New Special Offer through March 1

For the remainder of the month of February, when you buy one wire-wrapped pendant or ring, you'll get a free adjustable wire ring to keep it company.


Available here.

The above is one of the beautiful adjustable rings -- click the link to see how dramatic these look on the hand! I have a good-sized stockpile of them and am using them as free samples for this offer.

To claim your ring, use the discount code "peanut butter" in the "Notes to Seller" section.

The Internet is sometimes strange.

This has not been the best of weekends.

First of all, I've pulled a muscle. Not being athletic, I really didn't understand the level of crippling pain that can result from stress injuries. I used to see my high school's sports therapist for tendonitis, and he told me they're uncommonly similar. I can see why he'd get this idea, but the level of shooting, fetal-position-inducing agony reminds me of nothing more than shingles, which is when the Son of Chicken Pox comes back to rake its fiery claws through your nerves until you scream for mercy from God. Stress-induced, of course. How surprising that I've had this. *rolls eyes*

I feel slightly guilty for the level of pain, because I really don't do anything particularly strenuous with my shoulders -- and then I think about the positions I sit in. Sit upright, type, mouse, make about a dozen different small repetitive movements for an hour at a time, return to typing, mousing and typing, return to pliers and further small repetitive movements, hand-write for half an hour ... Other designers take note: The only wonder is that it's taken so long for me to hurt myself.

On a slightly more interesting note: I have a midterm today in Biology 40, Diseases and History, and am following my usual study method: search Wikipedia for study-guide terms, compare to textbook, note differences, rinse and repeat. It's a little weird to come into a Wikipedia article as it's being edited. The guy (why do I assume it's a man?) working on the stub about virulence factors is noting his place as he consults his books. It feels like he's leaving me little notes as I follow along. In the deliberate sterility that's created to give an impression of impersonal banks of objectivity, an odd moment of personal connection. I mean, we know there are people constantly editing wikis; it's strange to run across it as it happens, like an unplanned meeting of eyes with the nameless person who has the shift before yours at work.

So that's enough self-absorption out of me. Special offer to come!

Things I never thought I'd be excited by

My jewelry design has given me a previously-unknown passing interest in Fashion Week. I was a little chagrined to discover this, but not altogether surprised, since I already scan the covers of trashy magazines to see what kind of sparkly things are on their cover models and, when my coworkers and I were streaming Project Runway after work, I was sketching accessories to match the outfits instead of following the drama.

Then I got distracted by the Olympics, specifically the gorgeous, occasionally exquisitely pagan opening ceremony theatrics, and the awesome music choices in pairs figure skating -- Queen's "Who Wants to Live Forever" and the overture to Man of La Mancha, both out of the People's Republic of China. If neither of those couples won I'd have thrown things.

But now I have something new to be excited about -- Swarovski has come out with their Innovations for spring and summer 2010. We're getting two new colors in crystal beads (fern green and Provence lavender) and a new Lavender crystal pearl. A bevy of new shapes, too, of course -- the ones that interest me most are the couture Lotus pendant, which reminds me of a sand dollar and will definitely have to make an appearance in my beach-wedding line, and their new baroque pearls. I think I would still use a genuine pearl by choice if I was going to have an organic look -- for one thing, freshwater cultured pearls are actually cheaper -- but I've seen skeins of Swarovski pearls in person and their shimmer is amazing. You can see the whole spring-summer line here.

So that's exciting. Hmm, I was supposed to be working, wasn't I.

Steampunk Apologetics

For those who aren't in the know, I will try to explain steampunk as I explained it to my mom:

Steampunk is a genre marked by the mixture of neo-Victorian artistic sensibilities with the modern mixed feelings toward technology. It's marked by a mixture of bustle gowns and clockwork, safari suits and urban decay.

What does it mean in jewelry and accessories? Lace. Ruffles. Boots. Goggles. Pith helmets. Tailoring. Pinstripes. Romanticism. Hats. Leather. Bronze. Corsets. Overcoats. Victoriana. Technological leftovers. Gunmetal. Cameos. And above all, gears.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, both graphic novels and movie, is arguably steampunk. The works of Jules Verne are a large part of the basis of steampunk. There's a steampunk GURPS book called Castle Falkenstein which my current tabletop campaign is based on.

I've seen steampunk described thus (paraphrasing from several sources here, including The Steampunk Workshop's fashion blog: "Well dressed, meticulously groomed, elegantly mannered, and ever prepared for the imminent collapse of society."

