End of the season

Posted on December 5, 2012 by Maiden Star

So I have now completed my fall show season. I will be back in various locations around town starting in February or March – so far my first scheduled show is March 23rd. I’ll post more details on that later, once things are a little firmer.

I will be spending the intervening time creating new products, updating the site, and posting new items on Etsy. Expect to see a lot more items in the online store!

I will warn, though, that you won’t see a flurry of activity, or a tonne of new items every week. I am now 13 weeks pregnant, and will be focusing on getting the baby’s room ready. I’m sure you understand.

However, I do have a lot of new ideas for items to make, and will be coming into some extra downtime soon (before the baby – I doubt the little one will be very tolerant of me sitting at a desk making pretty jewellery for other people when I should be holding, rocking, and burping a baby).

Back at it

Posted on September 23, 2012 by Maiden Star

I sort of took the summer off. I’ve done a couple of shows, but have mostly been taking it easy and focusing on myself. I’ve had some health issues this year, and really needed to take some “me time”.

Some of that me time has actually involved beading, or cleaning up my office, or getting my things in a better order. Not that you’d be able to tell if you could see my office right now! It looks a bit like a tornado hit it, except there’s no actual dirt anywhere.

So this afternoon, after getting back from a fabulous wedding ceremony, I’ve been catching up on my show applications. I have added four shows coming up.

The Ottawa Artisans Guild will be holding their fall show at Lester B. Pearson High School the weekend of November 10th and 11th, and once again I will be there. I will also be attending their show at St. Francis Xavier High School, on Spratt Street, again this year. There’s a slight change with the St. FX show – this time it is a one day event, taking place on Saturday December 1 only.

I will also be participating, once again, in the Dacers’ Bazzar, hosted by TAV Creations/Belly Dancing For Fun. This year it will take place on October 14th, in the Knights of Columbus Hall, as usual, at 240 McArthur.

A new show for me this year is the Immaculata High School show. This takes place on November 24th from 10am to 3 pm. I am very much looking forward to this new show!

I have been busily putting new pieces together and coming up with new ideas. I hope to see you at the shows!

Summertime, and the livin’ is easy

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Maiden Star

This week has raced by!

Last weekend I was out at the Poltimore Fair with Drakestail. The weather looked threatening as I drove out at 6 am on a misty Saturday morning, stopping for coffee at the local Tim Hortons’ before the first pot was finished brewing, but it did lighten up, and even got warm in the afternoon. We had a lot of fun, as we always do at Poltimore, and made some new friends.

The day went by quickly, with sales sporadic due to weather. We packed up our jewellery and display materials at around 5:30 or 6, left our tents and tables in place, and started the long drive home. And then the monsoon hit.

Ok, it wasn’t technically a monsoon, just a torrential downpour. While we were driving. On twisty mountain roads. With speed limits that vary from 35 Km/h to 90 Km/h. So that was fun. It let up shortly before we turned off to head back into Ontario (the turn we missed, of course, because the directions tell us to take a road called Rue du Pont, when in reality the road is called something else, but happens to be the road that goes to the bridge).

I was the first of us to arrive at the fair on Sunday. As I pulled in, I saw a pile of flapping beige fabric at the gate and a conspicuous absence of our beige fabric covered tents in our spot.

Yup, our tents blew away in that storm. Robyn`s went first, according to other vendors who were still at the fair when it happened, and mine followed. Hers blew over mine at some point, because when I pulled them apart, hers was under mine. All the legs were pointing in the wrong directions, and the support latices for the canopys were broken in a couple of places on each tent.

An injudicious amount of duct tape later, and the volunteer coordinator, two of her conscripts, and I had the tents in something like a tent shape again, and we tromped them over to our space, about in time for Robyn to arrive. Our new friend Tanya (owner and artist of I Bead) helped us tie the tents with guy ropes, flagged the guy ropes with hot pink flagging tape, and checked in on us a couple of times through the day.

