bound

i am reading a book called Snow Flower and the Secret Fan which my friend Kristen Query gave me. It is about a chinese girl who has had her feet bound, her relationships and life. so i looked up some images of footbinding which are shocking. and gross. i have pair of shoes for bound feet that i bought in NYC's chinatown several years go. they are weird, yet beautiful with their embroidery. it is a fun thing for me to ask people what they think the shoes are...and when i tell them what they are, people don't believe me. believe, my friends. this was one crazy & sick thing they did in china. 1 out of 10 young girls died from footbinding back in the day. it was a terrible thing. and i have heard that the cleft in the foot was used, for...umm...men's pleasure. can you freaking imagine???? (nasty, dirty men!)




this is the necklace i was telling you about. i am very excited about it, though it has some technical difficulties i have to figure out. you can't tell what they are from this picture, but i will have to deal with that on monday. i am thrilled with the possibilities of future necklaces or brooches or whatever with this design. i love the color and am excited to do more with other stones. these are peridot. natural, uncut arizona peridot, faceted peridot, and a large lab-grown peridot in the center.


i received my 500 carats of red cubic zirconia today that i ordered from ebay. it is much smaller than i imagines, and i plan on weighing it on monday on the carat scale. i like the color very much. i am excited to cut it up and start some random faceting and see how it goes. i hope to achieve some sparkle with some funky facets, but since i have never done it i will just have to experiment. my new tool hasn't even come yet!



i worked some more in the yard today. i went to reem's creek nursery and bought a peach tree, since i had to buy 2 pear trees to cross pollinate and we don't have the room or the desire to have 2 pears. plus, i like peaches better. i also planted a shit ton of seeds in addition to the plantlets on the hill out back. now i will leave it alone and see what grows. i'll show you another pic in a month and we can all see the difference. hopefully, it will be amazing and satisfying. i'm very proud of the steps i dug in!



we noticed tonight that there is a bird's nest on the light for our back porch. the nest was there last year, but no one ever came to it. this year, we have a robin family living in it, which is exciting. too bad that it is too high for us to peek in!


the last book i read was one of my top favorites in a long time. it is called The Time Traveler's Wife. I bawled my eyes out at the end of this book. the characterization was fantastic. also, it made me think about my life and the people i love in my life. i felt so deeply while reading this book. furthermore, the author made you work to understand the time sequence of the narrative, and even though i was aware the whole time that i had to work to understand, the more i read, the more it became worth the work. i highly recommend this book.



that's about it for now. i hope everyone is having a great weekend doing fun stuff.

hugs