Custom Beauty

Agua Nueva custom ordered by an amazing woman:

Another buyer supplied her own stone, a lovely titanium Drusy cabochon:
It feels odd to not be doing as much leather lately: not a bad odd, just.... odd. Like I have forgotten my pants in a dream odd. 

With the book coming up after the move and the sheer amount of projects that will be giving me this is kind of a pre-storm rest. I am not afraid of the pause this time nor do I feel the need to rush out of it.

I am making custom orders in leather and custom orders in silver. I am watching cabochons I've long loved leave my hands and new ones to adore coming in.

I am watching Los Angeles in my mental rearview and welcoming the greenest hills before me...

Change

Is 

Here

And

I 

Am 

Awake

To all of it.

Home Sweet Home Petaluma

Cross your fingers :)

Happiness Part Two

Happiness

Happiness is when your favorite boutique emails you and requests six pieces from your shop.

Bliss.

When I move up north my first road trip will be to Portland to visit fabulous Redux and meet the venerable owner with whom I have had the pleasure to communicate.

Happiness is Jones and Jane and Super Schmilly. 

Happiness is a date in Redlands with your best friends around a dinner table.

Sigh :)

Drooling

Stones make me salivate. I have spent the vast majority of the last two months dreaming of them: interestingly enough I have never wanted to dig in and find out how they're formed (I wouldn't be opposed to learning per se) because it's kind of like a symphony: before I knew what the instruments were as a child I was mesmerized by the rush of sound and tenderness...

later when I learned what each instrument was and went into orchestra as a clarinet player the magic somehow changed. Became sober.

So I am letting stones be my childhood symphony, my 'Scheherazade'.

There are three rings and a necklace going into the silver shop today: one is a custom (the mookaite triangle) and three are for hire to uplift your spirits and add magic to your days.

I have included two peacock feather items, a Chinese turquoise ring in size 6 and a labradorite

 necklace... I could not have ever imagined the response to this shape would be so immediate.

I hope today is refreshing and lovely for all of you, my long distance friends!

When The Mouse is Away....

The Cats will play with whatever we've got: in this case it's Jones and he's crazy about getting into boxes and chewing on them. I love his little lion nose in this picture! 



There's Janey with the cat dancer: she is an excellent huntress. I wish I could get pictures of her gnawing on our toes as we move them under the covers before bedtime: she is so tiny and yet she opens her mouth so wide that we call her Jurassic Janey... when she bites down it's with that crazy huge mouth and it stays that way until a toe from across the bed starts a'wiggling and then she repeats the adorable hilarity until Anthony and I have laughed ourselves asleep.

Sunday Best

Yesterday's peacock feather ring sold so quickly, I decided to make another one to put in the shop. This one is made of an amazing Arizona turquoise and it is a size 7.

There is also a lovely custom order for a dear customer and this:

At The Center There is Peace

We took some really fun pictures of the cats playing this morning: Janey is a champion!!

I'll post them for your mirth later today after yoga.

Peacock Feather Ring

In the Metal Shop today :)

Tears

With each lovely and amazing friend I've told the news to here in Southern California there is a fresh crop of tears harvested between us. I awoke with swollen eyes.

For the first time in my life I see these tears as a function: they are carrying me somewhere new. I am not lost in the emotion of pain, I am literally moving in a direction and without the added salt water perhaps I would have a hard time slipping through the constricted places into my new life.

I never realized how much I love so many many many people. I have barely begun to say my goodbyes. The comfort is that it's only a 400 miles trip away: I can and will return often for many reasons, not the least of which being music or the chance of a good craft fair.

Katherine, my dearest friend who made Anthony and I man and wife, discovered and sent me a piece of an article that talked about Petaluma being one of the few places with solid bedrock beneath it: earthquakes aren't felt with severity there.... is that amazing or what?

Everyone so far has offered their couches or guest rooms upon my return, which is heartening, and I have a tour with Matt and Phil in late May/ early June, so there's a ton of things to look forward to in terms of the connective tissue between my new home and Los Angeles.

I just have to keep floating down this river of tears until something comes into view that I can make familiar once again. It is one of the most beautiful and stark pieces of our emotional life: grief is not always a welcome visitor, but it makes us who we will be as gently and quickly as it needs to.

Northern California.....

Here we come :)

Beauty and Worry And Underdog Houses

Tomorrow morning we are going to see this little house:

On a street of houses that sit back in nice yards it is right up on the sidewalk with a giant window into its soul. Built in the 1940s, it predated any other house in its immediate surrounding area (at least so it appears from Google Street View) and the woodworking inside is really something lovely.

