Swimming pools

Lately I have been spending more time swimming laps than making jewelry, so I decided to post pictures of swimming pools I like. And since this is a jewelry blog, I decided to add a Bead Parlor bracelet for good measure - a bracelet made with lovely metal beads and tiny Swarovski crystals. Shelley Nybbake designs them, and one of my favorite sayings "we don't do dainty" is from her blog.

The two pools you can see are in New York and Berlin. The top one is in Berlin; in fact, it is a huge container in a river (the Spree, if I'm not mistaken). My friend Frauke hangs out there, and you probably have to look as good in a bikini as she does to do so.

The second picture is more my cup of tea - dumpsters in Brooklyn. Maybe it made the news in the States and everybody has seen this picture already, but those three dumpster pools sure look inviting to me. Not that the public has been invited yet, from what I gather they've only been made available to a select group of New Yorkers. At least it doesn't look like you have to be able to wear a bikini to swim there!

I swim laps in a pool that is not in a river and not in a dumpster but in the middle of the forest, and so it is called "Waldschwimmbad" - "Forest Swimming Pool" (I just remembered this is supposed to be a bilingual blog); it's huge. And whe you don't have little kids jumping on your back as you swim by you get all this great oxygen from the trees .... speaking of which ..... it's a rainy day again, and those are the best days at the pool in August ... schönen Sonntag! ("Have a nice Sunday").

Danny's Perfection

Danny Lennertz, another one of my favorite teachers, makes some pretty perfect stuff. The pendant on the left and right are made of precious metal clay. Under her aegise it really does look precious, too. Sometimes I think precious metal stuff looks stark and harsh, and too *standardized* because so many people seem to work with patterned molds. The name of the right angel wing necklace on the right is *Flight of Love*, if I'm not mistaken. I think I read somewhere that it took her 12 hours to make. That's why it's so stunning. It reminded me of the wing of "Michael", the angel movie. There's been a lot of talk about precious metal clay on all sorts of blogs, so I had my sister-in-law explain to me what it is. Sounded intriguing and intimidating. Then I googled around a bit and found http://www.argentice.co.uk/, a website that specializes in selling precious metal clay and everything you need to work with it; they have a 20-minute video on YouTube which is as smooth as silk. When you're done watching it you feel psyched. I recommend it.

And some day, when I've mastered it, I'm heading over to Cornwall where those twelve British *senior* chicks who posed in the nude for the calendar for charity to take a couple of courses here: http://www.mcsj.co.uk/Lisa.html

In the mean time I'll be finishing a bracelet for Danny which looks like a Woodstock hippie shag. Its closure is a sparkly vintage Czech crystal that was an earring (part of a matching necklace and earring) that my dad gave to my mom for their first Christmas together almost sixty years ago. The rest is seed beads and delicas and tiny little Svarovskys and pearls as a fringe. That's what gives it the Woodstocky shag look.

It will have to remain a mystery for now, because I am unable to upload it ......... XOXOXOXOX

Perfection

I just spent the last few hours reading blogs about translations and translators; a great way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon. A great way to spend time, period. I hadn't realized that there were so many out there and I didn't know how good they were. Informative and entertaining and illuminating and interesting and fascinating .... But still I wondered if these translation bloggers didn't ever have to deal with imperfection, i.e. their own imperfection? It's so fun dealing with everybody else's imperfections, especially if you're a translator, language is such a perfect object of projection.

So instead of including an imperfect translation of mine - of which there are many - I decided to include an "imperfect" bracelet. I discovered the design for it in a book about beading and I thought it looked lovely and fairly simple to make. Wrong. I spent hours trying to figure out how to interpret the instructions and then hours doing it; I ordered the wrong shapes and sizes and colors of the beads, and I never did figure out what I did wrong and what I could have done to improve it. (Actually it was my second attempt, the first one was even worse). Still, it ended up a bracelet that looks pretty from a distance (at least I think so). And now try double-clicking on it. If you do, all of its flaws and irregularities look pretty glaring.

And so I am continually amazed that I read so little about "imperfection" in language and writing blogs. I've been in the translation business for more than twenty-five years now, and I continue to be overwhelmed by the endless potential pitfalls.

Jewelry and beading blogs are different. In fact, beaders are pretty fascinating that way. Especially beaders who make their own glass beads. They show you this solutely perfect bead they've just completed, and you say "wow", and they say "oh no, look at all these flaws ... here here and here".

Unfortunately, in all my imperfection, I have to open up a new post to be able to attach a picture (that is why yesterday's Porsche logo is mixed in with jewelry, in case you were wondering), so that I will wait until tomorrow to post what I think is a "perfect" bead, and a "perfect" precious metal clay pendant, made by one of my favorite bead artists, Danny Lennertz.

Das Leben ist ein Kreuz .....

I couldn't think of a title for this blog, on account of the fact that I was determined to post one of my favorite designs by one of my favorite designers, i.e. Marcia DeCoster. And so I gave it a German title, making it sound fancier for those of you who don't speak German ... Loosely translated perhaps: Life's a bitch; literally: Life's a cross. That's how I felt the last couple of days trying to upload pictures from my camera to the computer for this blog. The process kept messing up my computer, either that or my computer is about to kick the bucket (German: "den Geist aufgeben": "give up its spirit").

