Sunglasses, Philosophy, and Angst

It's Friday night, late, and I'm tired but not sleepy; EXACTLY the kind of time people shouldn't be committing ANYTHING to print in a public way, but this seems pretty harmless, and maybe sort of relatable.

I lost my sunglasses about a week ago.  With the sun glaring on the snow around here, I've really, REALLY missed them.  Now, surely, you must think, I must have ANOTHER pair of sunglasses lying around that I could use, right?  Right.  But I don't like them as much as the pair I lost.  I had them for three years.  That's a good long time to have a pair of glasses and not lose them, isn't it? I paid over $100 for the damned things, too, as I've come to appreciate good lenses.  And part of why I liked them is that they didn't shout "This face paid over a $100 for me."  They were just good, attractive glasses with no distinguishing marks.  They fit my face and they kept hair back and they didn't pinch my temples (I have wide set eyes, and thus, I guess, and broad brow, so glasses are often too narrow for me) so they were all purpose utility glasses.

Now I am faced with rack after rack of sunglasses which are ALL hideously ugly or worse, completely useless.  In the intervening years since my last sunglass purchase, fashion has made them either big and round, or square and pale with gradient lenses.  I am doomed to look either like a bug or a pretentious fashionista in a Subaru.  This can't stand.  Saks or Marshall's, they ALL s*ck.  All of them.  So I am now faced with the choice of spending $10 on something hideous and functional, or $300 on line for something I really like.  Neither option appeals to me.  I could wear an old pair, but there's a reason they became an old pair (lenses, size, etc...).

Whine.

New Product Pictures

Posting the inventory is such a HUGE undertaking (Which is why I am considering some deep architectural changes to mcj's web presence... and, in fact, tinkering with them this weekend) that I have decided to throw a few pix up here just to get them seen! I WILL post them for sale at some near date, but here is where they are for now. Above, in solid gold & pink, is "daughter," and below in garnet (literally - that's semi-precious garnet) is "mom." You may, of course, email me, annie@mcjusa.com, to purchase or inquire.

"Try"

Another product of the creative run I've allowed myself to have in the last week. This bracelet spells "try". It's remarkable how little time there is for jewelry in the jewelry business. I've got a taxes to prepare, a trade show to prepare for, all kinds of other marks to hit and commitments to keep and I actually feel guilty creating the thing that got me here in the first place!

"Try" is made with solid sterling, Swarovski, and imported glass rings (stuffed with the sterling). It's a concept I've been playing with for months; the idea of "stuffing" these little rings with sterling or crystal. The whole idea of how materials could fit together like it was meant to be, when, in fact, they came from completely different manufacturers from completely different cultures and points on the globe, eastern Europe (glass) and Austria (crystal) or America (sterling) just fascinates me. It's almost like I'll have a little bit of the answer of how we all fit together as humans, maybe just a glimpse of the answer... just briefly whispering, just out of earshot, every time I successfully complete one in that concept.

Colorado Rocky Mountain High....

ABOVE: "Family" is "spelled" in bronzite (brown), agate (hot pink), sterling, and two other minerals (the blue & purple) that I have to ask my gem lady how to spell and pronounce! (The blue looks like turquoise but isn't.) The focal bead is the most fascinating sort of pale flourescent green mineral called chrysophrase.

Gift Shop Magazine ran morse code jewelry as a "Fab Find" and as a result, I've been getting some phone calls from some interesting area codes. The one that has kept me the busiest has been a new client by the name of Gloria who owns a boutique half way between Colorado Springs and... I forget where, but it sounded lovely! Anyway, she filled my head with ideas and here is the first result. I haven't even emailed her yet with all the buying information for this necklace! She told me that her clientele, quite unsurprisingly, liked turquoise and purples and the colors of nature and such, and though she didn't specifically ask for a necklace to be made, I just couldn't help myself. I don't typically work in "southwestern" typed themes, and I don't think that is exactly what was achieved here, but I think it speaks to what she was looking for.

In between answering the phone and bouncing from client to client, I've been to the pediatrician three times since last Friday with one or another of my girls with one or another very ordinary ailment, but one that needs attention... When I showed up today I thought they were going to give me my mail and slippers!

I'm also sorry that I have not taken more pictures of the ridiculously beautiful snow covered world I'm living in here in south coast Mass. The branches have been hanging onto the snow that has been falling on them on and off over the last week and it's a wonderland.

King Jewelers TONIGHT

Yikes. Kinda late notice, but I will be at King Jewelers tonight from 5:30 to 7:00 at the gracious invitation of Valerie King. Hope to see you there. King Jewelers, Route 3A, Cohasset.

This story just keeps getting better...

