Weddings and Jewelry

This past weekend, I attended my cousin's wedding in Massachusetts (so confusing, because she lives in Augusta, GA, most of our family lives in Rhode Island, and the wedding was in Massachusetts not too far from Gillette Stadium, unfortunately for the car I was in). It was a beautiful event! She was a beautiful, happy bride, and everyone feels lucky to be adding to their respective families. This is such a great thing, because I've been to weddings where this hasn't been the case. Her now-husband was holding back tears while reciting his vows. I'm choked up right now as I think about it. It was a beautiful day, and we had a lot of fun! Including my 82-year-old grandfather who danced the fast songs with my youngest cousin and some of her friends. According to my aunt, he said, "All these girls were asking me to dance! I don't know why!"



For this occasion, I decided to make some jewelry, particularly for my mother since her birthday was last week. Included here are some pics of the necklace and earrings set that I hoped that my mother would wear to the wedding. She did. I'm pretty proud of this set. To me, it looked as good as much of the jewelry I saw others wearing. I think it was the most elegant-looking set that I've made thus far. And, she loved it! The set looked beautiful on her, with her dress.

I will be honest here. When I made this set, I didn't have a plan in mind. Often, when I'm making jewelry, I use the jewelry board so that I can get an idea of what the piece looks like before I make it. Since I made this one in a place away from home, I didn't have all the equipment I usually have, so I built the piece as I went along, judging that the center was right... about... HERE. Then, I reversed what I'd done on the other side to create a balanced piece.

I've been reading a book about facilitating adventure-based counseling for a class I'm taking next week. In it, there was a reference to those group members who tend to be quiet most of the time but who may offer insight when it comes to visualizing an end result. I think that's what I experienced in this project (and for the necklace-and-earrings set I made for myself for the wedding). I was able to see in my mind a rough picture of what the final product would be like. Likewise, I was able to determine the center of the piece without measuring. I can work similarly with my knitting. For instance, I make changes with patterns in advance of a project with an idea of what the end-product will be like with the changes. So, sometimes, I ad lib for a project as I go along, and at other times, I make changes to a pattern before I start. More often than not, I like the final product.

There were certain decisions I made with my mother's necklace that I made for reasons of space (and the idea that there were some parts of the necklace that wouldn't be noticed, because they'd be on the back of her neck). While I was at the wedding, I saw a lot of interesting jewelry, and my eyes were open to seeing the different beads and stones and styles that people were wearing. I found while looking that people were wearing pieces that mixed beads that I had sort of apologetically mixed for my mother's piece without any apology but with purpose. It led me to want to try to recreate some of these other pieces with intention.

I like how things work out that way sometimes. Something that I was embarrassed about doing (and not because it "looked" bad on the necklace) was the same something that was intentionally done for other pieces. I do want to see how I could play around with the same theme and make my own pieces in a likeness to the ones I saw!

Thanks for reading.
Tracey