Slowly

When I broke my shoulder last August, the citrine pictured here was in the machine and ready for adding the concave facets to the pavilion.  And then it sat that way for months.  It took a lot longer than I expected to recover from the joint replacement surgery.  I needed to regain mobility, strength and stamina before I could approach the fantasy machine — especially to deal with such a large stone.  And of course, besides faceting there were many other areas which also had been neglected and needed attention.

When finally finished the stone was 27.29 cts. and measures 30.3 x 12.6 x 9.7 mm.

I did a couple of smaller pieces of smoky quartz as practice getting back up to speed before finishing the citrine.  The octagon shaped one is  4.04 cts. and measures 10.6 x 6.9 mm.  The other is 11.0 x 9.0 mm. and 6.71 cts.  Both have concave facets on the pavilion.

Deck the halls

Last weekend I got the holiday decorations placed and got our Christmas tree up and decorated. This year the tree is the skinny 7′ one that fits in a corner of the living room instead of the 9′ one that takes up the far end of the family room.  Since I started collecting glass ornaments in the late 1970’s, I have a large enough collection to cover both trees.  The 9′ tree has the larger portion of ornaments — birds, flowers, fruits, and geometric shapes.  The rest, probably about 350 ornaments include the santas, snowmen, musical instruments and everything else and are assigned to the 7′ tree.  Doing the tree was an all day task.  It should have been less than that, but at 3 months post shoulder joint replacement surgery, I still lack enough each and stamina to work as in past years.

 

 

 

Pause

It has been a bit over two months since I fractured my arm, seven weeks since the shoulder joint replacement surgery to repair the damage and one week since my right arm was freed from the sling.

So it has been over two months since I was last faceting or gardening or doing routine household chores.

And it will be a while before I am back to doing all those things again as I lack strength and have limited range of motion in the arm. I have been told that most likely it will be another six weeks to get the range of motion, then time to rebuild strength.

Day by day I can do a little bit more. I am hoping that in another week or so I will be able to try faceting again. I need to be able to reach the point where I can inspect the stone, not just work with the machine.

Normally this time of year I would be thinking of what to do about holiday gifts and making plans for Tucson gem shows. Like everything else since the end of August, those making those plans has also been postponed.

Cherry Blossom Time

It has been a cool, wet winter here and the stone fruit trees in our “orchard” are taking their time waking up.  There have been some years where they are almost all in bloom by the second week of February.  Finally the cherry trees are coming into bloom.

There are only a few cherry varieties that will grow in our climate because we do not get near enough winter cold temperatures.  The ones that do grow here require a second variety for pollination.  Initially we had the two available varieties planted together and after several years they finally bloomed and we got a couple handfuls of cherries.  Unfortunately, one of the pair died out over the next couple years as the other matured into a nice sized tree that is covered in flowers in the spring.  A replacement tree was obtained, but unlike some of the other types of stone fruit, cherries are slower to mature.  The newer tree started blooming a couple years ago — but too early for the older tree.  Thus only one or two cherries from all the lovely flowers.  Finally this year, the timing is overlapping.  Maybe there will be a cherry harvest in a few months.

Tucson 2024 – Part 2

I had a day to do laundry and pack for the return to Tucson to be a dealer in the TGMS show.  The first load of laundry was in the machine when the power went out.  As the next hour or so went by, the outages increased and the only explanation from the power company was it was likely due to the storm.  Being that we are in a rural area, it has in the past it has been a day or more before we have power restored.  We have a generator — but it refused to start.

So plans changed.  I packed for the coming week, loaded the car and headed south to LA where my daughter lives.  It was a miserable drive down US 101 in the rain..  Fortunately there were not that many others crazy enough to be out driving in the storm so I could usually keep lots of space between my car and other vehicles.  And the majority of the other drivers were being as cautious in their driving as I was.

Laundry done and a head start for the rest of the drive, accompanied  by my daughter who had been drafted to help at the show, I started out the next day for Tucson.  It rained until we were past Palm Springs.  Unlike the previous day, there was a lot of traffic. First it was just the normal LA traffic, and then more and more of it was big trucks going long distances on I-10.  It was a good feeling when I finally saw familiar Tucson landmarks and got to check in at our hotel.

The next day after I picked up our credentials at the Tucson Convention Center, the storm caught up with us.  The wind was powerful enough to move the orange barricades used in the parking lot and carried small bits that stung exposed skin.  It was the last day for the motel shows on the other side of the freeway and the storm caused some of those in more exposed outside spaces to pack up early.

The weather was definitely the significant feature of the week.   Wednesday morning was set up time.  We were lucky that there was a pause in the precipitation while we hauled things into the building.  As we were heading back to the car after the booth was set up,  a few drops of rain fell.  No sooner than we got in the car, the skies opened.  I decided, to just sit there and wait hoping the cloud burst would go as quickly as it came.  And then the sound of the storm got a lot louder. It was hail!  All we could do was sit there and laugh until it passed (and try to take a few photos of the hail on the windshield).

Thursday morning the show opened to the public.   The ballroom where we were located was opened at 9:30 while the big exhibition hall did not open until 10.  It wasn’t the out-the-door first day crowd I experienced as a visitor to the show pre-pandemic.  As the day went on people trickled through the ballroom.  Some of the other dealers complained that a lot of people just did not realize there were more dealers in the ballroom and only went to the exhibition hall downstairs.  It was interesting that most of the sales that day were cash sales.  We had done okay.  Enough excess cash to make a deposit in the bank before heading to the hotel and then out to dinner.

Friday the show opened at 9am for local school children to visit the show and participate in special educational programs.  The show dealer chair took note of the complaints about traffic to the ballroom and for the remainder of the show, the hourly announcements included mention of  more dealers in the ballroom.  That did seem to help bring more traffic.  Of course, there wasn’t all that much I had to offer for the kids to purchase so the increase in people coming by did not help overall sales.  The major difference was that on Friday, more of the sales were using credit cards rather than cash.

Saturday morning started with more rain and a much bigger crowd in line to enter the show.  However, our sales did not reflect that increase.  There were actually fewer sales and only two stones not from the $50 and under boxes.  Only one of the sales was a cash sale.  So the day was a bit disappointing.  Lots of people came by and admired what was on display, but they were not buying.  I was getting the feeling that the most of the people who would be interested in the gems I had to offer had already left Tucson.

As expected, Sunday was slow.  It was also Super Bowl Sunday, so there was extra completion for the public’s attention and our sales reflected that. As a result, I had a chance to make a quick tour of the exhibition hall.   Several of the dealers were already packing well before the 4pm official show closing.  Tear down always goes faster than set up and it wasn’t long before we had everything back in the car and were heading to the hotel.

Monday morning we started for home. This time the trip was a very long but uneventful drive in good weather.

Tucson 2024 was history.