Winners Garnets and Ginger

The September challenge was fun - I wound up with a pretty good showing, but didn't end up voting for myself - there was some work which really blew me away including this, the winner, from Manek Lady.

Isn't it just amazing?

In local news, I've found the best scone in Minneapolis. It's at Cafe Maude which I just can't say enough great things about. Whether you opt for the buttermilk, or the blueberry ginger, you will find it has a palatable texture, something most scones totally fail, amazing flavor that only actual butter and good ingredients will give, and best of all, an appropriate size, so you can feel momentarily naughty and not like you are indulging in the dietary setback from hell. No overinflated Starbucks sawdust packet - this is a thing of beauty. Get the blueberry ginger (yes ginger, just the right amount, too) and pair it with the chai teabag and go stroll in the southwest metro rain by the creek.

I did.


Now that I'm warm and dry, I've been playing more with those garnet marquise beads:




Rhodolite garnet, 24K plated delicas, a little goldfilled clasp. Something elegant and quasi-ancient looking.

About Ensō

So I'm probably better known for my costume jewelry line, Bombalurina. It's a fun, vibrant, and fabulous romp through design history, but it's not where I started and it's not all I do.

Beadweaving was my first introduction to jewelry, and my first love.

I spent the better part of a year doing nothing but beadweaving - learning and mastering the major stitches, making huge meandering freeform items, losing myself in the cheerful and eccentric color palettes of seed beads. I still love that kind of work.

Only I don't wear that kind of work.

I have infinite appreciation for intensive elaborate beadwork, and I've made my share of outsized collar necklaces. Even won at the Minnesota State fair - second place - not bad for a relative neophyte up against the likes of various people who have written many a book on how to bead. (Minnesota has a freakish claim to many of the major artists in the bead world - Nancy Eha, Diane Fitzgerald, Bonnie Voelker, need I go on?)

But I don't wear this type of jewelry.

I don't know what exactly motivated me to start weaving with small, expensive, little bits of metal on silk, and I strongly doubt that this was something no one else had thought to do, but if they have I don't know about it. Maybe it was the realization that my 2mm crimps are about the size of a delica bead. Maybe it was fretting over the fact that those plated delicas are going to rub free of plating if you wear those pieces every day (not that you would, but what if you could?)


My goal with Ensō is to create something modernist, minimal, elegant and more upscale, in complete contrast to my enjoyment of inexpensive and vintage materials as expressed in my costume line. Something modernist, minimal,timelessly chic, something I would wear without irony, to my best outings or my serious dinners.

This is jewelry I wear.

I never could reconcile the latent modernist in me with the junkhound. So I'm not going to try. This line has a wonderful specificity to it and I'm proud to put my name on it. This is my art.