Confusion about amber

So I'm coming to a few decision-points in my life.

As I don't seem to be able to make a decision, I've made a necklace instead - mainly upcycled from that haul of assorted costume jewellery that my marathon-runner friend gave me a while back. The theme is amber. It is quite a heavy necklace because the blue glass pearls and the amber glass focal are both pretty heavy, and there's a fair amount of metal in there too. The disc-shaped spacers are dark-brown wood, although in this picture they look almost black in the sunlight. They go well with the amber.

But what does amber mean, really?

Amber with red means: wait, but get ready to go.
Amber after green means: go, but get ready to stop.


Argh! It's too confusing! Am I coming or going?

That blue. It gets in everywhere, you know.

I realised recently that I didn't have enough green necklaces! Which was clearly a serious deficiency, especially as green is one of my favourite colours. To redress the balance in my life, I decided to make a green necklace. However, it turns out that there is quite a lot of blue in there too now. I don't know how this happened, but blue often creeps into my jewellery when I'm not looking. How does it do that?

Here, you can see the necklace all draped over itself so you can see some of the beads in close-up. There are some gorgeous big green lentil-shaped glass beads from Yum Yum Beads in Leeds, the last of my white-on-grey-with-white-core spotty beads from the late lamented Bead Hive in York, some vintage acrylic ridged beads from the charity shop, and some actual real cracked agate from Ilona Biggins. Also some black Czech glass cubes from Preciosa, and some bright turquoise oval glass beads which I got on holiday last year in a knitting shop (as you do). Most of the rest (various small blues, and two silver foiled beads) are from the Brighton Bead Shop.

Here's a picture of it all laid out and looking a bit more necklacey. And really quite blue. Oh well.

Friends, flowers and tattoos



One of my friends from work is going through rather a rough patch at the moment, and I wanted to make her a bracelet to show my support for her. I took it round to give to her at the weekend.

It's mainly greens and blues, with a dash of orange for contrast. It has lots of natural motifs because I often see her wearing clothes with this type of design (although not bracelets, of course, because we're not allowed to wear bracelets at work). And when I gave it to her, it went with what she happened to be wearing that day!

In other news, one of my other friends is planning to leave her job in order to re-train as a tattoo artist. Good for her!