where are your gloves and your helmet?

The blue stone is pietersite*, which is basically a kind of tiger's eye or hawk's eye (blue tiger's eye) with certain other mineral inclusions. It's supposed to come from Namibia, where it was originally found, but like very nearly everything else in the world China has something similar that they sell under the same name as the real stuff. Regardless of whether this is real Namib pietersite or the Chinese stone, this particular piece is dang pretty rock.

I'm not entirely happy with the wirework on the pietersite piece, but we'll see. The next step is to go over both elements and work over all the exposed ends with a needle file, and then decide if I want further embellishments involved anywhere. After that it's time to do something about a chain. Not sure how best to go about working a Viking knit chain that'll fit through the loop I made on the top of the ammolite; I can draw them down that narrow but they wind up kinda stiff and weird, so I may see what happens if I do the chain with five loops instead of six.

I am not having much luck finding books that lay out anything significantly useful about Viking knit other than 'here is how to make a bracelet with a diameter slightly smaller than an American dime' or possibly 'LOOKIT, EARRINGS!!!!!', and most of the online tutorials point towards double Viking knit- which is fine if you want a strong structure with a very attractive design to it but not great for if you want something with a small diameter. We shall see.

Yes, I know it's a ridiculous amount of effort to go to in order to avoid having to buy chain, and yes, I know that if I just got a number of pieces of cheap-ass low-end this-will-turn-your-skin-green-and-scaly brass chain in different link sizes and styles and kept them labeled I'd be able to say 'oh! yes, this piece needs 2.5 mm rolo chain and not 2 mm cable or 3 mm curb!' or what have you, but I feel like being obstinate and weird and just making my own damn chain one way or another. And I haven't quite got to the point of using my blowtorch yet, let alone using it to make welded links. So my alternatives are figure-of-eight chain or Viking knit, right now, unless I want to hang everything from leather or silk. And leather just doesn't do it nearly as much as it used to, for me.


*Fun fact: the easiest way to find a mineral's properties and general history on an internet search engine without getting deluged with dozens of sites breathlessly informing you of the many metaphysical wonders of that stone is to type the mineral's name and the word 'Mohs' into the search box. The sites that tell you about the healing crystal properties of everything from diamonds to rainbow calsilica don't generally include the Mohs hardness of the stones they talk about, but the geology and mineralogy sites do.

( Debating using this as my jewelry icon instead of the old one. )
The piece of sea glass in the middle is about 10 millimeters by 15 millimeters- I use a caliper for measuring a lot of my jewelry stuff, it's just easier. As far as I can tell it used to be the topmost part of a beer bottle neck, but to get to the stage of frosting/hydration/pitting/whatever you see in the texture in the picture, it had to have been in the ocean for at least seven or eight years, possibly ten or more. I've also heard really good frosting takes twenty years in the water, but no idea how they arrived at that.

So I learned a new wrapping technique from Gayle Bird Designs at Craftsy this weekend.

( Turns out it's really fast, and looks awfully fancy into the bargain. )