I seem to be posting a lot of jewellery news here, and it’s sort of not the right place to do that. It will instead be at a new journal page, which I wanted to host on gaylebird.com but I got fed up with the technical bits and just set up a hosted one at wordpress.com. I have copied my last few jewellery posts and from now on, the jewellery will be kept out of nightingayle.com.

Check it out and bookmark it! http://gaylebird.wordpress.com/

I think I screwed up my camera settings; pictures keep coming out all grainy and I have to resize and de-noise and brighten and colour correct, and it’s no fun whatsoever.

But! Look! A necklace that could be worn as a crown:

And a commission for my friend Elinor, called “The Earth in the Night Sky”:

Huh, I thought I’d had all my LMM books already, but two more showed up in a late shipment. Me likey! Soft and sweet and full of nature-loving, fairy joy, just like most of her books. Very pleasant. LMM has a way of creating wee characteristics for people you only hear about in passing that makes them live for those few seconds, it’s quite endearing and causes a real whirlwind of activity in the brainpan.

274 pages.

I read the first half of this book in the waiting room before a doctor’s appointment last week; the previous book was a giant hardcover, and this fit nicely into my purse. It doesn’t, however, fit neatly into any category, or even into my psyche very well. It’s about passion, dance, and motherhood, and it’s a little unsettling. I finished it last night and it was beautiful; almost poetry more than prose. Huston’s style reminds me of Anne-Marie MacDonald - very fluid and intriguing. I’m not sure I really “got” the ending - maybe I was just tired? - but it was a gorgeous journey into words and I really enjoyed it.

appx 200 pages - I don’t have the book here to check.

OH COME ON. I just wrote a HUGE review, and I hit publish and it didn’t work, AND there’s no draft?

Gah. I HATED IT. Next!

496 pages.

I’m struggling with my light box - I burnt out a bulb yesterday and got a replacement today, plus a side lamp, but it still doesn’t seem to be bright enough. Or angled properly. Or something.

Anyway. I needed to take some photos to be featured on Arts North, so some of these are old designs, and some new. Enjoy!

I followed (vaguely) some instructions for creating your own light box today. Basically, I cut out the sides of a box, covered them in tissue paper, and inserted a piece of white cardboard for a backdrop. I still need to play with it, but I’m very pleased.

At first, I didn’t have the top hole cut large enough and I couldn’t get enough light in the front:

So I cut the hole bigger:

Which is a fantastic improvement. But when I brought the photos into Photoshop, there’s still a huge gap in the white balance. I definitely need a second light, but I couldn’t find one anywhere in the house that I was willing to unplug. I guess it’s off to Zellers today!

I also took some photos of the Labradorite pendant I made in the same style. One in the light box, looking very bland:

And one in my hand under a direct light to show the brilliance of the labradorescence (the top flash actually gets redder in certain light:

I don’t think I could love these two pendants more. Also new on the worktable recently: Crowns! Ok, just one for now, but the second one is already better than the first. This one isn’t really great, but I learned a lot from it and it’s pretty cute.

That’s all the jewellery news today. In other news:

• I have a doctor!
• I closed my eyes at 10:33pm last night neither opened them nor moved until 7am this morning. Then I rolled over and slept for another hour and a half. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve slept through the night in my whole life.
• I joined the gym pool! There is a gym there but it’s mostly the pool that’s making me giddy. It’s right next to my office, so I don’t even have to move my car. I might even jump on the bicycle machine for a while, as that’s what the physiotherapist had me doing for my knee. And then into the pool. And then the hot tub oh my.
• I had a fresh mango/kiwi smoothie for breakfast. Yum.
• There’s a jewellery fabrication class two weekends in February. A workshop! that’s not at 2pm on a Tuesday! I can actually GO and LEARN stuff like silver sheet and soldering and such!

Aaaaand… that’s about it.

I think this is possibly the very last of LMM’s books (outside of short stories, which don’t interest me much) that I hadn’t read before. Very light and sweet, I believe it’s unique in my recollection of LMM’s work by starting out in earnest discussion of a man. It’s also the first introduction of a violin that I can remember, and as a Cape Bretoner it’s surprising I didn’t miss it before, PEI being so close and all.

134 pages.

I thought I’d read all of LMM’s books, but a search through Indigo’s website with that lovely gift card has gleefully proved me wrong. It’s a positively delightful book. LMM of course has a grand pattern that often repeats throughout her heroines, but the details are always different, and it’s the details that make a book, no?

217 pages.

— 

I think I must now make some jewellery. I haven’t in a while and I’m feeling the call from my empty workbench and my full storage coffers.

And book number one is complete! I’ve got a whole boxful of new books from a carefully applied gift card I got from my brother and sister(in-law) for xmas. Now I need to decide what’s next!

I finished this book before I knew it was over; there were 30 pages of author’s notes afterwards, almost as interesting as the book itself, discussing Rice’s loss of faith during college, and how she regained it a few years ago.

The novel is a first-person narrative by Jesus Christ of Nazareth, in his seventh year, coming to terms with being the Son of God. The writing is very restrained and simple, completely devoid of Rice’s usual plush surroundings; the sentence structure is simple and plain, and it was jarring sometimes - but I was fascinated just the same. I get the impression that she intends to write nothing but books for “the Lord” from now on; which is disappointing, but I’ll read anything she writes, so I’m kind of at her mercy.

I’m off to lend this book to a good friend whom I lovingly call a “Jesus-freak.”

339 pages.