“Meeting in the middle” is the best phrase I could come up with to describe this pair of handmade rings — one darkened, one unpolished, raw and new.

In wearing them together, the dark ring will become lighter, the white ring will begin to darken; they evolve together towards a natural shine and meet upon a silver middle-ground. They change with your body chemistry, gaining character with your daily habits and routine, showing gleam and shine from how you touch other objects.

These rings are made of fine silver — a softer, purer material than sterling. Unlike conventional jewellery (that values hardness), these rings will become you, carry marks you make and bear your imprint as you wear them. It also means they can’t take harsh blows, therefore needing a little more care than your typical sterling ring. The white ring has a carved pattern that’s reflected in the dark ring, where the same pattern is raised instead of sunken. These rings are individually sculpted and not cast from a mould.

At $80 CAD per pair (yes it’s a bargain for both rings!), they are designed to be worn together on the same finger; however, if you would like them in two different sizes, whether for a loved one or if you want to wear them on different fingers, that can also be arranged. if you’d like them specially made for you. :)

So, the price is $255 USD, including registered shipping. I’ll even giftwrap it for you. Just by Oct 16 if you’d like to place an order.

Anyway, here’s a close up of my prototype that’s not yet wholly polished:

Here’s a sneak peak at one of the latest pieces I’m working on: the earbuds necklace.

This is a long single chain that you can wear whichever way you want. The entire necklace is sterling silver, the earbuds are solid silver, so you will feel the weight somewhat. Unlike a conventional necklace, this stylish handmade piece is “alive” — it will shift with your body gestures and movements. Also unlike conventional necklaces, you don’t fasten it at the back, as you’ll see in my demo video below:

Yes, I admit that this is a comment on how earbuds have become an unwitting widespread fashion accessory. Perhaps this provides a chance to wear earphones when social occasions don’t permit. Or as a friend said: it makes you look hip even if you can’t afford an iPhone!

You can be as creative or as experimental as you like with how you choose to wear this necklace. However, I’m also working on a version that is fixed and fastens at the back of the neck, which may be better for you if you don’t think you would enjoy the living/moving model or if you tend to prefer your accessories to be quick to put on and take off. These will both be fairly exclusive; I only plan on making a few of each model.

There will be an etsy shop up soon for things I’ve been working on. If you can’t wait or if you’d like one of these before Christmas (or any time, for that matter), just !

While we’re accustomed to associating the taste (and smell) of popcorn with that velvety buttery, salty taste of those you get at movie theatres, popcorn was discovered by Native Americans and has had a long and interesting history. Apparently, they were traditionally done with herbs, but for the world of me I can’t seem to find the reference to this today.

Chowhound has a long thread about making popcorn. Recipes are easily found online, and the historical recipes in “Popped Culture“, a book on the social history of popcorn in America, carry some most fascinating … uh, concoctions.

Here’s how I do my popcorn:

1. I use a 2 litre non-stick saucepan with a lid, it makes plenty enough popcorn. (And I figure if all this gets eaten in one sitting, it doesn’t take that long to make another fresh batch.)
2. I pour in enough oil to just cover the bottom of the pot, probably amounting to 3 or 4 tablespoons, and turn the stovetop burner to high heat.
3. Then I pour in enough organic popcorn to cover the bottom of the saucepan in a single layer, add herbs as desired and a little salt. I typically just sprinkle enough herbs to lightly cover the kernels.
4. I swirl the corn around in the herbs and oil so they are well covered, and while the corn heats up, I continue to gently shake the contents by moving the saucepan back and forth just over the burner. Some methods recommend keeping the lid at a slight angle to let steam escape, but I haven’t found this to be necessary.
5. You’ll hear the number of pops increases, rise to a crescendo (what music!) by which time I typically turn the heat down to medium.
6. When the popping slows down to one or two per second, I remove it from the stove and pour it all into a big bowl, where I add more salt. I’ve found that when you add salt later while the corn is still warm, the salt is more evenly coated over the freshly popped corn and you won’t need to add as much.