Why the collapse of society? Steampunks don't really think they're living out the Victorian past, though we try to adopt a little of it into our clothing, manners and lifestyle. Steampunk is more based on a dissatisfaction with modernism which draws from all eras but tends to settle on or about the days when the sun never set on the British Empire (though this is certainly not to say that Britain is the only geographical source!) That dissatisfaction results in a drive to beautify the cold, anonymous technologies that surround us, and to be less dependent on others to provide them for us. As someone once said: "Hate the factory, love the machine."

Many steampunks create machines and electronics and clockwork with their own hands. There's a general consensus that self-reliance and DIY are highly desirable.

So what's steampunk to me?

Well, it gives me a sense of purpose to the outdated things I know how to do. I may not be able to build a clock or a tiny hydroelectric generator, which are in some ways the high point of steampunk skills, but .... I can use all sorts of hand tools (you need eight or nine different kinds of pliers at the very least to make all the jewelry I make). I can grow a garden from seed without chemicals. I can make candles, soup and soap. I can start a fire from the embers of one ten hours old with no lighter fluid, paper or matches, and then I can cook a meal over it. I can make fresh paper from junk mail. I can dry flowers and herbs. I can sew both by hand and machine. I'm ready for the collapse of technological society, which gives me a weird and obscure sense of comfort. It's fatalistic, but there's not really all that much pessimism to it.

And on an aesthetic level? It gives me some theme to the fashions I like. A mild steampunk look blends well with my jeans and preppy layered tops, my mismatched knee socks and long skirts, and my obsession with lacy underthings. What are my steampunk elements? I love men's workboots (for reasons of comfort, not fulfilling lesbian stereotypes). I have a vast collection of fedoras. I make my own fascinator clips. It works equally well with my burnt-orange wool overcoat, my military-style sweatshirt-fleece jacket, and my elegant fringed shawls. The gears and chain mixed cameos and filigree, the warrior-chic mixed with the elegance of the romantic Victorianism, appeals to me on the same level where I love to mix fimo with pearls and rust with sparkle.

One of these days, I'm going to realize that all my rants end up at the same place -- i.e., "Because it marries non-matching elements harmoniously! Isn't that COOL?!?!" -- and just go straight from point A to point B without examining all the territory in between in such anal-retentive detail.

Links and a special offer ... who said I never gave you anything?

So ... I totally forgot to mention this but I have an article up since forever ago on Rena Klingenberg's awesome "Making Jewelry Now" site. It's got a couple of pictures and combines my three favorite things: Jewelry, anthropology, and semiotics.

My article

On another note, today I was reading about the steampunk aesthetic and I ran across a couple of quotes I wanted to respond to. Since I have a midterm on Thursday I've barely begun to study for, I have of course begun to compose my own little steampunk manifesto about what steampunk means to me. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, those with an interest in the genre would do well to read the following:

Steampunk Magazine's Guide to the Apocalypse, which is funny, beautifully laid out and ... um ... surprisingly informative, if you know what I mean,

and Ursula Vernon's Gearworld Blog, by my favorite artist who's also the author of the Nurk books, the Dragonbreath series and Black Dogs, and the author-artist of the superb comic Digger. It's an unfinished travelogue of an explorer way over his head in the investigation of a clockwork labyrinth. Since said explorer is a bespectacled antelope, this will also be of interest to the anthro crowd. But you immediately lose track of the fact that the characters are nonhumans in the creepy, beautiful fascination of the story with its precise humor and fantastic twists. It's a blog, so you start from the last page. There are also illustrations here (some nudes, NSFW).


And finally, on a more relevant note, a special offer through February 22:

When you purchase any one-of-a-kind item from the shop, you will get an exquisite wire-wrapped pendant.
When you purchase a second one-of-a-kind item from the shop, you will get a lovely pair of dangly pearl earrings.
And when you purchase a third one-of-a-kind item from the shop, you will receive free shipping on your entire purchase, which will be refunded through PayPal.


Available here.

To claim your free stuff and free shipping, use the code "glove" in the Notes to Seller section when you purchase.

Random List of the Week

1.) It's raining, but not yet pouring. Apart from wiping rain off my glasses, this is an awesome thing.

2.) I discovered there are electrical outlets on the balcony in the building where M teaches her last class. Since I necessarily have time to kill during that period, this now means I can sit outside and watch the rain while I update the shop and talk to any friends who happen to be online.

3.) A particular student in one of my classes threw a fit because she decided that a neighboring student's laptop's fingerprint ID check was recording secret films of her. She stormed out. After a long silence, someone else in the class suggested we pass the hat to buy the "perpetrator" a nice present.