Amazingly, the tents stayed up all day. The weather was nice, though a bit windy for our rickety tents, and we did have to apply more duct tape in creative ways to hold it all together. But we made it through the day, had some fun, and had a few laughs at our poor, mangled tents and our lack of judgement in leaving them up over night.

On Monday night, my husband and I went on a bit of a shopping spree – we ran out to Ikea for a desk and chair for his new ofice space in the basement, hit Canadian Tire for a new tent for me (yay!), and then grabbed some groceries on the way home. So now I have a brand new tent, slightly heavier (and hopefully a bit sturdier) than the old one.

I get to test out the new tent this weekend when I take it down to Kingston for the Women’s Art Festival. The weather is supposed to be nice – mostly sunny, 23 degrees, and only a 10% chance of rain. Hoping for great weather and a great turnout!

Ruby

Posted on July 1, 2012 by Maiden Star

Would you be surprised to learn that rubies and sapphires are virtually the same stone?

Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0 [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

A “pigeon-blood” ruby – the most desirable colour of deep red with a slight tint of blue/violet.

Rubies are the red variety of a mineral called corundum. Corudum is the crystal form of aluminum oxide (yes, used to make aluminum products and abrasives!), and comes in many colours. While corundum can be found in almost every colour of the rainbow, it is only the pink* and red varieties that are called ruby.

*In the United States, a certain level of colour saturation needs to be acheived before a pink corundum is called a ruby, but it is not clearly specified what that level of saturation is. Most other jurisdictions call all pink-to-red corundum ruby. As “pigeon-blood” is the most desirable colour of ruby, grouping pink corundum with ruby lowers their value; grouping them with sapphires allows them to be compared more favourably against other corundum varieties.

You may have heard that rubies have been used in lasers, watches, and other industrial applications. This is true – the first successful laser required a ruby to focus the wavelenghts of light (along with properly aligned mirrors) into a cutting beam. In watches, rubies are used as bearing points for moving parts – they are almost as hard a diamonds (9.0 on mohs scale, with diamond being a 10.0), so do not wear out easily. As an added bonus, rubies can be relatively inexpensively synthesized without losing any of the neccesary characteristics for these industrial applications.

But, you ask, how can I tell the difference between a natural ruby and a synthetic? It would be very hard for the average person to tell the difference. Under careful examination, a gemologist may detect bubbles or striations in the layers of the crystal, which are clear signs, but not readily apparently to the naked eye. (Note: I am not a gemologist, just an interested by-stander.)

In addition to synthetic rubies, you should also be aware of the easy confusion with other gemstones (almandite, pyrope, spinel, topaz, tourmaline, and zircon), the number of imitations (garnet over glass, or sapphire over imitation ruby), and false names (Balas ruby is really spinel, Cape ruby is pyrope, and Siberian ruby is tourmaline).

You may have seen green stones with very large rubies in them and wondered if these were real, and if so, why are they so cheap? These are zoisite (or anyolite) with ruby, but this ruby is not (usually) of gem quality. If the stones are a pleasing shape and size, they can be great decorations, and could even make nice jewellery if wrapped or set.

Rubies are the traditional birthstone of July, and the anniversary stone for the 15th and 40th anniversary. Ruby is associated with Mars and Pluto; Aries, Leo and Scorpio. A ruby under your pillow may ward off bad dreams, and can help you maximize your potential. It is said to aid in clearing infections. It is associated with transition, change, and choices, and may help you to make wise decisions, particularly in finance.

Recent activity

Posted on June 16, 2012 by Maiden Star

I spent a few hours in my backyard last weekend taking pictures of earrings and gettting a fantastic subburn (which has now turned into a tan).

Since then, I have spent some time cropping the photos, and I have to say they look great! I have uploaded pictures of all the earrings I currently have in stock to the Galleries – Earrings page. Now I am working on updating my Etsy store to include the new photos of items currently listed, and to list new earrings.

Here are just a few of my new photos – to see the rest, please visit the Galleries – Earrings page.