For whatever reason, my recipes all taste better by the time the popcorn has cooled a little.

Contrary to what we may first think —which may be getting the saucepan as hot as possible and keeping it as hot as possible — getting the corn to pop evenly is about increasing the pressure, and getting the corn kernels to a uniform pressure until the corn begins to pop. After some time, it’ll practically cause a chain reaction by energy released with each pop, so you don’t actually need to add extra heat by the time you have a good amount of popping going on if you keep the lid on tight. Therefore, you don’t need a lot of oil either. The oil can speed up the even heating of the kernels and flavour the popcorn, but too much will probably result in soggy popcorn. Keeping in mind that the hottest part of the saucepan is still the bottom and that already popped corn can act as an insulating layer, moving the saucepan around the burner helps ensure the unpopped kernels don’t burn, but remain at the bottom where it is hottest. This also helps to make sure the herbs, spices or salt continue to mix well throughout the popping process.

So, here are a couple of my favourite herb+spice+oil combinations:

• olive oil, 1 part paprika, 2 part dried oregano, 1 part sea salt
• olive oil, 2 part garam masala, 1 part tarragon, 1 part sea salt and/or herb salt

Warning: they can be highly addictive. The good thing here is that if you’ve made your own, you know exactly what went into it, and you can choose to stick to healthier ingredients.

Some Chowhound recipes recommend coconut oil or grapeseed oil. The latter sounds great, though the former makes me think it won’t help my waistline!

I didn’t think much of it then, but as I was setting up my own studio little by little, I knew I’d like to throw as little harmful substance down the sink as possible. I had a good supply of these strange little nuts from a tiny shop in Melbourne where Mara told me I could find them, but I would be needing more — only then it occurred to me to see if I could find anything about these magic nuts. If there are ways to make the process of creating jewellery more environmentally-friendly, I want to know how.

It took about an hour of hunting online, but I finally found what I was looking for. In English, they are simply called “soap nuts”, or “soapberries”, and there’s even a Wikipedia entry for them.

Soap nuts are incredibly versatile, they are the ultimate general-purpose cleaning agent. These seems to be endless uses for them, anything from laundry detergent to household cleaner. But as a jeweller, notes like this are particularly interesting:

Soap nuts are used by Indian and Indonesian jewelers to polish and remove the tarnish from gold, silver, and other precious metals.

I’ve found almost nothing written about the technique online, so here’s what Mara taught me:

1. Boil some water.
2. Once boiled, pour the water into a pot or a container that can handle the heat, preferably with a cover. I’ve noticed the soap-solution is more effective if left to sit overnight, so you would want to keep this in a place where it stays clean and re-usable.
3. Take a soap nut, and hold it up to a flame until the leather skin sizzles a bit and begins to turn black, until the skin starts coming away a little from the inner seed. You can do this any way that you deem safe; I’ve held a nut with long metal tweezers to a candle or a cigarette lighter.
4. Drop the soap nut into the pot or container of boiled water. Sometimes, the skin will flake off into the water; this is perfectly okay, even desirable, seeing as the saponin (the soapy substance) is in the skin.
5. Use a metal brush or polishing cloth, dip it into water and use the water to polish your silver or gold.

The shine you get from this “polish” will surprise you. It does get a little wet, so I keep an amply supply of drying cloths or paper towels around.

So, where can you get these? There are a number of shops online that sell soap nuts, though mostly for laundry purposes. I happen to live close to several grocery stores that sell Indian produce and decided to go and find out if any of them happens to stock these. Finally, in a narrow middle aisle in one of them, tucked under things like tumeric and ground cumin, I found a small packet of “Aritha”. I paid $2 for about 30 nuts or so. Cool, no?