4.) I have a D'Anjou pear and an Aero bar. Both are tasty.

5.) My high school friend A, who is deployed on the front lines in Afghanistan, emailed to let everyone know he's alive and celebrate his weekly shower.

6.) M has health insurance again. We found out last week, though she's had it since October. Without revealing details, we've needed it. Now, the university never bothered to tell us she had it or submit her paperwork, but that's a whole nother story.

7.) I have discovered this awesome webcomic called Something Positive. I've been reading through the archives all week. It's a very intelligent, dry work -- think Peanuts with late-twenties characters who drink a lot to fuel their biting verbal wit. It has touching moments, and a tendency to batter the emotions every three months or so, but it's worth it, and hilarious. The story so far will be pretty clear from the cast page.

8.) My Bio 40 professor's favorite phrase: "Patience at once!"

9.) I'm almost done with my custom-order forms for a consignment line.

10.) And I have one more commission to finish up tonight, which makes me break even nicely for the month. I think this may be the first time.

ETA: Oh, and I almost forgot!

11.) There's a rock album based on Tolkien's Silmarillion. It's by Blind Guardian and it's called "Nightfall in Middle-Earth." It's not bad. Not groundbreaking, not Metallica, but not bad. I really like the voices they cast as Sauron and Morgoth, and the singer who does Maeglin's part is pretty good too. I've been listening to it pretty much nonstop.

Limited-Edition Donator Jewelry

Until further notice, to encourage donations to disaster relief in Haiti:

With your jewelry purchase, I will send a free pair of crystal earrings OR a multicolored freshwater pearl bracelet if, in the Notes to Seller section, you pledge to donate ten dollars to the Red Cross or Doctors without Borders.

This jewelry is limited-edition -- there will be as many pieces as people who pledge to donate with their purchase. There's no other way to get these pieces!

I'll provide pictures of your options as soon as I get the first pieces made and photographed.

There will be no extra shipping and you can get your choice of the pieces with ANY purchase -- even a five-dollar pair of earrings qualifies -- provided you make that donation.

Ends and Means

I've noticed my posts often seem to trail off rather than actually ending.  To hopefully break myself of this, I challenged myself to compose a bunch of different endings to blog posts.  I came up with the following:

"So I learned that I should be more careful of my companions if I wish to avoid being eaten."

"I'll never do that again unless my need for a block of beeswax is really pressing."

"So that's how you solve the problem of a component requiring a half-millimeter bead size, and I shall call it the Liverwurst Method."

"In this way, though Marx's model breaks down under thoughtful scrutiny with the mores and values of the twenty-first century in mind, it would be a disservice to a great thinker to say that Das Kapital is anything but a landmark of social science."

"Parakeet dive-bombs toddler.  Tune in at eleven for the evening news."

"I'm glad we've solved the aardvark problem.  Onward to tackle the zombie defenses!"

...

I don't think I'm very good at this, guys.

Special Offer ... ish

Type the code "Haiti" in the Notes to Seller section anytime this month and I'll donate 30% of my proceeds to Haitian disaster relief. I am ... a bit disturbed, so. Um. Yeah, that's it.

Back on the chain gang

First day back in classes after the New Year. Am currently in the Physics lecture hall for Biology 40: Diseases in History. Class sounds very cool. This lecture hall, on the other hand ... well.

Let's begin with the fact that you enter it at the back, and the tops of the slide projector screens are then about level with your toes. You're looking straight ahead ... at the ceiling. From this non-Euclidean plane your eyes skate down ... and down ... and down. The floors and ceiling are dirty ivory; the walls are an odd eggshell iron-grey. It's generally mop-water colored.

If you laid a ruler along the tops of the long lab-style desks, you'd get a 45-degree angle. This room is nauseating already, and you haven't even started to descend the stairs. When you do begin to descend, you will notice that the stairs alternate: two slightly shorter than the average human stride, and then one slightly longer. You will wonder how many have died here.

As you try to enter a row, you will notice an odd proportion. A six-foot person, seated, will find that the previous row's table is level with the back of their head -- but the rows are scaled such that the passage behind an occupied stool is roughly a foot wide (narrower in the top two rows, probably to make room for the rather degrading corral that constitutes handicapped seating). Me? I literally cannot get through a row. I just swiveled five tiny Asian girls fully 90-degree turns trying to get to an empty seat. I can't decide which is better -- this, or the theater-seating halls where my hips don't quite fit into the seat.

I'm a size twenty. This is four inches larger than the U.S. average. And I don't fit in UCR's lecture halls.

Gaaaah.