Tucson 2013: Part II

As promised, today I'm sharing some of the other goodies from the most recent shopping trip:

Turquoise...gorgeous turquoise. I found the above, and these:

I LOVE the striking blue color against the dark host rock. They're so different from the turquoise I usually see and buy. But don't worry, turquoise lovers, I bought a LOT of other turquoise too:

Though I bought quite a bit of the traditionally blue turquoise, I found myself gravitating to greens as well. I love the bold bright blues, but these subtle greens really caught my eye. 

This is how a lot of the stones are sold - taped or glued to cardboard. Which is fine...unless you don't want ALL the stones on each piece of cardboard. Then you have to either purchase them all anyway, or ask the seller to allow you to cut out the stones you want...sometimes they're nice about it and sometimes they're not. In this grouping, I loved them all and am thinking of making a big necklace with them, so I bought the whole card. Same for the stones below:

I had a hard time finding good earring stones this year - a lot of them were cut weirdly. I wish I could explain it better, but they just were off and I knew it would take extra work on my part to make them hang right. So I put tons of not-good-enough stones back into the bins and didn't bring home as many as I'd like. But these above are all so wonderfully matched, and I like the coloring of each one, so they came home with me. I am thinking the ones third from the right will be great with the first pendant posted above.  :)

I bought a lot more turquoise...a LOT more. I think I should be stocked up for a while now...

And while we're looking at turquoise, check out THESE beauties:

Royston / ribbon / boulder turquoise. Incredibly hard to find. And often very pricey when you do find it. This is turquoise that is not cut out of the host rock (the boulder). Instead, the stone cutter plans his or her cutting so that the "ribbon" of turquoise is the highlight. Thus the term "ribbon turquoise". Also known as boulder turquoise and Royston turquoise because most of this type of turquoise comes from the Royston mine in Nevada.

I liked the thought of them as earrings...but:

I think they may be even better as pendants.  :)

Another gorgeous pair. These may be the prettiest of all the ones I found.

A slightly more subtle pair. I should point out that though I only found Royston / boulder turquoise at three stone sellers in all of Tucson. Now, I can't possibly go to every show that takes place, but I went to six or seven shows, with hundreds or thousands of sellers. This stuff just isn't easy to come by. And it's definitely more expensive than most of the other turquoise I buy.

But they're so gorgeous...and you get what you pay for. These may have to be set into some very special pieces...

More goodies in the next post, and then back to business as usual.  :)

Tucson 2013 : Part I

The only quick snap I got of my beloved mountains....from the JOGS show parking lot. There just wasn't any time for photos...

I'm just home from a very whirlwind trip to Tucson last week! My shortest trip ever - just 2.5 days. And while you may think that shopping for gemstones is easily done in that amount of time, it really isn't. And why not?

- All the people. Though Tucson show visitor numbers haven't returned to pre-recession levels (no official data, just my impressions from a decade of attending), there are still a LOT of people shopping. And many of them want what YOU want. So you wait in line...in fact, you wait in many lines (the parking line, the shuttle line, the opening line, the line at the stone dealer's booth, etc.). And all that line-waiting takes up precious minutes of time.

- All the locations. "The Tucson Gem Show" is actually comprised of about 40 shows, spread over two weeks. Some shows are open for the whole two weeks, some a week, some for just a few days. So planning to shop from certain dealers (who may or may not all be at the same show, or in the same location) is tricky. And you can drive from show location to show location, but don't forget all the other people who are doing the same. Parking can be difficult (and expensive - $10 to park all day might be reasonable...but sometimes you're going to three shows in a day. Now we're talking $30 extra to park). Shuttle buses are available, but you'll be waiting in line...again...and they're not always the fastest way to get to another show. Especially once it's after 3 p.m. and rush hour traffic starts.

- All the options. Every year I visit Tucson with a very specific list of items. And every year it's difficult to find the right items, at the right price. Millions of stones. Thousands of sellers. In different locations throughout Tucson. It's madness. By the end of the day, your eyes are glazed over and you can barely stand to look at another stone, no matter how rare / beautiful / perfect-for-you it may be. And what you're looking for might not be there this year. Or it might not be there in the quality / price you want. So you'd better have a Plan B (or think quickly on the fly) to figure out what else to buy. These are natural stones, and many of them only occur in one area of the world (or a few areas). So sometimes there just isn't any supply that year...sometimes there's no supply at all because there's none left.  :(

So yeah, it's crazy. But it's *so* exciting when you find something that speaks to you (and fits your budget)! I"m a rock lover from a very young age, and being around all those stones and gems and rocks is exhilarating. And I am exceptionally choosy about the stones I purchase and use in my designs, so for me, there's no substitute for hand selecting my choices each year.

Let me get you to the money shots.  :)

Red creek jasper. I'll do a full "Natural Wonders" post on it in the future, but it's a fairly new stone to the gem market and it's gorgeous. These are matched up (pretty well; the stone never looks the same twice) for earrings.

I bought several pendant-sized stones. The one on the left is new and the one on the right is from last year. I keep talking about going bigger with my designs and these stones are going to force that to happen.  :)

I love the shape of these. And while I try to not purchase stones with sharp corners - they're more difficult to bezel and set - I could not resist these.

