Flower Power & Earthbound Joy

I made a bunch of rings this morning and put this "Flower Weave" bracelet together after the rings had tumbled for a few hours. I got a little carried away, as I often do when I'm weaving rings, and made it a little bigger than I had intended. Too big for my little wrists, but at 7.5" it'll be fine for the average wrist. I make tidy little earrings to go with this weave .. they're up for Tuesday. They're made up of two sets of those three-ring "flower" segments and two sets of the double rings that connect them. I hang them from a simple French wire.

While I was waiting for the rings to tumble, I walked the dog and made a couple of these bracelets. Sometimes the name for a piece comes to me while I'm assembling the stones .. other times the piece sets on my bench for a while before a name will occur to me. Other times I get impatient, as I did with this piece, and open a Healing with Crystals book that a friend gave to me. Usually, just looking up the properties of any given stone will start the cogs turnin'. Smoky quartz (and these faceted stones are a particularly dark and rich example) has the quality of helping to focus energy internally. "Smoky quartz , with its quiet, calming energy is an effective grounding stone." Who knew. And when I turned to the page on Turquoise, right at the top of the page in bold letters is "Joy and the immune system." It goes on to explain that "Activating and strengthening the body's own defences (sic) naturally improves quality of life, bringing an increased sense of optimism and happiness. Both turquoise and aquamarine can be used for this purpose." So ... grounding + happiness = Earthbound Joy!