me about it.  The first thing he asked me was if both dogs were at work with me (which, thank god, they were).  I had almost not taken them with me that day.  I can't even imagine what my mental state would have been if I hadn't.  As it was I was in tears, imagining all of my possessions as ashes.  All of my letters, and drawings, and my wedding ring!  But we got really lucky and nothing was ruined (and nobody was hurt!).  We just had to pack up 2 pugs, 2 kitties, and one sickly Bean and ship them over to the in-laws for 2 weeks.


And that leads me to my third piece of news.  I'm pregnant!  And I've been feeling like total SH*T!  Seriously.  Being preggo is not for the faint of heart.  I can't even tell you how hard it has been to scrape myself up off of the bed and slime my way into work.  Things were staring to look up last week, but today has seen a recurrence of ghastly nausea and general I JUST WANT TO DIE horribleness.  Yet, here I am, soldiering on, sipping my anti-nausea fruit smoothie.

And would my pregnancy announcement really be complete without an overly intimate glimpse into my uterus?  I think not!

 (My apologies if you came here looking for jewelery eye candy.  I know that a grainy photo of a creepy alien child isn't exactly shiny diamonds.  But this is my blog, so you'll just have to put up with a few ultrasound pics.)

Yesterday was my first real midwife appointment and in the morning I had scheduled an ultrasound.  There I was, floating in the semi-darkened room, blissfully peering at my baby for the first time.  The tech was clicking away, taking photos and measurements, and I was laughing at the little squirming movements and sweet little squid features.  Then the tech asks me, oh so casually, if this is my first ultrasound with this pregnancy.  Immediately suspicious of the worst horrifying possibilities, I answer yes, and ask why.


Does anyone care to hazard a guess at what the below picture might be?

Then she says, because I think I just saw another baby.  My first reaction?  I KNEW IT!  And then she adds, hold on, let me make sure.  And I was so nervous that it wasn't going to be true!  My heart had in that tiny moment already attached itself to that second baby and it would have broken (broken!) if it had been a mistake.

But no!  She sort of scrolled over to the right, and there it was, plain as day.  A second baby!  So, there you have it, dear readers, I'm having spontaneous twin babies.  Due in December.

Wedding season begins in earnest.

Spring has finally sprung here in the gloomy rainy overcast depression inducing beautiful PNW!  Hallelujah!  Sunshine at last!  Even if it is intermittent, some sunshine is better than none.  So I'm enjoying it (while it lasts).  (To be honest with you all, I know I really belong in Hawaii.  I lived there for 3 years and they were the happiest of my life.  Some of us are just not suited to gray weather.)

So!  We've found a house!  OMG!  I'm trying to not get too excited (ha!), but we have a sale pending now and the house inspection is this Saturday.  We found it last weekend and when we walked in, it was literally like "We want to buy this house right this moment".  OMGOMGOMGOMGOMG! (That was what my text messages to my sister were like all that day.  I'm afraid I wasn't very coherent.)  It's perfect!  3 bedrooms (plus a little bonus room off one of the upstairs rooms!), 2 baths, .48 acres.  It was built in the 30's, sort of a cottage type house with a peaked roof, and a big front window that has the original leaded glass.  So awesome!    The backyard was the clincher, though.  Fruit trees, fire pit, big patio, hedged in veggie garden area, and mature pinot grape vines.  OMG! And even a little out building that will become my studio (with a lot of elbow grease).  I LOVE IT.  I can't wait to get out of the condo we are in right now. When the Shop Monkey and I blended households, we both brought two animals to the union.  Me, the sweet angel pugs. And he, the Goddamn Kitties.  So things are a little crowded as they are.  I can't wait to have a bit more space.  We won't be moving until the beginning of July (couldn't be worse timing as far as my work is concerned), as long as everything goes smoothly.  Fingers crossed!

Yay!

Is bigger better?

 

Everyday life

As much as I love my job, I also have a life outside of my work.  It consists mostly of reading, pug watching, quilting, working out, cooking, and being with the Shop Monkey as much as possible.


Puggery:

Cookery:

 

Miso soup, to go.

 Quilting:

The everlasting zig-zag quilt.

So those are some of the things that fill some of my time....when I'm not working like madwoman to get things out (close to) on time.

The Raw Circle returns!

I had been debating whether or not to continue making Raw Circle rings, one of my first designs when I had just started out.  I made so many of them in the my first couple of years of business that I was a little tired of them.  And the way I was making them was wearing me out.  But I think I've perfected an easier way!  Can't wait to add it to my shop!

(Pretty decent picture, if you can ignore my fingerprint on the band!

If it is isn't pug hair photobombing my pictures, it's dust or my fingerprints.)

Not much else new going on here in the shop.  Wedding season seems to have started in earnest and I'm busy....especially as the house hunt also continues (and continues to disappoint!).  But I have hopes that we will find (and actually manage to purchase) a house soon.  And then it will just be moving house, and moving the studio (which I am dreading....I have so many tools and bits and bobs that moving the studio is a pain the ass of the first order!).

French Honeymoon earrings

(Me trying to feel French.  Check out all of that sun damage!  I must have got it from all of 

my topless sunbathing on the mediterranean, right?....)

When we were wandering through the charming Paris streets this last January, we stepped into this dusty little antique shop near the river.  The shop keeper was an ancient woman, exactly what you might picture as the keeper of a tiny antique shop in Paris.

In a jewelry case there was an adorable pair of red coral drop earrings with 18kt yellow ear hooks, so classic and sweet.  I'm not really a big jewelry wearer (oh, the irony), but under the influence of the Parisian sunshine (and feeling like an ugly American duckling....longing to be a French swan) I felt the urge to make them my own!

