The last couple of months have been difficult. With multiple ER visits, procedures and hospital stays for my parents and the physical, mental and emotional turmoil that comes with it, I haven’t been productive. My research and writing have been down the drain wrecking my best laid plans. Additionally, this blog crashed twice! Both times due to the “expert advice” of tech support of my hosting provider. I am never picking a provider based on cost again. Anyway, the second time it happened, I got really upset and left it for a few days without attempting to revive it. It was particularly frustrating because in the last few months the blog has been doing really well. I had been posting regularly and the stats were at an all time high.
Only when Rozantia of Bairozan asked me about it I realised that I did not want to let go of sixteen years of work. I took a couple of more days, before attempting a repair. Hundreds of links are still broken and it is taking a lot of time as each of those links and posts have to be fixed manually. This reminds me of September 2016 when I migrated from blog from Blogger to WordPress and it crashed after a bot attack. It is harder now as I have double the number of posts but having done it once, I know that I can do it again. So please do watch out for broken links and share the new/working posts to repair the ranking.
Of plans and pendants
I did make some jewellery in between all of this. I had planned to visit Srivilliputhur for the temple car festival this year. I had never seen it and felt Andal calling out to me. It was upsetting when life got in the way but then I got an order to make four pendants with the image of the poetess-saint Andal. It was a jewellery order after eons. I made a few extra as there are always loses with working with resin and these bezel bases. As anticipated, I had to do a couple of redos but then I got seven pendants out of it. I shipped four and turned two remaining pendants into necklaces.
Navy Andal Pendant necklace
I have made several Andal pendant necklaces in the past. Therefore, to make these stand apart, I chose to make them with 2mm-4mm beads. I typically use big beads for my necklaces and dislike using beads smaller than 8mm. But this year, I have worked a lot with 3mm and 4mm beads for my research and gotten used to stringing multiple strands of tiny beads, including seed beads.
Further, I tried new colour combinations such as black, navy and peach for this necklace along with silver accents. I hope that it is please clients who have forever asked me to make necklaces with smaller beads.
Red orange Andal Pendant necklace
I paired the melon beads with 6/O seed beads and a dori closure for this red orange Andal pendant necklace. I have been fascinated with melon beads and been sourcing melon beads made of different materials to try them out. I tried melon beads made of quartz, glass (with Monalisa finish) and matt glass such as the red-orange beads used in this necklace. Melon beads add texture and offer an interesting form. But the downside is that they have tiny holes, making it a pain to string them.
Both pieces are available for sale. They are lightweight and be easily layered with other chokers, chains or necklaces. I have been creating more picture jewellery and posting them on Instagram. Check them out and Dm me to buy them.
I pray to Andal to let the difficult times end and good times begin immediately.
I hope you find it interesting
Cheers
What do you think?