Love Token Necklaces

If you're searching for a nice gift, I'll be listing quite a few love token necklace in my Etsy shop in November. From the early 1800s to the early 1900s, tokens made from coins were given to loved ones by suitors, friends and family. One side (sometimes both sides) of the coin were smoothed down and engraved with initials, names, phrases and/or scenes. The Seated Liberty dime from the 1850s–1880s was frequently used, but tokens are known on all U.S. denominations, as well as on many world coin denominations. 

Here's an older picture of some of the tokens my collection, a few of which have already sold. If you're interested in a particular token or necklace in one of the pics, please shoot me an email.

Soon to be listed love token necklaces.

Love tokens available for swapping out.

eggsplosion

I tried to make perfect hardboiled eggs today. I craved them deviled.

I failed to make perfect hardboiled eggs.

In fact, they were the most imperfectly boiled eggs I've ever accomplished.

After their ice bath, I peeled them and, for want of a better phrase, gave them a "squeeze feel." They felt gooshy, not hard, medium boiled at best. So I put them in a glass bowl with no cover and nuked them another minute or so.

While I was waiting for the microwave's ping, I pushed the shells down the disposal and turned it on. It seemed unbalanced and knocky, and I wondered if it were possible for an unbalanced disposal to fly off the pipes, which prompted me to imagine in great detail what would occur should that happen.

I pictured metal bits flying through the cabinet doors under the sink, with shards ripping into my knees and shins, which led me bleakly to pressure cookers and shrapnel and all the images and aftermath of the bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

As I was thinking these things, I took the eggs out of the microwave and dumped them on a paper towel--and one of them exploded, hurling the yolk into my stomach. I shrieked, and then started laughing hysterically. Hysterically.

I looked for an exploding egg image online that would do the
incident justice. I couldn't find one, so I drew this. And now I
see that I somehow managed to give it balls. 

persons

If your name was I, and you wrote a blog about something you'd done that day, you would be writing in first person and third person: "I wrote a blog about what I did today."

If your name was You, and you wrote a blog about something you'd done that day, you would be writing in second person and third person: "You wrote a blog about what you did today."

If your name was We, and you wrote a blog about something you'd done that day, you would be writing in first person and third person: "We wrote a blog about what we did today."

All you want to know about person and form and case: go.

You can't blog, dog.

dreadlocks for Elloree

I just came back from an estate sale half a block from my house. I scored a 200-year-old money bracelet from Ghana with a bunch of other costume jewelry for $20. I researched the bracelet when I got home and found others like it worth $700! But my favorite find was a collection of accordian-folded garlands. The woman in charge of the sale was going to throw them away and let me have them free. The lady who had lived there had made the garlands to cover her windows. She had lined the varying lengths of folded paper on hangers, arrayed along a curtain rod. I used to see her at her mailbox when I'd walk by with my dog, and she always said, "What a handsome dog." I can picture her folding strips of paper from magazines to make the garlands. I think they'll make excellent party decorations. In the meantime, I've hung them on Elloree's antlers.

like a stag in a paper shop

Call me Wallace.

You know when you're sitting around with a person or people and one of you laughs so forcefully you audibly fart? I find that hilarious. I can't keep from laughing. So the other day, Mike and I are sitting around, and this subject comes up, and I say, "Farts are never not funny...at any time...in any language." Then I say, "Oh my god, I have to make a site that translates fart into every language." Mike says, "There's probably one already. Remember baconwater? Remember Pornterest?" And of course there's already a site. Or an app. If you have a eureka moment, as sure as dogs love baconwater, someone has already not only had the same idea but has also implemented it. There will always be a Darwin to your Wallace.

You're never too evolved..

a little coverage goes a long way

Heartfelt thanks to Porthole Cruise Magazine for the wonderful write-up of Millennium General Assembly in its "Savvy Cruiser" department for the February 2013 issue.

My gratitude goes out to managing editor Emma Trelles, art director Laura Roche, and the rest of the editorial staff. If this sounds like an acceptance speech, I guess it sort of is. I gratefully accept this boost, this nod, this affirmation. Media exposure is vital to small businesses like mine trying to get a foothold in a burgeoning field. Now I can add "As seen in Porthole Cruise Magazine" to my press kit.

 

Here's the text:

Fashion Forward
Millennium General Assembly handcrafts its jewelry from vintage and curious baubles, and each one-of-a-kind piece flashes a days-gone-by glamour. Necklaces and bracelets are constructed with Victorian keys and lockets, Old World watch fobs, and antique silver spoons and brooches, to name just a few of the eclectic elements carefully selected and transformed by the company's founder and chief craftswoman Maidel Margulies. In fact, most of the materials used by MGA are repurposed or "revived," which means you can be socially conscious and fashionista-like, all at once. millenniumgeneralassembly.com

YOU CAN BUY MY STUFF ON ETSY

closer to fine

little bit of bokeh, eh?

I just made this more-delicate-than-is-usual-for-me necklace from an antique watch chain and vintage brass rosary chain and a tiny pin I got in Hardy, Arkansas, made of brass and celluloid. The pin was costume jewelry in its day but is closer to fine today.

And here I will confess that I used to perform this song by the Indigo Girls when I lived in the Florida Keys. It was the end of the '80s, and I'm a sucker for a nice melody and decent lyrics, so I was playing Edie Brickell and Suzanne Vega and Emmylou Harris, and if she'd made her break by then, I would have been playing Sheryl Crow, but that would have to wait till the '90s. Before Vega's "Luka" was a hit single, I'd said, "Damn, this song should be a hit single, but it's too dark."

*****

"Closer to Fine" --Amy Elizabeth Ray, Emily Ann Saliers

I'm trying to tell you something about my life

Maybe give me insight between black and white

The best thing you've ever done for me

Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life after all

Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable

And lightness has a call that's hard to hear

I wrap my fear around me like a blanket

I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it, I'm crawling on your shore. 

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains

I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain

There's more than one answer to these questions

Pointing me in crooked line

The less I seek my source for some definitive

The closer I am to fine. 

I went to see the doctor of philosophy

With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee

He never did marry or see a B-grade movie

He graded my performance, he said he could see through me

I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper

And I was free. 

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains

I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain

There's more than one answer to these questions

Pointing me in crooked line

The less I seek my source for some definitive

The closer I am to fine. 

I stopped by the bar at 3 a.m.

To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend

I woke up with a headache like my head against a board

Twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before

I went in seeking clarity. 

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains

I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain

There's more than one answer to these questions

Pointing me in crooked line

The less I seek my source for some definitive

The closer I am to fine. 

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains

I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain

There's more than one answer to these questions

Pointing me in crooked line

The less I seek my source for some definitive

The closer I am to fine. 

We go to the bible, we go through the workout

We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout

There's more than one answer to these questions

Pointing me in a crooked line

The less I seek my source for some definitive

The closer I am to fine

The closer I am to fine

The closer I am to fine

You can buy this necklace soon,
as well as other pieces, in my Etsy shop.