where are your gloves and your helmet?

So, question. If I go through my Etsy store and change all of the various Pride items (ear climbers at this point, might do necklaces or some sizes of ring if I get the urge) to note that a percentage of the proceeds or a majority of the proceeds will be donated to an LGBTQI+ charity in light of recent events, who would you recommend?

Right now the first one that's coming to mind is Rainbow Railroad. I am open to suggestions.

EDIT: Have edited the Trans Pride ear climber listing to indicate that $10 from the sale of each pair is going to be donated to Advocates for Trans Equality, the org formed by the merger of the National Center for Transgender Equality and the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund. Will figure out a few other orgs for the other pride climbers later.

Have also purchased some more bead supplies in the hopes of keeping a moderate amount of stuff in the inventory.

Did some testing with 4mm rhinestones and the hoop earring design* last night. Specifically, with cutting two lengths of chain, five rhinestones each, and wiring them to a central 20 or 22 gauge wire, then strapping the result into a square wire frame and bending it into hoops.

( Here's the second prototype. First prototype was the proof-of-concept in copper and brass and is all bendy and bleh. )

I may make another one to match the prototype- it's in wearable condition- but mostly what I'm interested in here is getting some blue rhinestone chain and some yellow from Las Vegas Rhinestones. I dunno how many purchases I'm likely to see but I like this look. The stones are bigger than I like for climbers; I'll find other uses for the chain that doesn't get made into fundraisers.

*Disclosure: That's not my design. I bought a tutorial for it from Bobbi Maw at My Wired Imagination; she's the creator there.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1187695547/ukrainian-flag-fundraiser-ear-climbers

Four-millimeter crystal and three-millimeter crystal ear climbers in the colors of the Ukrainian flag for sale. $20 from the sale of each pair goes to either the Red Cross Ukraine relief effort, World Central Kitchen's Ukraine refugee feeding work, Catholic Relief Services' Ukraine work (my mother always brings CRS up when I'm looking for an organization to help in times of disaster), or HIAS' Ukraine refugee work (I'm not Jewish but I like HIAS' ethos).

I'm marking them make-to-order because I have no clue who'll be interested or how interested they'll be, or what metals/crystal size they might be interested in, and my life will be easier if I just work them up as necessary. The '5' in the inventory refers to the ones I used for this photo shoot- I have a pair of each metal on hand. I've got some more crystals on the way in case these catch on.

I should probably see if Rio Grande offers the rose gold filled wire in a non-mushy variety. (I hate working with dead soft wire but at the time I placed my original order they didn't have anything but dead soft.)

"Non-binary/enby/genderfluid/genderqueer: because the gender binary is for OTHER PEOPLE"

*thumps head on desk*

I mean, unless that one would actually work. Then no head thumping.

My sister's mother-in-law found out on the family's Easter Zoom call that I not only collect sea glass but make jewelry from it, and gave me a bag of sea glass she'd collected over the years when I visited the family on Father's Day weekend. I picked out a few pieces to work into some jewelry for her.

( Sea glass pendant I made for my sister's mother-in-law behind cut. )

I'm waiting on the silk ribbon I ordered from artbeads.com to arrive so I can see if this looks right strung on the ribbon or if I should hold out for a satin cord. If either doesn't really work I have decent faux gold chain.

I am not trying to do commentary or anything like that, but I have a hard time resisting the urge to accent sea glass pieces with Swarovski or Preciosa crystal when I get the chance. There is something weirdly funny about pairing the result of hundreds of years of deliberate glass-making skill with literal actual Boston Harbor trash, or in this case, Jersey Shore trash, and getting the same kind of 'oh wow that's beautiful' for the part of the work that started its life as somebody's discarded soda or beer bottle as for the carefully crafted simulated gem. It's all glass. It's just that one's been tossed around in the ocean for twenty years on end before it became worth having.

Got pinged by the state preregistration service yesterday with a notice that there were slots available at the mass vaccination sites near me. I appreciated the thought, and honestly it was faster than I was expecting, but I canceled everything and backed out. I'd set it in motion on Saturday about two hours before finding the slot at CVS.

