It’s official: I love making woven jewelry.  I’m still using designs and instructions from Jodi Bombardier’s book Weave Wrap Coil, but I’m just about ready to strike out on my own with my own designs (I even woke up this morning with a great idea for a star pendant, which I promptly sketched out for future reference).

Yesterday Jim and his band were at an all-day recording session – the CD they cut sounds great – which meant that I had an entire day, minus two hours to watch the season two finale of Downton Abbey, in which to make jewelry.  Fran’s birthday was a couple of days ago, so I thought I’d make her a ring, which of course means making a prototype/test model first (never give someone the first version of a piece of jewelry, unless you’re really really good, which I’m not).  The two rings that I made are vastly disappointing; one, a coiled ring with a bead between bead caps, looks cute on the table but a bit odd on the hand.  The second, a knotted woven ring, frustrated me beyond measure.  I made a long straight stretch of perfectly woven wire (best weaving I’d ever done), which I then wrapped around a ring mandrel, then took the two ends and tied them in a knot as instructed.  The ring looked great…but the flaw of the design (or perhaps, to be fair, my execution of the design) became clear once I snipped the ends of the knots on the underside of the ring.  No amount of filing could smooth those ends sufficiently to keep my finger from being cut by them, and the more I worked on making the ring smooth, the more screwed up my formerly beautiful weaving became.  It’s a mess, and way too sharp to be worn.

So then I decided to finish with a pair of earrings to match the necklace and pendant I made two weeks ago.  And I LOVE those earrings!  In my stash of beads I found small white freshwater pearls that dangle perfectly and add the right spark of brightness to the deep purple of the wire.  And my weaving looks terrific on these earrings – even and flawless.  I’m thinking that perhaps a pair of these earrings, in silver with black freshwater pearls, would be the better solution for a birthday gift for Fran…and I’m guessing my sister will probably want a pair, too…and Judy’s birthday is today…and then I’m hoping to have a booth at the farmer’s market this summer, and I would wager that these earrings would be a big seller, if I can make enough of them.

Here are the photos of yesterday’s projects – click on images to enlarge, and please leave feedback for me (good and bad, I’ll take it all).  Also note that some of the photos are a bit dark because I used the macro setting on my camera to show more detail.  Update at 3:15 PM:  Just finished – hot off the pliers, so to speak – the earrings in silver with black pearls: