Custom Joy

This fills my heart to bursting!

Richly tooled Floral Raven Wing Cuff, a custom order.

The In-Loves are here and have been for several days, allowing me to 

work work work work until my fingers hurt.

Today we buy shoes for the babe and get him the agricultural tools he so richly deserves

and then I will meet my husband for a cooking class: Coconut Curry Chicken.

Life with Oma and Opa here is so flexible, so full of gratitude.

I hope your days, your week are likewise made better by someone you love dearly.

xoxo,

Sunny

Leather Sale

20% off of everything in

The Leather Shop

Today -

enter coupon code THANKS13

at checkout for your discount.

xoxoxo,

Sunny

Bit by Precious Bit

Perfect Orbit Studs

Textured Sterling Silver

Potential for Green Earrings

Seed Imprint

Peridot and Sterling Exclamation Points

For your dreams.

.

RESERVED

Late Summer Harvest Earrings

Brass and Heated Sterling

Jacaranda Imprint

Hammered Edges

Texture of Place and Time

Gorgeous patina and organic feel

Large Hoops

Robin's Egg Earrings

enamel on copper

sterling and fine silvers

elegant and simple

for the tailored type

with a bit of coastal forest inside her heart.

All of these can be reserved before they're listed Saturday.

write to me 

HERE

for more information

.

Notes on recent creation cycles:

I have dialed in my days in a glorious way, the lucky days that I get into the studio. There are about three or four of them a week, and sometimes I literally grab an hour or two while O naps, or sometimes the babysitter comes. Or Daddy takes over so I can fire or hammer. Those days feel like the luckiest.

Five hours or more in which to create.

What I've been learning is to break things into tiny increments, being supremely patient with the length of time it takes for something to become itself. 

All of the pieces you see above?

Well, they had their hearts written in sketches and dreaming many moons ago.

Bit by slow and patient bit they've come to be:

one solder join at a time,

one late evening moment to quietly file.

Mixed in with making these small delicacies I work on custom orders

careful to do so with the greatest of intention

because a LOT has been entrusted to be this time around.

Deep and beautiful healings.

Stunning ideas that blow my mind!!

The things I am building into their designs are so much more than metal, stone and hide. I have literally cried with the beauty these women have gifted me.

What a soulful bunch. What a precious gift to make for them.

This is my experience in the studio.

.

I have also worked self care into the mix of my hours, fully and powerfully aware that without

that piece I am so much less at peace in every aspect of my life.

Meditation is key,

sleep in decent amounts (though less than I'd like of course)

clean eating

intense and purifying exercise

sweat and exertion

and cooling showers.

My business might be very small right now, but I am growing like crazy 

my boy is growing strong and tall

and my center is holding.

I hope you are feeling grounded, too.

so few of you have the time to comment these days, I know how it is believe me...

but I miss your voices here in this space.

I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you that.

How are you, really?

With love,

Allison

A Walk A Walk

Or as you pronounce it 'awah-awah'.

Right now it's in your top five words and phrases along with 'Dahnnn!!' (down)

which of course allows you to awah-awah.

Today you referred to Grandma as 'Mum-Mum', which may just stick.

She's probably in the air by now

and my heart is going to ache when you awaken from your nap and ask for her,

curious as to where your new and wonderful companion has gone.

I will tell you that she went home and that we'll fly to see her in just a few short weeks

and you'll nod or stare and ask for more rice cakes or strawberries.

Ten minutes later you'll repeat the question and so on and so forth until you loosen your grasp on the mystery.

You may wonder why your mama is slower today than she's been in the last week

or where all the conversation has gone

but I could never explain to you now or maybe ever

why saying goodbye to a loved one is so hard

about getting older or mortality or any number of things that make life what it is

in its fullness.

Existential stuff that you'll cover in A.P. English 

but never begin to grasp until you're older.

Or maybe you'll be just like me

and on a summer evening when you're seven or so you'll sit on the back porch with me

and look at my hands, suddenly and horribly realizing that someday they'll look older,

that I will get older.

If you're anything like your old lady you'll freeze the moment

forever in your gorgeous brain, what I wore, the temperature of the air, the crickets

and the watermelon rinds on a brown and mustard-yellow ringed dish.

Maybe it will define the way you see the world as it did for me,

the constant urge to capture and celebrate the beautiful now

that blooms like a deafening and constant flower

somewhere deep in the fabric of the cosmos

or maybe you'll fly through your years without the heaviness of such creative

sensitivity, awash in numbers of sports equipment or chess pieces.

I cannot think one is better than the other, except that other options might be a lot less...aching.

Your mama aches an awful lot in the best and worst ways.

I ache

When I look at you

or your handsome Daddy

or my own parents

sister

friends

felines

Time of late has been flying for me

though it has not even begun to fly for you:

I suspect growing bones and teeth and motor skills is arduous work

that adults would resist and bemoan.

I think there is so much bravery in being a baby.

After all these years of being a daughter

I am still somebody's baby: can you imagine that?

The very same hands that guided your stomps and steps this morning

did the same thing with me when I was small.

We are so lucky to know her, baby boy,

so lucky to be of her tribe.

I suspect by the way she made you smile that you already know this, that there are certain things that don't need to be taught to be understood.

xoxox,

Mama

Delicate Cycle Six.

