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Tomorrow’s Instant Gratification Monday will happen in two parts: 2 - 3 p.m. and 6 - 7 p.m. EST. It’s an experiment.

28 new items tonight.

Well.

Well.  That was interesting.

I just managed to break my Lindstrom chainnose pliers.

I’ve lost track of how many pairs of cutters I’ve gone through since I first started using Lindstrom tools exclusively three years ago, but that’s because I’m dumb sometimes and keep trying to cut steel with them, so those are my own damn fault.  But this was my original pair of Lindstrom pliers, out of the set I bought when I quit my job four years ago.  Most of my startup money went into that set of tools, actually, and they’ve served me very well — I’ve made over 7000 pieces of jewelry with them.

The break was probably due to a manufacturing flaw, as I was working on a soft copper piece at the time it happened, and I wasn’t exerting anywhere near the sort of force you’d have to apply to break tool steel.  So I’m inquiring with the company I buy my tools from to see if we can get Lindstrom to honor their warranty and have ordered a replacement pair (since a spare pair wouldn’t be a bad idea anyway) and in the meantime I fortunately have a pair of bent chainnose Lindstroms that are a reasonable substitute.  But wow.

By the way, if you happen to be in the market for a pair or three of Lindstroms, Urban Maille has the absolute best prices I’ve ever seen, and they’ve always been fabulously quick to ship my orders.

Elise is having a birthday clearance sale. Birthday clearance sales are fun things, and you should go check out her pretties. At some point today I’m going to have to investigate the sofa cushions and see if maybe $620 in loose change might hiding in there, because Doll With a Ghost In It, II is on sale and we wants it, precious.

But now? I need to grab breakfast and go retrieve my friend who needs a ride to the mechanic, and then come home and work on custom stuff for a while. I have a Project today, oh yes I do. *rubs hands together gleefully* It’s a Sekrit Project, at least for the moment, but it involves emeralds. BIG emeralds. (Well, relatively speaking. Kate would insist that they’re tiny, but Kate’s evidently been working on something that would frighten even me.) And while I was buying emeralds I got a few extra, and some mystic topaz, and mostly I’ve been staring at them and going “shiny.”

Previews of tonight’s update are here, and if you’re one of the people who’s been pestering me for more Northwestern Forest Whatchamacallits, the two going up tonight are some of the very last you’ll see for a while; I have one more of those stones left, and then I’ll have to try to order more. Which I’ll do if I can, but it could be a while. Likewise the Atlantis Rising pendants, as lately my orders of ocean jasper have contained nothing but the swirly spotty variety and none of the translucent spooky stuff.

I am seriously considering placing the following ad on craigslist:

Moderately Obsessive Bead Enthusiast Wanted

Eccentric and disorganized jewelry designer seeks moderately obsessive person to help sort and put away beads. No experience necessary. Must enjoy sorting tiny objects and be good at declining offers of feline assistance. Position is unpaid, but I will be happy to fill your head with vast quantities of random information about gemstones while you work, make you a piece of jewelry, and feed you lunch. 1 - 2 hours per month, ongoing.

Think anybody would actually want to do it?

I skimmed through my RSS feeds this morning, and ran across this very good article about creativity and work:

Attention & Amiguity: The Non-Paradox of Creative Work 

“And, yeah, “talent” doesn’t hurt either, but there’s no way to even discover if you have talent until you’ve made a lot of crap and an occasional good thing, and find a way for that all to be okay. Plus, anyone can tell you, “talent” is like having a nice ass or a rich father; it helps open doors, but the actual work on the other side of the door is all on you.”

Yes.  This.

In other news, there’s a small update coming on Friday (look for previews on Thursday evening) and today I’m juggling custom work, talking to people about jewelry parties and wholesale orders, clearing up the explosion of beads in my workshop, trying to figure out where on earth I’m supposed to cram an hour a day of exercise into my schedule, and wondering if I still remember how to swim. And, of course, making stuff for the update.

Now booking jewelry parties for October, November, and December

If you’re in the New England area and would be interested in hosting a Wyrding Studios jewelry party, I’m now booking for the fall. These are NOT your usual product parties — for one thing, I’m the world’s worst salesperson, so I don’t even bother with a sales pitch. If somebody wants to buy something, hey, awesome! Otherwise, I’m happy just to hang out with people, put faces to names, and talk about pretty rocks. They’re also very low-key: I bring my inventory bins and a few cases of materials, and people can either look at pre-made items or poke through raw materials and have me make something custom on the spot. There’s always a drawing for a free shiny, and the hostess gets shiny presents at the end.

I’m willing to go pretty much anywhere in the New England area; if you think you can get 6 - 12 people together, I’ll make the trip. I will also be traveling to NYC sometime this fall, and would love to do a party there, and could also be convinced to go to anywhere in the NYC metro area - New Jersey, Westchester, Connecticut, etc. With a bit of persuading, I could probably also make it to Baltimore and Philadelphia, as we’re overdue for a trip to visit family in Baltimore. Email me (kythryne@wyrdingstudios.com) if you’re interested, and we’ll talk.

Instant Gratification Monday is on over at the LJ community. It’s running an extra hour this week, from 6 - 9 p.m. EST.

Next week’s Instant Gratification Monday (I’ve dropped the “almost” since I’m now photographing stuff as I go and generally manage to ship most of the stuff on Tuesday, which means the only thing faster is getting me to do stuff in person) will happen from 6 - 9 p.m.
Yes, that’s three hours — I wanted to do 6 - 8, but I have a custom appointment at 9, so rather than trying to find something else to do in that spare hour, I decided to just extend the time window this week.

24 new items tonight, including some fall-inspired pieces and another set of space-opera-esque pendants.

Also, as you may have noticed on the calendar, my friend Shira Lipkin asked me to collaborate with her on September’s Wind Tunnel Dreams. She’s taking prompts right over here. Go give us some ideas!