Crafts on the Coast

Our last show of the season is rapidly approaching! I will be removing many of my ceramic pendants from my Good Dirt Jewelry Etsy shop to take to the Crafts on the Coast Annual Harvest and Holidays Art and Craft Fair in Yachats, Oregon. This is a wonderful venue for a show and there is always a great variety of artists, not to mention the location :) If you have "bookmarked" any pendants as possible holiday gifts, you may want to go take a second look before they are gone. I'm thinking positive here! Everyone is going to be in the holiday shopping mood the first weekend in November, and I'm going to sell every pendant I take :)

I've also just finished some new Runic and starfish pendants, so if you are planning on being in Yachats, Oregon the first weekend in November, stop in and say "Hi!".

A Little Cross Promotion!

Many of you that enjoy our Ogham jewelry have told us that you are involved in the SCA, so I thought I would do a little cross promotion for some of our newest items in our Grizzly Mountain Arts Etsy shop :)

Dave has just completed 8 new fossil ivory nalbinding needles. He made these ooak medieval needles from a variety of materials including deer antler and fossil walrus and mammoth ivory. These can be found in the Fiber Art Tool section of our GMA Etsy shop. The gorgeous blue fossil mammoth ivory nalbinding needle in the photo is currently up for auction on Ebay.

I've Been Featured!

What a wonderful way to start the day!

Caren from Handcrafted Visions, has featured my Old Irish Blessing Stone Pendant on her blog! Thank you so much for taking the time to do this!

Be sure to go check out her wonderful blog that features many other talented artists!

New Old Irish Blessing Stone Pendants

Two new Old Irish Blessing Stone Pendants were added to my Good Dirt Jewelry shop today!

These Blessing Stones are patterned after the Buckquoy spindle whorl, which was excavated in Buckquoy, Birsay, Orkney, Scotland in 1970. The old Irish Ogham inscription is believed to date back to the 8th century. Historians believe it was a standard Old Irish ogham benedictory message, Benddact anim L. meaning "a blessing on the soul of L.". The stone from which the whorl was made, and on which the inscription was written, is native to Orkney.

Celtic Spinning Dragons Earthenware Ceramic Pendant

Made with love on Grizzly Mountain!

I created this "Celtic Spinning Dragons" piece from earthenware clay. It has been glazed with an earthy iron ore glaze. Measuring about 1 1/4" in diameter, this pendant hangs from an 18" ball and chain necklace. Don't forget--you can click the photo to get a closer look!

**Dragons in Celtic Mythology**

According to Wikipedia, "In Britain, the dragon is now more commonly associated with Wales due to the national flag having a red dragon (Y Ddraig Goch) as its emblem and their national rugby union and rugby league teams are known as the dragons. This may originate in Arthurian Legend where Myrddin, employed by Gwrtheyrn, had a vision of the red dragon (representing the Britons) and the white dragon (representing the invading Saxons) fighting beneath Dinas Emrys. The red dragon was linked with the Britons who are today represented by the Welsh (and Cornish), and it is believed that the white dragon refers to the Saxons who invaded Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries. This particular legend also features in the Mabinogion in the story of Llud and Llefelys."

A Little Celtic Love

My laptop is still down, so I haven't been as prolific online as I'd like to be. I was able to add this "Celtic Love" and three other new pendants to my Good Dirt Jewelry Etsy shop.

This "Celtic Love" pendant is made from earthenware clay and has been accented with a very old African Krobo bead. It has been glazed to have a distressed look. The cord is a wonderful faux suede material that doesn't "shed" on your clothes like real suede does and is very easy to tie so your pendant can compliment any neckline. If faux suede is not your favorite material and you prefer to wear your pendant on a chain, you can easily remove it.

What are African Krobo Beads?

Krobo powder glass beads are made in vertical molds fashioned out of a special, locally dug clay. Most molds have a number of depressions, designed to hold one bead each, and each of these depressions, in turn, has a small central depression to hold the stem of a cassava leaf. The mold is filled with finely ground glass that can be built up in layers in order to form sequences and patterns of different shapes and colors. The technique could be described as being somewhat similar to creating a sand "painting" or to filling a bottle with different-colored sands and is called the "vertical-mold dry powder glass technique". When cassava leaf stems are used, these will burn away during firing and leave the bead perforation. Certain powder glass bead variants, however, receive their perforations after firing, by piercing the still hot and pliable glass with a hand-made, pointed metal tool. Firing takes place in clay kilns until the glass fuse.

Celebrating Another Anniversary!

We'll be traveling to celebrate another anniversary this weekend!

In our former lives, we worked and traveled at the pleasure of the Department of the Interior, more precisely the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Over the course of his career, Dave managed some of the largest game ranges in the United States, with the most recent being Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. We spent six years in Burns, which is located in eastern Oregon and is also known as the "Oregon Outback". This weekend, Malheur NWR will be celebrating it's 100th anniversary as a National Wildlife Refuge and we have been invited to attend!

Also, Rogue Ales has released a Great Egret Pale Ale to commemorate this event!

If you try to contact us via email or Etsy convo this weekend, we will reply as soon as we return on Sunday. Thanks to Hurricane Ike, the motherboard for my laptop is still sitting in Houston.