Summer in the High Desert

Summer is in full swing here in our little corner of Nevada, with temps consistently in the 90’s during the day. It’s mostly tolerable, as it always cools down at night, except for these damn hot flashes I have been having. I can’t really complain, other than my disappearing waistline, the hot flashes have been pretty much the only negative side effect of menopause, so far anyway. A funny thing I have discovered about aging, that despite the wrinkles, gray hair and extra pounds, I find I like myself more with each passing year, which is something I didn’t expect. I look back at pictures of myself 10, 20, 30 years ago and can’t believe how insecure I was back then.

That’s me on the left, 1983, 19 years old. I thought I was too fat. I wish I could go back in time and tell that young woman how beautiful she really is but I wouldn’t have believed it anyway.

So along with the warmer weather, we have also had some amazing sunsets…

And awesome thunderstorms…

This area has so much to offer and we have been trying to enjoy as much of it as we can. We’ve discovered some great mountain bike and hiking trails, and exploring some of the local lakes, like Topaz Lake and Kirkwood Lakes. A couple of weeks ago I took a hike to Winnemucca Lake near Carson Pass and the wildflowers were amazing. It’s a popular trail so it was fairly crowded but still gorgeous…

In between all this fun and exploring I have managed to spend some time in the studio working on some new earrings…

On the pieces with the gold I used an ancient Korean technique I taught myself some years ago called Keum-boo, where gold foil is permanently bonded to silver. I think it adds such a nice splash of color, especially when you add a patina to darken the silver and highlight the contrast. I had fun with all the stones in these, starting clockwise at the top left, I used labradorite, Keshi pearls, green tourmaline, iolite and citrine, and cool green prehnite. All these pieces are up in my shop now.