Speaking of which, yesterday was all right. I had soreness at the injection site, as well as stiffness in that upper arm. For a good part of the day it hurt more than I cared to deal with if I tried to raise my left arm above a 90 degree angle, but by the time I went to bed the pain only really kicked in when I was close to having the arm straight up and down. I was tired most of yesterday, too, but I think that had more to do with not having been able to find an easy sleep position the night before due to the sore arm.

This morning there is a little bit of soreness in that arm. Otherwise, I'm good. Still booked the day of injection 2 and the day after as vacation days, though. You know. Just in case.

Meanwhile, working my way through my second attempt at making a T-shirt from the pattern I drafted. Sleeves are weird. I think the next time I do a knit shirt with sleeves I'll use someone else's pattern, ideally with notes on what I'm supposed to do to match things up and what gets stretched or not. Probably going to do either leggings or underwear next with knits, though- I have patterns for both low-rise and higher-rise underpants and it's a small, comparatively short project that I can do multiples of, so long as I have the right elastic. I'm expecting a shipment from artbeads.com soon, though, so I'll probably have a few more climbers made up before that- and be able to do some new Etsy listings for the various Pride options, possibly with option dropdowns for 'gray niobium/yellow anodized niobium/bronze niobium/gold-filled/Argentium silver'. Still have to work out how I want to split the options for listing purposes. Also I need to put together one or two of the inclusivity Pride flag climbers, with black and brown in addition to the six colors. As long as I stick to 3mm bicones that shouldn't be too long to look right.

.... ooh, I should get an order in with Las Vegas Rhinestones just to make sure I have emerald green cupchain available, that's like one of my most popular non-Pride climber items.

Today's lesson in color theory: just because it looks like the right color on a white background doesn't mean it's gonna look good in situ.

( Ace pride climbers test 1: Swarovski colors jet, graphite, crystal moonlight shimmer, and iris. )

I'll be trying the purple velvet beads next. That's the dark purple color that I had for the enby flag climbers. It's a really nice purple, but next to black it looks so dark that it's hard to say it's purple. Next to the crystal beads it may be a different story. If this doesn't work I have a lighter clear purple, I think it was called lilac or violet, and if that doesn't work out either - especially against darker skin than mine, because I am a very poor Italian-American when it comes to melanin - I may need to see about one of the milky colors like cyclamen opal or a coated color like amethyst with double AB coating (the problem with that is that the AB makes it so iridescent you can't guarantee seeing that it's purple).

Note to self: Swarovski's Purple Velvet color of crystal bead is very pretty on its own or in the context of five other clear colors, but when placed next to their Jet beads, it winds up looking super close to actual black.

this revelation brought to you by an attempt to make enby pride flag ear climbers, after discovering that the Graphite beads I had ordered were nowhere to be found so the ace flag was out of the question until I got a refill

also I just plain need to get some brown ones as part of the inclusivity pride flag. They probably have a Smoky Topaz color that should work.

My sister's getting married in June. Originally it was going to be in September, but COVID. (Both the pandemic itself, and the fact that she, unfortunately, came down with it- she's one of the lucky ones in that she's been recovering at home, but from the sound of things it's about a million miles beyond mere martian death flu in terms of trying to get better.) I'm going to be attending the wedding by Zoom, myself, as are a number of other people, and I believe it's going to be held in my parents' backyard or possibly on their back porch.

I bring this up because she pinged me last night to ask if I can make clip-on earrings, as she can't wear pierced ones any more for unspecified reasons. She pointed out a couple of designs on Etsy that she liked and we went over a few possible options. Wound up with her liking a specific style of ear climber with a dangle.

I'm currently wearing an already-made ear climber as a clip-on to see how well it holds without design changes. I'll be visiting the Las Vegas Rhinestones Jewelry Supply site in a bit to start looking for the appropriate other design elements. We'll see how this goes.

Trying to teach myself how to solder jewelry, not just do the wire work. Lesson one: bezel setting sea glass.





Corners suck. However, we don't get rounded sea glass on my beach, so I am going to have to learn how best to set those. Next step: making a claw setting.