A Little Grace Dangles.

Asymmetrical, American Turquoise

Copper

Sterling

.

Both Sides Now Necklace.

Amethyst

Pressed Sea Plants vintage 2011

Sterling and fine silvers

.

Dragonfly wing swing bail

moving parts

.

Enameled Maidenhair Fern Frond Earrings

Rhodochrosite asymmetrical in dome height

fronds asymmetrical in number and length

fir fronds pressed into the sterling of the earrings

gorgeous ombre fade of the fronds

Jacaranda and amazonite double dangles

sterling chain connecting

pillow undulations

stunning patina

hammered edges

sterling ear wires

.

RESERVED

Short Jacaranda Ring Dangles

sterling connection

hammered texture

gorgeous patina

gently domed brass

.

This wonderful group of delicate lovely pieces will be in the 

Metal Shop

tomorrow.

Please feel free to contact me for reserve information.

xoxoxo,

A

Ooof.

I had an appointment this morning with our pediatrician

whom I adore so much.

When we arrived I noticed that Orion was signed up to see someone else, a lovely male doctor (ours is a young woman, younger than me) who told me the news with tears in his eyes

that the woman who has been our baby's link to all things health since his birth

has been diagnosed with a cancer that she will not recover from.

That she is closing her practice to be with her two very young sons and her family.

I think of her warm, kind eyes and I cry.

.

Remember that post I wrote here?

A friend told me not to be too proud to ask that it be so, that my mother come to see us

and without those words of hard-won wisdom I would have not blurted "now!"

when the woman who made me asked, "When should I come?"

She will be here tomorrow night very late.

She intends to be of great service

by helping

but honestly

I just want to look at her

and drink in the moments

because everything feels so darn fragile these days

like a loose weave spiderweb sweater

.

I just want to find good brioche with her,

watch her watch Orion's amazing little personhood

note and ignore where we've both aged

and appreciate the season of our lives.

My heart is busy beating prayers for our Good Doctor.

I cannot imagine the weight that a terrible prognosis brings

nor the choices that must be made.

I just trust that she is lifted by those around her

and made whole by love

which is our only true resting place.

Oh friends,

may we all live live live live LIVE the fuck out of life

until we are parted from it.

Don't waste another moment.

xoxox,

Sunny

I Am a Fish.

Tides I trust and ride.

I move

slip

shine

and surrender.

There is no opportunity for wastefulness being a fish:

there is survival

and play

and rest.

Life is streamlined quick and beautiful.

We live in the deep blue

and die there, too.

you would call the existence of ours

'simple'

in your rushing and plans

but I would say you've lots to learn from such beings

celebrating busyness as you do

and suffering for it in the worst most debilitating ways

.

Perhaps it would be nice to be reminded when you glance at your lovely wrist

to glide on this moment as you might a wave

as if you had fins

and scales

and an ocean in which to dance them.

To move with purpose.

Perhaps a slip of Sleeping Beauty Turquoise hugged lovingly in fine silver and copper

might help open a channel 

I could dart through with my beautiful scale symmetry

to invite meditation

and contemplation

into your harried.

To breathe

and adventure

and be in your skin

with the grace of something wild

and at peace.

I am a fish.

Tooled leather Fish Scale cuff.

Fits a 6-6.25 inch wrist perfectly.

Inlaid Sleeping Beauty Turquoise.

Double nickel snaps.

Rich early spectrum colors

lovingly and painstakingly dyed and painted and antiqued.

HERE

later this evening.

xoxoxo,

Sunny

Asteroid Orphan

The most magnificent stone I've ever cabbed

the likes of which I'll not see again:

a Moctezuma Agate of such depth it boggles the eye.

Butter yellow

cream clouds

deeper and deeper green the further down the banding goes...

given a high high high dome on my wheels

and a starry shine

in a celestial setting

that echoes the big magnificence of a wandering field.

It remains to be sized, an orphan.

Beautiful, delicate, strong and very much of the heavens.

HERE

xoxox,

Sunny

Bubbles and My Boy

This kid.

This kid with his blond mop of curls

and dogged determination to always have just one more grape.

Master of complicated gibberish that ends with a sweep of the voice to a higher octave like a bird

whose faces are no longer parroting but his own take on smiles

laughter, misery and complaint...

This kid with my heart in his sweaty palm,

bubble soap landing like lace between strands of peach.

Who daily wakes me with an impatient tug on my shoulder

and points at a pile of books he might peruse while we wipe the sleep from our eyes

reading them to himself

singsong

laughing at his own storytelling

and tossing them indiscriminately about the bed and floor

with surprising strength for six a.m...

This boy testing the limits of 'no' and curating a constant verbal wish list

of Elmo and walks and his best friend Nathaniel and rice cakes and showers with Daddy

and one more reading of Fox in Socks...

this baby who is no longer baby at all, really, but a small human conducting ten thousand important experiments a day that counted together determine his relationship with the world

the mathematics of the soul.

This imp

who wriggles from my grasp and points to the horizon like a thousand explorers before him

who keeps me on my toes

and yet gives me graces like he gives kisses,

generously and with lots of slobber...

who hates naps and loves strawberries

who gives my life double the meaning it once had...

This one is mine.

.

xoxox,

Allison