This story just keeps getting better... Remember the serviceman who bought the "marry me" bracelet for his girlfriend before he shipped out but decided not to tell her what it meant until he got back? Link to that post is here. Now I hear from his Mom, who was with him when he purchased it, that the first she'd heard about his intentions was the moment he bought it. In essence, he walks in with his Mom to buy the bracelet and says, "Hi. I'm so-and-so. I'm here for the "marry me" bracelet." I thought his Mom was just tearing up at the whole situation. Turns out, she had NO IDEA until he showed up what his plans were...

Wow.

That's the "marry me" bracelet, above, in case you haven't seen it, and a link to details about it. You see it in person and purchase it at King Jewelers, Cohasset.

King Jewelers, Cohasset

In the next days and weeks, morse code jewelry will be expanding its relationship with King Jewelers of Cohasset!  Here's a quick little slide show of just some of the items which are/will be for sale there. Valerie King and I have all kinds of exciting projects in store! Please visit them at their website or mine for updates, directions, and hours.

Captiva

I took this photograph in May of 2007 on Captiva.  I have strict rules about photographing nature.  Ready?  Here they are:  Don't touch it! &  Don't touch it!

Photoshop it all you want, but when the camera is in your hand, it is verbotten to manipulate the scene.  It feels dishonest.  When someone looks at a photograph I've taken of something outdoors, I want them to not only like it, but be impressed with how lucky I was to find it looking like that, or arranged like that, or frozen like that in that moment in time.  Maybe that one journalism class I took in college got through to me (back when they actually taught ethical journalism) about never manipulating a photo or a story.  I suppose it shouldn't apply, as this is just goofing around, not reporting, but the guts of it spoke to me:  find the remarkable truth and share it.  Though, I would add, "and Photoshop it 'til it begs for mercy!"

About Captiva:  My husband Mike and I were lucky enough to get a week down there without children.  It was an incredibly relaxing vacation.  We travel really well together, which, I've come to discover, is not true of many couples.  Maybe it helps that we like each other, but I digress...

If I weren't so Yankee practical, thus finding the prospect of losing my real estate in a hurricane distasteful to say the least, I could see the appeal of having a condo and wintering there.  Not Florida in general, but on the outer reaches of Captiva, which is still untamed on its fringes.  "Old Florida," as they say.  January through April would be a my choice.  Escaping the dreariness of a New England winter as it drags on and settles into your bones sounds really, really good.

There seemed to be a "Captiva uniform:"  A convertible PT Cruiser and a visor sporting gray hair.  There must have been a run on them at the rental place because that was how we were outfitted and discovered quickly that we fit right in. 

Other than the ghastly $6 toll to cross the bridge from Ft. Myers into Sanibel & Captiva, making the trip over was a gas, if only for watching the bad-ass pelicans!  I love those guys!  They just dive bomb right into the water, or hang out, completely non-plussed by humans, and just seem to have a swagger that really appeals to me.  Just love 'em!

Love all the other critters down there, too, winged or not.  Of course, the shells are what the area is famous for.  The "Sanibel stoop" is what it's called, bending over to pluck a shell from the shore, and the shoreline is a treasure box.  I defy even the most hard-hearted to stroll along a beach down there and not be completely seduced at the beauty at your feet.  If you find a junonia, they will take your picture and put you in the paper, as the junonia shell is the rarest and most prized find.  We got a laminated trifold "shell map" to help us identify all the shells we were picking up.  Every day when we got back to our hotel suite (it had a kitchen), I put them on the stove in a pot of water and boiled them.  It seemed weird, but as soon as I did it I could envision myself making it a regular habit in my dotage...

A Call to the Sovereign Bank People I Met...

Okay... Clearly I need to get out more, but I've wondered about everyone I met while at Sovereign Bank in December. There were so many interesting people. So much human drama! Send me an email, will you? You know who you are. Here's my email: annie @mcjusa.com

After the Storm

Happy New Year!

Here's the same view of the front yard as the previous post.

That's the Atlantic Ocean way out there, beyond the peninsula of land belonging to neighboring Scituate known as Humarock, The South River, marshland, and Tilden Island on the left.  

If you click on the picture, you will see a much enlarged view, and you will see the row of all the houses on Humarock, which, during the Great Blizzard of 1978 were swept out to sea.   When we moved here we asked the neighbors who had been here for it if they "Sipped martinis and watched Humarock wash away," and they said, in essense, "Yeah.  What else would one do?"  (They're not that callous, really!  But that was the sum and total of what happened!)

Sometimes we hear rifle fire from hunters coming from the island.  I didn't know what it was!  I had to ask Mike, who grew up in the mean streets of Stockton, CA, to tell me what the sound of gunfire was!

In any event, as stated in morse code jewelry's literature, it was just off the the right of the frame of this photo, just a little further along the coast where Reginald Fessendon made his historic radio exchange.  morse code jewelry really is made within sight of the waters where that forgotten piece of radio history was made.  It's not jive!