Eudialyte (yoo-die-ah-lite). Another stone that needs a Natural Wonders post. For now I'll tell you that it's fairly rare. And fairly expensive. I have a hard time finding it and when I do, it's usually a good bit out of budget. This year I came home with three small pieces, and consider that lucky. Love the funky shape of the piece above...

A very thin cab, but the gorgeous garnet-y red is what sold me.

Similar to the one above it, but thicker and with a deeper color saturation.

I'll share even more amazing goodies in the next post.  :)

January Overview

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

-Theodore Roosevelt

For the last few years, I've felt like I've lost myself. I was drifting, both personally and professionally, and it seemed like my life was headed toward mediocrity. But I also felt trapped, frozen, unable to do anything much about it. I just couldn't get myself together. I knew neither victory nor defeat; I was stuck in the long flatline between either.

Through a series of "things" - changes, events, occurrances, for lack of better terms, I have pursued emotional and spiritual growth. and pursued it hard through the last year-ish, 18 months or so, and though it's been a long journey (good lord, aren't they all...there's no quick path as far as I can tell!), I'm feeling empowered and making changes in my life. I wanted to chronicle them here on the blog, since I'm not much of a journaler or record-keeper otherwise. I tend to rely on memory, and we all know how unreliable it can be. At least this will keep me honest.

 

January was an up and down month. I often felt like the "cold and timid soul" who knows neither victory or defeat...despite starting an excellent series of jewelry fabrication classes at Amalgam Arts,  I found myself nervous, worried about finances, worried about festival deadlines, worried that I really couldn't do the job of making the kind of jewelry that would expand what I wanted to achieve this year, that would help me get to the next rung on the ladder. I spent more time on my Etsy supply shop than on my jewelry. 

As I've mentioned, my father died on the 13th, and while I'd been as ready as I could be for that to happen, it still affected me and my work. I guess when you're processing a loss, it's hard to have the focus necessary for design. I'd also given up drinking (yes, I know this is the first many of you have heard about it!) for the month of January, and for the first two weeks, I felt like my body was not struggling with wanting alcohol, but it was craving more sugar than I normally eat (and I eat a fair amount). I'm a moderate drinker, but I wanted to take a break to see if it would affect my weight - you hear SO much about alcohol being detrimental to diet and weight gain - and I've been using wine for years to help manage my Fibromyalgia pain. I thought I should see what life was really like without my additional "medication". Apparently, life is about managing one's sugar addiction. ~wry smile~

About the wine and Fibromyalgia - I take prescription pain meds for the Fibro, but they don't eliminate the pain. Wine goes a long way to filling the gap between the meds and bedtime. So I did have a lot more pain to manage...but I managed, though not always well. I'm not sure I want to drink as little as I did this past month, but I do think being an even more moderate drinker is a good thing for my mind and my body.

source

I felt tired for most of the month. I would get up in the morning later than usual, and feel like I really needed a nap around three or four p.m., and then feel ready to go to bed around 8 or 9 p.m. I don't know how much of that was leftover exhaustion and stress from the last four months (or the last twelve...), but I felt exhausted almost all month. It's only been in the last few days that I've started to feel somewhat more energized.

I went back to exercising after about a three-month hiatus, and found that relatively easy to pick up...at first. I'm up to 35 minutes of running, three days a week, and my legs are sore, sore, sore. I don't know of anyone else who gets so sore after exercise. I suppose that's the Fibro...but I like how I look and feel (aside from the muscle soreness) when I do it, so I'm not stopping. 

I added in some CoQ10 in with my vitamin supplements / pain pills. I'm not sure if it's really doing anything (mostly I wanted it for energy), as taking it's coincided with no wine and more exercise, both of which could contribute to higher energy levels by month-end. I have another month's supply though, and will see what happens once I've added the wine back in.

One month into 2013, and I feel...okay. January has been a workhorse month (paperwork, catch-up work, organizing work) and the cold, gray, wet winter days haven't made me feel especially motivated, but I slogged through it anyway - even sans wine - and now I'm ready for February. Well, sort of. I'm having a "no extraneous sugar" month. Which might be harder than giving up my alcohol. Scratch that - it WILL be harder. No extra sugar means no afternoon candy bars, no hot cider, no after-dinner snacks (which I don't have every night, but when I do, they're sweet/sugary based). It's not going to be easy, but at least I picked the shortest month of the year to try it.  :)

I've also declared this the year of trying new things, of being more open to change, to almost forcing change. I am eager to taste the newness, to sample more of life, to stretch myself out and *hope* I don't fall, but the fear of falling has (pardon the pun) fallen by the wayside quite a bit. I still worry and stress, but I feel that those low times are part of the process and the journey, to pushing out some new design, to evolving personally, to reaching out to whatever else life has to offer. 

What? An actual jewelry photo?? I *have* been working, in the midst of all this other stuff going on. Sometimes it's just a slower process than I'd like...

 

All this might not be "daring greatly", but I haven't liked a lot of where my life's been at for some time. Better to try, fail, and try again, than to simply not try.  :)