Annual Late Winter Jewelry Photo Dump

 My mom bought me a Riverstone bracelet for Christmas. It was lonely so I made two more:

Humblebeads had a cute, Spring-y necklace made with waxed linen and assorted charms and beads; I used dyed hemp cord (so rough, my poor hands) and beads and charms from my stash, making it the perfect easy project.

 

I bought this lovely Anne Choi bead decades ago and made it into a necklace that I really liked but never wore:

So I remade it as a chunky bracelet. I hadn't intended a Valentine theme but that's how it worked out; fitting, given the inscription on the bead: lux et umbra vicissim sed semper amor.

 I've been telling myself for two years to make a pair of small brass earrings to wear with brass necklaces. I finally did!

Book Round-Up: Better Late than Never Edition

The Shape-Changer's Wife by Sharon Shinn: Shinn's debut novel is about an apprentice wizard who studies under a powerful mentor and his odd wife. It's often (rightly) compared to Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn in style and vibe, but it also reminded me of Naomi Novik's Uprooted.

In Search of Lost Books by Giorgio van Straten: This is less a deep dive into known books that have disappeared, and more an idiosyncratic meditation on those books colored by Straten's tastes and experiences. Enjoyable as it it, but I would have preferred a more investigative work.

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman: My battered paperback disappeared, so what better excuse to buy a lovely hardcover with Gaiman's preferred text? It's a gritty, magical, weird exploration of an alternate London that also forces us to think about the parts of society we'd rather not deal with.

Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter: The premise is that of a TV producer who creates a true crime show to explore a brutal death that happened in his childhood. The text, then, is a transcript of the shows, plus emails and research, that gradually reveal what happened. But transcripts are an awkward thing to serve as the bulk of a novel. The mystery wasn't hard to figure out, either, but it was enjoyable enough.

Cat Tales by James Herriot: A collection of some of his anecdotes and stories involving cats, and just as sweet and comforting as you'd expect.