The lore around the moonstone typically associates it with a wind or water element and is — it goes without saying — closely linked to the moon and its goddesses. Its symbolisms are plenty: anything from balancing emotions to fertility and intuition; attributes fairly typical of a stone related to wind or water.

I encountered the labradorite much later in life without knowing what it was, though its iridescent qualities reminded me much of the moonstone. In delving a little more into the mineral composition, it’s no wonder that these two stones are closely related: they are both feldspar minerals. I know too little about how the chemical composition works, but the lore around the labradorite is as weighted as that of the moonstone. Consider this list of metaphysical properties; there are many others, and it’s curious that we should attribute so much meaning and power to a gemstone.

Of all the lore that exists about the labradorite, one little thing that caught my attention is that the labradorite is also called “the dark side of the moon”.

That was all the inspiration I needed for this piece: a necklace featuring a gorgeous labradorite bead with satellite moonstones as the center piece, held together with erratic macramé of black cotton and dyed hemp, punctuated with smaller moonstone and labradorite beads.

2009 Oct Update: This necklace now belongs to Nicole Sullivan.

It’s always fascinating to know what is thought of “tourist-while” fare. Throughout my days in Corsica, it became obvious that the most jewellery sold featured “l’oeil de Sainte-Lucie“, the white shell with a mathematically perfect grey-brown spiral that comes from the opening of the Turban snail shell. Only once, I noted the use of particular stones I have never seen before. Though, when politely enquiring as to their origins with my passable but awkward French, I scored some bewildered looks. (Eventually, I realised it’s possible to find these stones on the beach.)

Unfortunately, such a gorgeous and natural element is often set in metal in rather conventional styles; I fancied that if I found my own “eyes”, it’d be interesting to experiment on what could be done. However, no one’s going to tell a tourist where les yeux can be easily found. The big shell you see in this photo is one I picked out from a shop in Calvi; the shell had been machine-smoothened and was hanging from a cheap piece of double-knotted string. Here, I’ve re-worked it with Japanese hemp (the best there is) in loose macramé and wooden beads dismantled from necklaces I’d previously picked up from South East Asia. The tiny shells are actually ones I managed to find while we stopped for lunch at a beach just outside of Cargese. It takes some beachcombing skill to spot these on a beach, I assure you!

The legends of Sainte-Lucie vary, but generally had to do with her being a miracle healer, a Christian whose eyes were gouged out — whether by soldiers or a jealous husband. In some versions of the myth, she threw her own eyes into the sea to keep her faith/virginity. What actually fascinates me is the notion of luck that’s associated with the shell. Aside from the traditional symbolism of the spiral, it’s also said to ward off the evil eye — which is an interesting topic all on its own.

While Corsica prided itself on these shells, it nagged me that I’ve seen these elsewhere on my travels, so it must not have been all that local to the Mediterranean. I skeptically wondered if many of the pieces I saw in shops were perhaps imported.

As it turns out, these shells have numerous names:

The most popular name of this stone is “Shiva Eye”. Also in other areas of the world this lucky stone is well known, but with different names. In Asia people call it “Shiva Eye” or “Buddha Eye”. In Australia and New Zealand it is known as “Cat’s Eye”, in South Africa as “Money of Mermaids”, in Greece “Naxos Eye”, in Italy “L’ocio di Santa Lucia” or generally “Sea Eye”.

The “cat’s eye” referred here is not to be confused with the other “cat’s eye”, which usually refers to chrysoberyl.

The prized l’oeil de Sainte-Lucie is also found in the Philippines and many pieces of these shell jewellery are made in Indonesia.

While I’m no longer the wary traveller who cares much about being “cheated” of a local experience (I prefer to think that if I’d chosen something it was because it mattered at the time), it’s yet another challenge for someone who has a love of making things. How, as an artisan, do we survive the thirst of the world that expects us to make what they think is beautiful and desirable enough to take home as a souvenir, as opposed to what may be unique and special?