But Marcia's cross designs are light and opulent. Especially the one on the right. I used off-white Czech seed beads and opaque aqua Svarovski crystals and some gold and bronze delicas. Some day I hope to attend a course of hers - hopefully next year, she's going to be teaching in Hannover. I'll keep you posted. The above is a new book of hers which comes out in September.

The large bead that acts as a closure is probably a product of child-labor, which I didn't know when I bought it. I was told afterwards that when you buy hand-made glass beads for 20 cents they are usually made by Chinese kids. Some day, as a special treat, I'll give you a little preview of what my attempts at making glass beads look like ....

Seeing I lived in Stuttgart for a few years, here's also to Wendelin Wiedeking's swan song ...

The incredible lightness of being ...

... I don't seem to be feeling. It took me two days to figure out how to take pictures and up- and download them on my computer, during which I blasted my television channels into the ether, and then my Internet. I spent hours on the phone getting to know the guys at the technical department of my internet provider; I hope it was worth it, because in the midst of everything else I discovered that what I had thought were pictures were actually little clips. When I'd click them, the images would whizz around and I'm afraid you could hear me swearing in the background. I was quite shocked, and I hope none of the pictures I'm going to post now come alive. How embarrassing ....

The above necklace is my very own version of the heavily clunky necklace of the Asam store. Mine has semi-precious stones, too, but it also has pearls from Hongkong, and Bali silver, and Sarowski crystal and tiny little painted shards. It's nice to wear because it's light, especially in summer.

Asam Church & Co.

Here is the store in Munich next to the Asam Church where you can buy the clunky jewelry. The more oppulent facade in the middle of the pictures is the Asam Church itself, to the left of it you can see yellow awnings, that is the store. Today when I googled the church I found out that the store is in the Asam building. Apparently the Asam brothers lived here. That is why it used to be called "Asamhaus".

In case you were wondering, this (above) is what the church itself looks like from the inside. It was completely destroyed by bombs in 1944 and restored - "lovingly restored", as it is referred to in Bavarian guide books - from 1975 to 1983 (actually it is being restored again right now and won't reopen until late September, 2009, just in time for Munich's Oktoberfest). It's a tiny church, 160 square meters, and one of the many things it is famous for is the "Sensenmann", an allegorical personification of death in the form of a golden skeleton, dangling in one of the corners, if I remember correctly. Spooked the heck out of me when I saw it for the first time.

And, since this blog is called jewelry and not churches, I added an example of the kind of jewelry the two gals make who reside in the Asamhaus; the coloring of the stones reminds of the facade of the church which itself is sort of reminiscent of the Bavarian Alps, a chalky grey.

Polymer Clay

Isn't this a beautiful example of a polymer clay necklace? My sister-in-law Judith made it for her son's girl-friend; actually she made the necklace for a specific dress. And you should see the necklace and the dress together. Actually, you do. It's the top picture. Loverly (got this word from a fab British blog). The thing about polymer clay jewelry is that it is also nice to wear, feels good on the skin and is light. I don't know about you, but I don't like heavy necklaces clunking around my neck.

There's a jewelry store in Munich right next to the Assam Kirche church (used to be the tourist shop), like the church, the store looks like it was hammered right into stone. Really fabulous, and great location. And the necklaces the two goldsmiths who work there make are absolutely gourgeous, all made of precious and semi-precious stones. Rocks, rather. They look like they weigh a ton. Actually like they llok like weigh about as much as the Assam church. And so that is what makes this kind of jewelry so wearable. Its lightness. And the fact that you can fashion it exactly to match the dress you're wearing.

Murano Perlen

Here's one of my favorite bracelets of mine - now I finally understand why some painters have such a hard time selling their own pictures. I can't seem to part with this one, although I never wear it. And the reason for my inability to part with it is the tiny center bead. It is a vintage Murano bead (Petra Reski, ignore this post - Petra lives in Venice and CANNOT STAND Murano and/or their cloying customers). It was part of a necklace I bought 15 years ago in what the Germans refer to as "Haushaltsauflösung" (= the resolution of a household, in other words a fancier and more definite form of a garage sale). The lady whose Haushalt was being aufgelöst (today the post is not only bilingual, it is Denglish) was a superrich gal - part of the Budweiser Clan actually - and travelled all over the world. (No wonder, she had houses stashed away all over the world). This bead that was part of a necklace of hers is lovely, all soft, almost feels like plastic, and it is decorated with tiny little flowers in pink and purple and specks of gold.

I never see Murano stuff like this anymore; when I do see Murano stuff it is prohibitively expensive and prohibitively ugly. Garish glass in garish colors. Nonetheless, says writer Petra Reski of Reskis Republik, the tourists continue to pile into their dozens of stores. (I just made up the dozens, and I don't know if Murano and Venice are recession-proof).