Then I saw the price tag.  I think it was something like 700 euros (!!!! OMFG!).  So that was the end of that.  But I was determined to have something of the same shape.  And so I made these first thing when I got home.

These are a little hefty, but I don't really mind since I like big earrings.  But I will also be making a smaller, more light-weight version for my shop as well.

Well, it only took me 3 years

Yes!  I have finally broken free from the tyranny of the round stone.  Took me forever, but I've finally done it.

I love the way it turned out!  So much that I had to send my sister a text before I even finished polishing it:

And now I just have to get my first cushion cut ring finished.....it's in the works.


(Yes, I have done oval stones before, but never as an item for my shop!  I plan on adding this tomorrow.)

House hunting and other horrors

 I have been busy.  Busy at work and busy at life.  We are house hunting.  I (mistakenly, it turns out) thought that house hunting would be fun!  Oh the naïveté!  I was wrong.  It's terrible.  It's terrible terrible terrible.

 

In order to get oneself to spend an enormous amount of money and go into massive debt (which I abhor!), one has to LOVE the house.  But in order to survive the multiple disappointments that competing for houses puts you through (the wringer, my god!  I just want to sit wide-eyed on my couch with a cup of strong tea and a science fiction book after a day of viewing houses), you have to not give a sh*t about the house.  It's a catch 22.  Love the house in order to get yourself to buy it, but simultaneously don't care about the house at all because your heart will be broken if it doesn't work out.   

 

(This is me, trying to survive the last little part of the Oregon gray (who am I kidding, it will rain until the end of June) by wearing bright Parisian lipstick.  I bought it on my honeymoon, at one of those ubiquitous pharmacies.  It only helps a bit.  You have to either be oblivious to the weather to make it through the winter/spring here unbruised, or made of sturdier stuff than me.  And I was born and raised here!)

  

So the house hunt is turning out to be hard.  We found this fabulous house that had 1.5acres, it was a 1910 farmhouse in good shape, close to town.  And we made an offer, and the seller came back to us and said he didn't realize he couldn't sell it for what is was listed for,  he could only sell it for much more.  WTF.  And then, he takes it off the market entirely, with the intent of selling off part of the land (the horror!) and keeping the cute little farmhouse as a rental property.  Why would you list it in the first place?  And the worst part is, we found the house right off the bat, it was perfect and the land it came on was so interesting.  There was a stream!  And that ruined us (me, really) for other houses for at least a month or more.

(Jealous of this giant blue sapphire I made for someone last December.  So bright!)

I really just want to find a house and be done with it.  It doesn't have to be the house of my dreams, it just has to be bright inside, older, with a reasonably sized yard.  Is that too much to ask?  Maybe I'm being unreasonable?

Vlog?

What is the term for a video blog post?  Anyway, here you go:

Oh, pictures of hands!

Oh, the indispensable wedding photo titled "Portrait of Rings."  Hehe!  I love it/hate it.  It is similar to the "Portrait of  Bride and Groom with Cake (no. 400 thousand million)."  No one is actually married unless there is photographic evidence of the actual cake eating. (Man, I would love a piece of cake right now.)  No one can escape the staged ring photo, not if your wedding photographer has anything to say about it. :-)

Not even me.  Witness the evidence below.

 You might recognize my ring from previous blog posts, but here it is in all of its bridal day glory.  The Shop Monkey's ring is one I made in platinum, special, just for him.  It has a shallow groove down the middle that is filled with my finger prints.  And the following picture is from someone I was lucky enough to make their wedding jewelry for.  And you should have seen the other photo!  I'm now convinced that my next wedding will need to be beach side. (Just kidding, I'm never getting married again!)

Where have you been?

Sorry everyone!  I've just been trying to get myself back into working mode.  For me that is the hardest part of working for yourself, no one expects you to stick to a schedule, so you have to supply all of the structure for yourself.  Which I am determined to do this year!  I want to have a more structured existence, in fact I need it!  Otherwise I just fritter away my days skipping from one website to another, reading the back entries of blogs (curse you, Apartment Therapy!), and consuming news media of all sorts.  I don't want to waste my life away on the desert that is the internet!  I want to do things that matter to me, not read about things that other people have done.  I want to practice the piano, quilt, cook, play with the pugs, and draw pictures!  I want to do things!  Actual things!  Not read random stuff off a computer screen.  I have an internet problem.  And I know I am not alone.  Can I get an amen?

Towards this end, I have instituted a daily schedule, that I am going (to try) to follow.  Of course there will be room to improvise.  But you can't improvise from nothing (at least I can't, my life just turns into a total sh*t-show...see above), so a framework is going to be a positive change for me.  I've even given myself a bedtime and a time to get up in the morning, and established some little pleasant rituals that will help me stay the course.  And I've banished the iPad to the studio, where it sits dormant until it has to go on a trip with me, instead of laying around the house like a black hole that an entire morning/afternoon/evening can vanish into.  Things have already improved since I've returned from my honeymoon, and I think that with the gradual build up of willpower, I will be where I want with my time management skills by the end of the year.

As for work, I'm going to try to manage that better as well.  I needn't go into extreme detail, but I am going to try to break things up into more reasonable chunks, and make a regular process for everything, rather than just using brute force to power my way through my work load.  I'm not a natural organizer, I tend to just try to get everything done at once, rather than using a progressive, step by step approach that would be more efficient.  So, that is my plan, maybe I will blog about my progress.

I am going to be adding a few pairs of earrings to the line up this year!  I'm pretty excited about them.  They are very plain, but nice I think.  They are exactly the sort of thing that I would like to wear, so I hope my taste doesn't differ too widely from the norm.

I don't have photos of new work, but I do have photos of my honeymoon, which I know you are all dying to see!

The Wedding