Thursday, February 21, 2008

Did you watch the eclipse last night?

By some miracle, the clouds actually left our Oregon sky last night! We were able to take the kids out and watch the eclipse. Our eldest - 10 - was very impressed, and stay with me talking about what was happening and why. (Got to encourage science whenever I can!) The other three thought it was neat, but got rather cold quickly and lost interest in spurts. Then again - can you blame them? It's a rather slow process after all.

Once we were all warm, and the kids were tucked into bed, I settled into my latest project. Yesterday I made a "flower" - 7mm pearl with amethyst chips in a circle around it. My original idea was a pendant, but the result seemed a bit small for that. So last night I hung it on an earhook, and decided it would be a great earring - which meant I needed to make a second one!

This might sound like no big deal...but amethyst chips are difficult to get in uniform sizes, and can have some color variation too! I had to sort through 40 or so, to get 8 that were close enough to the original. Still, I think the result is worth it. The earrings are now done, and ready for pictures and listing.

I still want to do a pendant with this style, but I'm thinking I might need 2 rows of amethyst 'petals' to get it to the right size. Could be a challenge!

1 comment:

Sheila said...

We watched it intermittently through the gaps in the clouds - silly kids kept running outside barefooted and then wondering why they were so cold! What we did see was pretty cool! Those amethyst earrings sound really pretty - I love to craft when everyone finally goes to sleep as well!