Go Big Or Go Home
This past week I fared better with posting new items, putting up 14 in total on five of the seven days. I mixed things up a bit - although most of the items were Native American, I posted three non-Native sterling silver items as well - this huge rope chain necklace, this beautiful Coro-Craft bouquet of cabbage roses brooch from the 1940s and this really lovely twist design cuff bracelet from Mexico.
I pulled some vintage Navajo pieces as well from one of the large cases of jewelry I had set up for the estate sale I attended in North Scottsdale a while back. This belt buckle is one of my very favorite pieces that I have right now. I will give it some time and if it does not sell I may have it converted into a necklace with some paperclip chain I came across. I shot photos of seven belt buckles because they are the easiest to do since they only need front and back photos. I decided that I will pull all of the buckles from my collection and get them posted, alternating two belt buckles with one necklace. At the rate of three items per day, slowly but surely I will get these fabulous items online. Belt buckles are popular online as well as watch tips. I do not have as many watch tips but they will be next on the agenda.
I have a basket of "to-do" items that I have been keeping next to my photo light box. It is a combination of some of my personal items that I will be selling, Mother's items that I am not keeping and some other odds and ends. The basket items have not been inspiring me but I did pull this necklace bail from Navajo artist Tonya June Rafael. I had purchased it from her directly at the Heard Museum Indian Market three or four years ago but never used it. I made the decision that the pendants with shepherd's hooks just do not work for me, I prefer for the back of the pendants to be flat so they lay nicer. I feel like the hooks flop around on me. I knew that this bail would not last long and it sold in two days.
I also pulled two of Mother's personal pieces from the basket and I have mentioned these before - the pendant is by Chimney Butte and the cuff bracelet is by Ronnie Willie. I am sentimental about these pieces because Mother, Dad and I attended the fancy antique show at Arlington Racecourse back in the mid-90s and one of the vendors had fantastic Native American jewelry. It was really my first exposure to it, I sure wish I could step back in time and remember what their booth looked like! I just recall it being very cool. It was run by a couple who said they traveled the country going to shows. I think they were from Scottsdale! Never would I imagine back then that I would be living here now.
Mother zeroed right in on these two pieces and I think she chose very well. Chimney Butte only creates matte silver pieces now and I am sure a high shine silver piece by him is rare. Ronnie Willie does not load up his pieces with all the repousse work anymore, which I understand because I am sure even back them it was very expensive to do. Both pieces are too small for me and it is time to have them leave my drawer and go to good homes.
Every piece I posted this week is fantastic, including this charming four-way cross I found in Tucson this year. The bail is tubular and is the perfect complement for multi-strand beads. At least I am posting it the same year I purchased it! Two of the pieces I posted this week have already sold (I will tell the story about the other piece in a bit) but the rest are on my website in addition to seven other venues!
Thursday afternoon turned out to be a wonderful time for Facebook Marketplace sales! A gentleman contacted me through the listing for this squash blossom necklace asking if he could stop by and see the squash blossoms I have for sale. I went through my entire inventory and found 28 of them! He narrowed it down to three choices, each wonderful in its own way. They happened to vary in size - I would call them extra large, large and medium. He was struggling a bit with the decision and I tried to help.
He showed me her picture and I thought this choice (the large) would be a good one. I love this pre-1970s squash blossom necklace because it is mid-century modern of course! After some internal deliberation, all of a sudden he said "I'm going to go big!" He went with the extra large choice. It is difficult to convey in my little square picture how big this necklace is. It is 29" long not including the naja and weighs a whopping 287 grams or more than ten ounces. He said he was going to present it to her at a family picnic in a park for Mother's Day. I told him if by chance she thinks it is too large she could exchange it for something else. He said oh no, she will completely treasure whatever I give her! I hope it went well. It was meant to be, I believe he traveled quite a distance to go to Old Town Scottsdale to look for a squash blossom necklace at the stores there. He said I had the greatest selection and most interesting pieces! It was such a compliment.
Right after that, I needed to attend to the next Facebook Marketplace customer. A woman messaged me about this Navajo handmade beaded necklace that I had just posted the day before and asked if I would meet her at the VA clinic in Phoenix. I think most sellers would have blocked the person after a request like that but when I clicked on the buyer profile something told me to give her a chance. I explained that I do not travel for Facebook Marketplace sales but she was welcome to stop by to take a look at it. It turned out that she could make it on her way home from work. She is an Iraq war veteran who was meeting the senator the next day and she had been looking for a necklace like this for a long time. She was having trouble getting her Zelle payment to go through and her credit union told her it was going to be at least an hour to straighten it out. I told her I trust her and to just take the necklace and go. I did end up receiving the payment the next day. I hope things worked out for both of these customers.