Today we saw loveliness of a purely natural sort:

And, as with any change, today began my worry. On the heels of my three best months ever as a craftsperson ( and on the verge of a leathercraft book deal, too! ) I have a fear of falling sales.

I must stop reading Yahoo bylines when I check my mail.

I would like to believe that people need beauty to get by.

Now is the time to trust more than ever in my connection to the divine and just continue doing what I am doing.

Nothing is linear, no siree....

The Most Welcome Sight

Now if a rainbow over rolling pastures isn't enough to tell us we're on the right path, I simply don't know what is!!! This lovely vision greeted us on our way up to Novato.

We are here at a nice Best Western courtesy of Anthony's interview team and I just had to show you this rainbow because it was incredibly inspiring.

Being here in these rollicking green hills is so healing for my frazzled soul: if we move here I know there's a lot more frazzled where the original frazzle came from ( still with me? ) but it feels like in the end there will be more of me left to create with.

Big cities inspire, but if it's not the right fit they constrict and leach as well. 

Los Angeles is way too cool for me: I think we value different things, my current homeplace and I.... I was telling someone the other day that is was nearly IMPOSSIBLE to leave NYC...

It whispered things in my ear as I was packing for the west coast... terrible things like, "You're nothing without me.... I made you!!" and, "But where will you get good wonton soup at 12 Midnight on a Tuesday?" But mostly it was this one that did me in - 

"I will haunt you forever".

And it does.

Los Angeles is kinda like, "Hey, I totally understand... No hard feelings, come visit, okay?"

And I will.

I say this as if this has already transpired, but in my mind I'm already gone - the only ache that keeps me awake at night is how to leave my best friends, especially my brother Matt Coleman, my Terra, my angel Katherine and Powerhouse Liane and wee Seamus.

Not to mention my incredible pilates tribe at JAM...

Ouch. Such is life, best illustrated with an insightful Indigo Girls lyric -

"For every pleasure exacts its pain - how you hurt me; how you were good to me"

GETTING READY!!

Sorry to shout, but I am really really excited about our trip up North tomorrow: I will be gone for three days and I hope to write while I am there!

In preparation today I made two custom orders: a gorgeous large agate ring and a lovely mountainous stone I have not identified ( it was supplied by the lovely buyer ).

I also had the pleasure of making an incredibly intricate and druzy-filled Moctezuma Agate necklace with a free-swinging bail and a bevy of sterling granules tucked inside the agate. It is stunning and rare and will be in the shop today!
Tomorrow morning I will ship out my last orders and we will hit the open road to Northern California ( eeek!) I have set my sights on Petaluma, a little town filled with bungalows and yoga studios with a huge weekly farmer's market and a much slower pace: I have been living in major cities ( NYC and LA ) since I graduated college ( from a sleepy town in Ohio, no less! ) and I really really really want some peace in my heart.

I think a little town ( but not too little! ) could help create a peaceful feeling. 

Cross your fingers for us :)

xo,

A

Opals on Sale

If you go to my Metal Shop you will discover two of the most expensive Opal items have been significantly reduced: happy shopping, Opal lovers :)

You will see them in the 'Sale' section of the shop right HERE

Enjoy!

Light of Heart

Dearest Sunday Drivers,

Today I got up and had the pleasure of going to Pilates where I got the chance to stretch my muscles and strengthen all the limbs I am lucky enough to use every day.

I had the company of amazing women who make me laugh and I even handed out a card or two for the Etsy stores, which is something I am normally very, very shy about!

I also had the happy luck to be able to photograph two rings I made last nigh in the midst of working on several custom orders in silver.

After Monday my custom orders in leather should be well under control and I'll be making some more things that are newer ideas: if Anthony and I move to the Bay Area there shall be no custom orders for come time until we get settled, etc. So much to think about these days!!!

The first ring I made yesterday is light of heart:

A beautiful red/orange vintage plastic cabochon, high domed and light as air because it is hollow on the inside of its thick plastic walls. It might seem silly to set something like that in a material as lovely as silver, but it made perfect sense: it is my Humor Ring. It is meant to remind the person who wears it to smile, laugh and find the lighter side of the heavy we all have so much of lately. It's also gorgeously big!!

The last ring I made is a Mexican Fire Opal with the most lovely rainbow fire in an arc tucked into its rhyolite matrix. The companion stone for the opal is a lovely dot of coral.

Interesting thing I've noticed in the pattern of creativity: there has to be some small level of 'pinch' before you have a string of uninterrupted creativity: It's something I have noticed more and more - there comes a moment after you've lain fallow for a little while where you kind of blow a little steam out of your ears with the need to MAKE.

I've felt that way this week.

And now I am making!!

Be restful of heart today if you can and know that you are all in my thoughts.