Today, November 1st, is a cluttered black square of type in my calendar… It’s the first day of the month, with all of the financial deadlines and chores that accompany a fresh month…it’s the day after Hallow’een, so we are all just a little groggy from sugar overload and a sleep punctuated with fireworks and firecrackers. It’s also All Saints Day in the Christian calendar, or Samhain in the Celtic Pagan calendar. No matter what your cultural background, here in the Northern Hemishphere there is no questioning the shift in light that accompanies the beginning of November.
Gone are the memories of Summer – we are well and truly into the dark months of the year!
The beginning of November feels like a shift. Suddenly we expect the nights to be long, we expect the days to be cold and we look to the days of Winter ahead. I awake in surreal darkness, convincing my skeptical body that it really is time to get up… and on rainy days it sometimes feels as though it never really gets fully light. Curls of slate coloured clouds catch on the curves of our local mountains and lazily hang there waiting for a breath of wind to push them along. No wonder, then, that just now the veil feels thin between the world of the living and the world of those who have gone before.
So what are we to do? Shiver here in our dim, grey existence? Hardly! We North Westerners have perfected our strategies for warmth and light. We celebrate the contrast of light and dark in thousands of tiny ways. Some examples… You’ll find brilliantly uplit, spectacular trees in most gardens in my neighborhood. That pop of green light is even more beautiful for being embraced by darkness. we light our houses more and more as the very darkest time of year approaches, and by Christmas the entire city is aglow. Inside you’ll find candles and fireplaces are de rigueur to banish the November chill and in the very darkest months I’ll even light candles at the breakfast table!
In the same way, I seem to gravitate to warmth and light in my personal objects and jewellery… a little more warm metal: a touch of bronze, copper and gold just feel wonderful at this time of year. Amber has a natural golden glow that is irresistible, particularly when blended with warm metals and some black or grey for contrast. This leather bracelet is just the thing to have a touch of sunshine that can be carried with me through my day!
C.
Casting an eye over our selection of uniques today I noticed that we have an absolutely marvelous collection of raspberry pinks in stock at the moment. I decided to have a bit of a play with them, but thought I’d give the design a little twist and try my hand at a crimson-to-pale pink ombre composition….
together it was bound to be a fantastic bracelet. I really think that with these beads it would be impossible to make the bracelet look anything but gorgeous.
At the two extreme ends of this bracelet design you’ll find some of the opaque unique beads that are such a delight to true collectors. The rich red and glittery one shown above has actually been tempting me for my own collection! So luxe and utterly delicious. At the other end of the bracelet be sure to note the beads that have elegantly formed flowers traced on milk glass backgrounds. These have been such a lovely fresh addition to the design oeuvre of glass Trollbeads uniques. I’d love to see an entire bracelet made up of these delicate beauties.
Clockwise from clasp: “Lace Lock”, All Glass beads uniques. Silvers: “Spiritual Ornament”, “Elderflowers”, “Spiritual Adornment”, “Wine Harvest”.
The time of year when we all dust off our best pumpkin, citrus and cinnamon coloured beads and create combinations to honour Thanksgiving, Fall Equinox, Back to School, Harvest Moon, Halloween and the warm low light of Autumn. Every season has its colour mood, and no question that no matter how you like to celebrate Autumn, with subtle earthy browns or stark ghostly black and white – orange is the queen of the Fall palette.
The arrival of a group of spectacular yellow glitter uniques, as well as a punchy new olive glass colour had me eagerly anticipating this annual ritual even more than usual. Olive has traditionally been a bit of a tricky colour to find in the Trollbeads collection… there have been a few beads with cool, blue-olives, but very few with a true, acid soaked sort of an olive green. I was delighted when we received a few precious uniques with this very fresh colour and immediately resolved to combine them with rich golden yellows and tangy oranges for a fantastic, citrus take on Autumnal orange.
A bracelet with this much texture, rich colour and visual energy needs a few places designed for the weary eye to rest, so I showed restraint, and kept silvers minimal and calm. The silvers in this combination create colour groupings that are meant to be viewed as a whole… then suggest a pause to the eye before moving on to the next group. For that reason I selected simple, abstract silvers of a similar size and shape that would quietly fulfill their role and not demand too much of one’s attention when viewing the bracelet.
I began to tease this combination together over the past few days, inspired by a very special “Honey Bud”. This retired Trollbeads can be seen close to the middle of the bracelet design, tucked between the “Bee on Hive” and the Switzerland World Tour “Mountain Crystal”. Then, as often happens during the Challenge, I was delighted to see that another Trollbeads Collector, Linda Jo, was working on a similar theme! She posted a beautiful “Honey and Vanilla” design on our 
Today I decided to see if I could build a bracelet of all-labradorite. Like so many other ladies, this stone is a favorite of mine. Its endless shades of soft grey to green to blue add a gentle note to so many compositions. It’s elusive flash of blue, aqua, green, gold, pink or even purple rewards those who are patient enough to sit and really *look* at it in the light. Over the past year a few more Labradorites have found their way into my collection, but they are normally scattered across a number of bracelets where they can work their quiet magic. However, today they were all lined up together on my play
tray, just begging to be strung together all on one bracelet. Initially I played them together with larger, more complex silvers that took up more space on the chain, so that I could feature just the stones. I thought I would love it that way, but when I actually saw it… it felt a little flat to me. I wanted to add a little something… just a little pop of pattern – but not too much. I could have used soft Azure Bubbles, but decided instead to use the slightly more challenging Kimono Kit of beads. These are understated glass, with matte finish and clean, minimalist patterns.
The large, complex silvers were replaced with a series of “bead shaped” silvers that usually reside on my teal bracelet. Their similar size and shape offer a nice rhythm, and are economical in the amount of space they take up, so that more glass and stone may be fitted onto my usual size of chain without crowding the bracelet. I like the beads a little on the loose side, so that the bracelet flows nicely and doesn’t feel too stiff. You can see I was feeling a little squeezed for space, as I resort to narrower and narrower silvers as the composition goes on!
To begin, the hours of daylight are very slightly different. For those of you who live closer to the waist of the earth, that may not sound like headline news, but for those of us who are farther North, light, or more properly, the lack of it, is a daily conversation. Through the darkest weeks of the year, the sun doesn’t rise until eight in the morning, and has disappeared again by four-thirty in the afternoon. Here it is, only a month past the Winter solstice and already the sun has relented just enough to light the way to school for the kids. It’s a happy thing!
We’re not the only ones that have noticed that the light is starting to come back to our side of the Earth… It’ll sound funny, but the squirrels about the neighborhood are showing the first signs of Spring Fever! I watched out the kitchen window last weekend, laughing out loud, as what seemed like wild herds of Squirrels scurried back and forth across the front veranda. I’m not sure what they were doing, (what happens in the front yard, stays in the front yard) … but whatever it was, it involved a lot of frantic chasing, fluffing of tails and chattering.
Meanwhile, Our elderly cat, Cookie was keeping a close eye on their dodgy proceedings, hustling determinedly along behind them each time they crossed the porch. I would be concerned for the squirrels safety, but fortunately Cookie no longer poses any real threat to the garden creatures.
showy, looking for all the world like microscopic displays of fireworks. Everywhere that I look I see the promise of flowers to come. In the case of the snowdrops, promise is perhaps the wrong word – they are already up, out and in full bloom. The Crocus won’t be far behind, though they seem to pop out of the ground already in bloom, as if they think they’re running late. The Tulips are pushing their lush green leaves out the soil, as are the daffodils, hyacinths and even daylilies! I expected to see the Spring bulbs up and around, but I was surprised to see the Summer ones too.
tartooful 