Oooooh, Shiny!

I went on a field trip today at work - a very dangerous field trip, as it turned out, a field trip into the dark valley of temptation: a field trip to the wholesale gem and jewelry show at the Civic Center. Yes. Wholesale gems and jewelry, scattered across a bazillion tables in a huge room full of bright lights that made all the multitude of strings of beads extra, extra shiny. They were so shiny. And all of them were so incredibly cheap that my self control just snapped and my magpie instincts took over. The good news is that approximately 1/6 of my Christmas shopping is now done. The bad news is that I spent 1/3 of my saved Christmas money for a ratio that is really, in the cold light of home, rather distressing.

I spent money on ridiculous things. I bought a jade alligator. And three Halloween charm bracelets, and two hair clips with skull & crossbones on them - the skulls have rhinestone eyes! Is that too cute or what? - and, uh, a couple of pairs of earrings and some pendants and a bracelet and, um, another stone creature that looks kind of like a cross between an alligator and an aardvark and possibly some other stuff that I don't remember too clearly, like a boar tusk and a couple of aliens carved out of bone. It was the shininess of it all, and all the signs saying 50% off marked price and. . . and. . . there's no excuse. I've just been spending like a drunken sailor on shore leave lately and it is true that I have the instincts of a drunken, sailing magpie at the best of times, eccentric taste and no self control.

I even bought some beads in a sort of hopeless, doomed, last ditch attempt to redeem myself by pretending that I would make jewelry with them and sell it, thus recouping my losses! Yes! And pigs will sprout those proverbial wings, etc. I came home and made two bracelets while I was having my brain sucked dry by M's science and math homework. "No offense, Mom," said M, peering over my shoulder, "But your crafts suck." Alas, he is right. They are shiny, my bracelets. . shiny. And if I was five, they would be excellent but somehow, they are, uh, lacking that subtle je ne sais quoi, that certain something that marks objects as having been created by a mentally competent artistic adult. Which is partly because they keep falling apart, since I'm not very good at tiny knots, and partly because, well, stringing shiny beads on a piece of elastic string, while brilliantly good for recovering brain tumor patients and the criminally insane, just is not a technique that really cuts it in the world of serious jewelry.

Ah well. I'm way broker now than I was this morning, and I was not flush this morning. But I am bedecked. I have jewelry all over me. And a jade alligator to admire (he is a handsome fellow indeed) and a whole bunch of shiny beads all over the dining room table, safely dragged back to my nest where I can stare at the shiny for a nice long time.