the new and the old

I posted quite a backlog of items on etsy today [trigonetsy.etsy.com] which got me to thinking about some of my original pieces. The necklace in the image is one of the first necklaces I made. It’s circa junior high and, as I couldn’t drive at this point, I had to talk my mom into stopping to let me browse at a new bead store that had opened. I was dying to stop in because the owner had opened her shop in an old caboose. A bead store in a caboose, the novelty of it called out to me. The story diverges here. First, in retrospect, the shop probably didn’t last very long because the only aisle from front to back was about 18″ wide. Two was a crowd. Second, with the exception of that 18″ wide aisle, every square inch of that place was filled with shelf after shelf of beads and it was a hundred times better than a candy store. When I found these garnet colored glass beads, oh, they were a treasure. A treasure that would wipe out my entire saved up allowance. I wanted seven but I bought six so I could afford the silver beads between them. Somehow they were the most wonderful beads I’d ever possessed and nothing I strung with it was good enough. They were a necklace, a bracelet, back to a necklace – always torn apart within a week. Almost a year later a friend was getting rid of a purse. A purse that had a strap made out of a chain. It’s been a bit longer than week and it’s still intact and still one of my favorite necklaces.