Back in the Saddle Again

View in Big Sur

We got back from California two weeks ago and boy am I sorry I left!  The snow and cold has descended upon us with a fury and I was much happier in the 60-70 degree weather we had while away.  And speaking of snow, now that we have multiple feet on the ground and more on the way, parking in Cambridge has gotten even worse than it usually is.  So I wanted to remind you that we do have one parking space available most of the time we are open.  You just need to call ahead of time and I can tell you where it is and whether or not it is available.

Our trip however was quite wonderful.  We had perfect weather and for the first time in years it was actually green when we got out there thanks to a couple of large rainstorms they had.  Unfortunately California has had so many years of drought that they really need a lot more rain, but it was even more beautiful this year thanks to what they did get.  My younger son is living in California now and my older one came out to San Francisco for a friend's art opening so we had the entire family together for the first time in two years for a few days while we were there.

As always the Big Sur scenery is amazing (the picture above is one I took when I walked up the mountain road behind our inn) and one customer in particular is benefiting from my trip as he had ordered one of my Big Sur rings just before I left and I re-sketched some of my favorite mountains while I was out there and used one of the sketches for his ring. I once again would like to recommend that any of you who are looking to travel in the Big Sur area check out the inn we stay at: Ventana.  If you're more into camping, Ventana has a beautiful campground as well. Besides the wonderful accommodations and surrounding views the staff is always quite wonderful and helpful. 

In the meanwhile, I am back at my bench.  Valentine's Day is coming and I'm starting to work on one of my Valentine's Day pins (an almost annual tradition here).  The pendant below is a custom piece I made up this past Christmas that had a wonderful piece of jadeite in it.  I don't often get requests for jade and the reality is that very small pieces of fine jade can be hugely expensive (perhaps one of the reasons I don't get more requests).  This piece that I found for the customer had a wonderful luminous quality to it that was quite exceptional. 

Jade Pendant in 18k Yellow Gold

If you're new to my blog please make sure you check out my blog directory that you can find a link to on the right of the page here.  I believe my next article is going to be about tourmalines, one of my favorite gemstones. 

New From Old

I often talk about how I am happy to take in old gold pieces you might own and give you a scrap credit towards new work I can do for you.  I have also often talked about how I am happy to work with your stones as I believe firmly you retain the most amount of value by keeping them.   So here are some pictures of what I can do for you.  One of my regular readers (Hi Helen!) brought in some old gold and stones she had:

gold scrap

If you look at the small pile in the lower center of the picture you'll see two pieces with diamonds in them and a jade pendant.  Helen wanted to reuse these stones and some of my fancy colored sapphires in a pendant design based on my black mobe pearl rings pendant:

18k and 22k gold  pendant with South Sea black mobe pearl, sapphires, diamonds and emerald.

I was able to give Helen a $900 credit towards the job and this is what I came up with for her:

18k and 22k yellow gold pendant with jade, diamonds and fancy colored sapphires

I enjoyed working on this project because I happen to like the design to begin with, I was able to utilize a number of her stones in it, and we came up with something that was beautiful all at the same time. 

So if you have a bunch of old stuff lying around somewhere bring it in and let's see what we can work out together!