This will be the last of my old pictures of my old pieces of jewelry; both the new digital pictures and the new jewelry are a heck of a lot more sophisticated, so sophisticated in fact that I haven't figured out yet how to get them on this here blog. The newer jewelry is so sophisticated because I have taken to following my favorite beaders' designs until I have all of the different techniques down-pat. And when I do I will be designing my own stuff. Until then I'll refer you to who designed what. And then you can go and see the gourgeous stuff they've posted on their own sites.

Five Easy Pieces

These are my early attempts at beading, I think they date back to 2001 when I was living in Hamburg. My friend Rosemary was still living in Goa* and supplying me with beads she bought at the local markets in Goa and in Bombay, where she reported that beaders sit on the ground in front of their shops beading so fast that they have a second beader sitting there and handing them the beads while they work. Anyway - I'm not a fast beader - I'd combine the Indian beads with Czech and vintage beads I bought in Hamburg - and vintage seed beads I bought in a shop in L.A. (the sparkly purple ones). The bracelets and the cross are stitched/sewn onto a rough muselin cloth and then sewn onto a fabric in a matching color, usually silk.

Beads bought in India are interesting, they're actually much more difficult to use on account of the fact that they are quite irregular, i.e. a lot "sloppier" (and those really are quotation marks!) than, say, Czech beads. The holes in particular are very irregular so that you never know if the needle & thread you are working with is going to fit through the whole - in fact you never know if they're going to crack while you work with them - or worse yet, if they're going to crack after the piece of jewelry has been completed! They're a heck of a lot cheaper, too, so that the beads for this kind of a bracelet can end up costing 13 cents. The very small emerald green and pink beads on the lower bracelet, however, were vintage Czech, I bought them in a beautiful store in Hamburg (Everglaze) - and they cost about 10 bucks. They spiff the bracelet up.

*Now Rosemary and Joss are no longer living in Goa but in Schliersee - a beautiful Bavarian lake/town tucked away in the mountains near the Austrian border - where she is writing a series of novels (guess who the translator is??) whose heroine is a Bavarian detective who travels the world to solve/write about crimes and mysteries and such. The first one takes place in - you guessed it - Goa, and selected chapters will soon be featured on this blog. Stay tuned ......

Frühwerke von mir, 2001. Die Perlen sind aus Hamburg, Goa und Los Angeles. Bunt gemischt. Es macht Spaß, Armbänder zu sticken, aber meine tragen sich nicht gut. Besonders nicht, wenn man am PC arbeitet, und das tut ja heutzutage fast jeder. Die Perlen kratzen dann bei jeder Armbewegung an der Oberfläche des Tisches und brechen ab und geben knarzende Geräusche von sich. Außerdem habe ich damals gelernt, dass es schwierig ist, Armbänder zu fabrizieren, deren TrägerInnen man nicht kennt; meine jedenfalls sind abewechselnd viiiiiel zu weit oder viiiiiel zu schmal. Meinen Cousinen in Chicago waren sie zu schmal, den Kolleginnen meiner Freundin Ruth in New Jersey waren sie viel zu weit; diese mutmaßten "women in the Midwest seem to have wider wrists ......".

My very own blog

So here's my first post, on my very own blog. I hope others enjoy reading it as much as I enjoy reading my bloglist. This one is going to be about jewelry and writing, and sometimes it is going to be bilingual. That means that sometimes it is going to be about Germany, and sometimes it is going to be about the States. I always miss both places simultaneously depending on where I am, and I'm going to to tell you about what that feels like. When I say miss, I mean missing Chicago, my favorite city in the world - or missing Bensheim an der Bergstrasse, where I presently live. Germany's Riviera - without the ocean but with the warm + sunny weather.

This is one of the first bracelets I ever made, and as you can see, it is the VERY FIRST picture I ever uploaded into my blog (I hope that's the correct verb, I don't know the difference between uploading and downloading .....). *Warning: This is not a tech-savvy blog.*

Anyway, this picture was taken by a graphic designer in Hamburg, where I first to learned to bead. It became an instant passion, thanks to my teacher Katharina and my sister-in-law Judith. my own pictures are going to look a lot squigglier. The bracelet ended up being sold in a boutique in Hannover.

Anbei also mein erster Blogeintrag, den ich heute nicht übersetzen werde, da ich ganz erschöpft bin von der technischen *Überforderung* heute (habt Ihr gewußt, dass es nicht mehr schick ist, Anführungszeichen zu setzen? Die Sternchen fungieren so wie "unglaublich manieriert wirkende" Handbewegung, bei der man beidseitig Zeige- und Mittelfinger so bewegt, als würde man ein Anführungszeichen setzen ..... Damit läßt sich fast jede Unverschämtheit in Worte fassen, auch Du *Arschloch*.

Wie auch immer (meine Lieblingsüberleitung wenn ich keine habe), vor neun Jahren habe ich in Hamburg mit Perlchenschmuck angefangen, Katharina und Judith sei dank, und das Armband auf dem Bild ist eines meiner ersten Entwürfe. Es folgen neuere Bilder von älteren/besseren Designs, wenn ich die Kunst des Herunter- bzw. Heraufladens von meiner Digitalkamera begriffen habe (es hat Monate gedauert, bis ich begriffen habe, wie man die Batterien einlegt, also könnt Ihr Euch zeitlich schon mal drauf einrichten).