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Last year, I was on the phone with my friend Brigitte and told her I was thinking about buying this block-printed kaftan from one of my favorite Indian brands, Anokhi. She replied, “I feel like you’d be living your best life in that.” Which is exactly how I felt wearing it at the beach this past week with my new Virage Threader Hoop Earrings in rose gold.
Last weekend we went camping at the beach (well technically, the bay beach) and it seemed like the perfect opportunity to put on my favorite black and white dress and take a few pictures of my new Verdant Threader Hoop Earrings in 14-kt gold filled.
Back in May, I bought this massive philodendron while visiting family in Delaware. And then I came home and had such a fun photoshoot with it. Partly because Patricia from Parima Studio and I are having a (joking) competition around photographing ourselves behind plants!
Fun fact about me: I have 33 cousins on my mom’s side of the family. And last week, two of those cousins came to visit! There’s nothing like hanging out with a couple of twenty-somethings to inspire you to create some new jewelry designs!
I realize there is something ironic about reading The Future is Analog by David Sax on my iPad, especially considering I very rarely read anything other than physical books these days, but the only way I could get my hands on it before November was to request a digital review copy.
I finally found my reading groove this month, and that’s all thanks to some truly, truly incredible books. (Yes, I said truly twice, but DAMN, I read some good books this month!) What I read this month took me down two very distinct (but in some ways related) rabbit holes. Neither of these is a new research area for me, but they both really came out strongly this month.
Like many last summer, I was obsessed with images of the British diver Tom Daley knitting at the Tokyo Olympics. I followed his Instagram account, madewithlovebytom, swooning over his Team GB sweater and the adorable pouch he made to protect his gold medal. But one image struck me more than the others.
Shared in Daley’s Instagram Stories, it showed him knitting in the stands of the Tokyo Aquatics Centre while two of his teammates sit in the background staring at their phones. This image stops me, the contrast is so profound, and I screenshot it so I can remember and revisit it later. The image is a visual summation of something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately – that time spent making something is an antidote to time spent mindlessly scrolling. Or to put it another way, if my hands are on something else, they can’t be on my phone.
You may or may not know this about me, but despite having two degrees in metalsmithing, I am actually a giant textile nerd.
In undergrad, I spent as much time in the fibers studio as I did in the metals studio. (It helped that they were right next door.) And while I did make jewelry for my undergrad thesis, many of the pieces incorporated hand sewing or beading techniques I had learned in my fibers classes.
Apparently, there’s something about March where I really struggle to find my reading groove. And since I only finished two books in March, I decided to just hold off and blog those with my April reads. The start of April was a bit of a slog as well, but I finally found my stride and ended up tearing through three books at the end of the month.
Whenever I launch a new collection, it’s always a fun surprise to see what the best-sellers are. And it’s really exciting to see that, for the plant stakes, the early front runner for bestseller status is the five leaf double vine! This was definitely one of my more wild designs, so it’s fun to see how much people are loving it.