Friday we took the girls in for a much-needed grooming. They were overdue because Kuochun was away and he wanted to wait until he returned. Every spring the girls pick up little round burrs from plants they encounter on their walks. They both have cottony fur on their legs and beards. Margot lets me remove them at will and actually appreciates it as opposed to having to try to remove them herself. Vivi on the other hand wants no part of it. However I have been working with her - when Kuochun left, Vivi had a rat's nest of these little burrs in the middle of her beard. I carefully worked on it a little bit every day and got to the point where Vivi was becoming a little more tolerant of it. I only had one left when Kuochun returned! However she would not let me touch the burrs on her legs. Between that and Margot being burr-free but totally matted I thought for sure they would have to to be shaved down. We were shocked when we picked them up - they looked like a couple of show dogs! They did charge a little extra for dematting which is totally understandable. Kuochun does not want to put them on a schedule but they need one. I promptly set up their next appointments for 8 weeks. It just happens to be July 3 but they are open!
Sunday marked the second Mother's Day without my dear Mother but I did not have much time to reflect on things. We picked up an estate sale at the last minute so the day was spent updating the schedule, putting up the new sale and finishing the estate sale packages for the week.
Kuochun has been back from China for a week but he has not been feeling great and we have not been out to eat since we went to Portillo's last week. That is totally OK though. He said he lost seven pounds - he has not had much of an appetite and is having trouble sleeping which is not normal for him. It is a big adjustment so I have been giving him his space and so it nearly feels like he is still away. I am sure I will have better news to report next time.
I made some progress on the desk clutter but then I decided to pull a shoebox with goodies in it from the pantry. It has been four years since I had the kitchen remodeled and we basically have not had pantry items in there. It is totally filled with jewelry that needs to be attended to. I ought to feature a shoebox of the week! This shoebox had lots of sterling silver in it, this is where I found the big rope necklace, the floral brooch and the Mexican cuff bracelet. I also will be sending a Native-made turquoise necklace and a brown freshwater pearl necklace with a 14K gold clasp to the jewelry caravan. There are still plenty of items to deal with in this box including several sterling silver charm bracelets that are just groaning with vintage charms. There is also a giant sterling silver seahorse pendant. I will separate the items out between those I can list online, those I can send to the jewelry caravan and those I will keep for pop-up sales in Scottsdale or Prescott. I decided to hang onto any jewelry items where I cannot totally secure the jewelry tags on them. If I send them to the caravan, the tags tend to fall off and get lost and then I do not remember what they were priced.
The pantry has four sections - it would be great to at least clear out one section this summer so we have a place for pantry items in the fall! The eventual goal is to have Scottsdale more livable in a normal way. Right now we do not have a dining table so I just eat meals at the computer. At least I have gotten Kuochun out of the living room and to the kitchen island (with counter-height chairs of course!) to eat his meals.
The glass shower doors have been installed in Prescott but the bathroom is small and the door handle hits the shower door. Victor will install a stopper which will be a necessity with Kuochun around! He tends to let doors fly. The landscaping project has started but it looks like the Arizona room folks did not begin yet. They will probably get started next week. This would be a good time because the week after my bed frame is going to be delivered. I need to supervise the delivery (and move my mattress and metal frame out of the way because the delivery people will not do it) and hopefully by the time we get there the loud construction on the Arizona room will be finished.
I decided to do some searching on my own for the tile for the floor in the Arizona room. I found this tile by Lili Tile (four pieces shown here) which looked to me like the right color combination. I had a sample sent to Tina and I am waiting for her approval. She not only needs to approve the colors but the thickness of the tile, to make sure it will work in the room. The darker background color will be the color of the exterior of the room and the black and blue will help tie in with my furniture and lamps. The mustard yellow will just be a bonus color! The good news is that the tile is in stock so we will not have to wait 16 weeks for it as would have been the case at Cement Tile Shop. I feel confident that it will work out. I am looking forward to everything being in place as it is starting to get hot here and the weather there seems delightful!
Next week I will be out of commission a bit with the colonoscopy and I have two appointments on Tuesday but the goal will be to keep up with posting new items online every day, working on the stuff on my desk and estate sale duties.
As a final note, I took a moment to see if I could fix the wonky paragraph spacing issues I have been experiencing with this Shopify blog since the very beginning. On my end everything looks good but when I publish, a lot of times there is no paragraph spacing. AI suggested that I take a look at the HTML code and I manually added paragraph spacing wherever things did not look correct. It took an extra ten minutes to add the codes and test my changes but I think it is so much easier to read. See you next time!