Bon Voyage (Brrrrrrrr)!

Good afternoon chickadees and chickadoods!

Just a quick note to let you know that late last night, while you were all in bed:

I packaged and shipped all of your orders and your baubles should be in your sweet little wingtips in a matter of days, even if you're in Australia. I had a package take about 5 days between Idaho and New South Wales last week...

I'll be in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada for 6 days waiting for my sister to have a baby and causing mischief with my other un-pregnant sister. It's cold there, but I know that if need be, my friends and family will spoon me to keep me warm!

Have a lovely week and I'll see you soon!

Love,

The Noisy Plume

PS If flying over Denver any time soon, prepare yourself for a bumpy ride. Ew.

PSS

SEND ME YOUR TREES!!!!!

Leafy Detritus

It's a long path between bud and ground.

A road full of unfurling, a passionate push towards a green blush

up in the boughs.

The carefully whittled pull of veins

pushing up from petiole.

A ticklish midrib, a bony spine, the bending smile of stacked cells

eager to catch sunlight.

A summer spent:

waving

shading

breathing

cleaning

dappling sunlight on brown skin

whispers and clatters muddling together, musically, conducted by the able hands of zephyrs.

Then the fall.

The drop in temperature.

The fade of kelly bright chloroplasts to rusty,

spent hues.

And the letting go, settling into musty earth as blankets to blankets.

Dust to dust.

A leafy detritus

overripe

and spent,

makes the prettiest things.

This decolletage candy is built of a gazillion spent, sterling leaves wrapped carefully around a huge cut of amethyst sage agate. As usual, I can't utter enough compliments to do this cabochon justice. I had it cut with a huge dome and the nuances in color and pattern are too fantastic to convey. It has to be seen to be believed. The pendant is a glorious mess of hidden bails that form a complex web of draping chains. An etched and anticlastically raised leaf dangles from one side of the pendant for a perfectly balanced but asymmetric piece that will tame straying eyes and delight fingertips.

Wearing this necklace sets a girl adrift.

Gravity starts humming in all directions.

Feet fail to know the feeling of being planted.

She gets carried off on the wings of whims.

It's good.

It's good.

It's good to have some of that internal pretty stuff make its way out onto the surface of things.

I've had this piece

partially finished for a couple of weeks

now. Yesterday I managed to squeeze in the

finishing touches

and the words I would use to describe

it are:

Ethereal.

Organic.

Nature rich.

She's special.

And she knows it.

Prepare the Tannenbaum!

RW and I have been strolling around in a winter wonderland and discussing the

rules and regulations of the

CHRISTMAS TREE PHOTO CONTEST

right here at The Life & Times of The Plume!

We invite every single one of you to participate in the contest again this year not only because it's fun BUT also because it bolsters a sense of community around these parts which is wonderful. Additionally, this is a democratic contest wherein you get to vote for your favorite photo! The photo with the most votes wins! Easy peasy!

We aren't picky about the photos you submit! ANYTHING you enter will make it into the official contest blog post and it will be part of the voting.

Put any or all of these items in the photo:

*tree

*kids

*pets

*cookies

*significant others dressed as Santa

HOWEVER, since this IS a Christmas Tree Photo Contest, a Christmas tree needs to be part of your overall photo composition. Please and thank you. If you would like to see some of the shots from the 2008 contest, please click on the link at the top of this posting.

Whatever you can dream up, if you can capture it in film, it's good!

Official Rules:

1. Only one entry per person.

2. Only one vote per person.

3. Please email your entries as file attachments in tiff or jpg format to: thenoisyplume@gmail.com

4. Please include a name for your photo, your location in the world and your first name!

(if you neglect to name your tree, I shall name it for you)

5. Enter with joy! This is supposed to be fun.

DEADLINE FOR PHOTO ENTRY: DECEMBER 16th

PRIZES

First place: A care package that will include a $100 gift certificate for The Noisy Plume.

Second Place: A $50 gift certificate for The Noisy Plume.

Third Place: A $25 gift certificate for The Noisy Plume.

Whew. That's a lot of prizes. But it's the season to share and give gladly

and I want to show my appreciation for your support.

Bonne chance et Joyeux Noël

XO

THE NOISY PLUME

Nice Guns

[sterling silver, carnelian & blue chalcedony]

A fresh cluster of Pistola Brooches for girls with vendettas or ladies who like to roll dice and practice deadly force!

Today, whilst recreating in my studio, I got to pondering the pistol brooch I made for myself a while back. I haven't seen it since that wedding I attended in The Dalles on the Columbia River in Oregon this summer. That darned cherry orchard must have snatched it off my wedding attire...

Anyway, I was pondering pistols, looking out my huge studio window at gentle snow fall and the mountains across the street and suddenly, without even thinking about it, I realized I had sawed out four of the darn things. I festooned them with spicy carnelian, blue chalcedony and sheaves of wheat.

Can you tell I'm traveling home to The Great Northern Plains in two days time???

Here's hoping you all managed to find a little sabbath for your souls

this Sunday.

I love the advent season.

Loverly loverly,

PLUME

PS Besides acquiring a Christmas tree today, it was a rather uneventful afternoon. I was supposed to have a reporter come by and interview me for the Pocatello newspaper but this small pestering petulance in my nose had me feeling under the weather. Still. Fingers crossed for a swift and full recovery before I jump a plane for Saskatchewan.

Handsome but good for nuthin?

Methinks not!

Last night, while in the midst of a dinner party at Plume Gables, I opened up the door to the laundry room to see Mister Pinkerton crouched over a dead mouse on a rug. Of course, I screamed. He picked the rodent up in his mouth and leaped out the doggy door into the night.

This was perfect timing for him to prove his hunting prowess to RW since the man tends to go on about how worthless Pinky is when it comes to seeking and destroying rodent populations around our property. I always knew the great white beast was hunting in the night and lazing about in the day. While he is getting rather corpulent these days I like to think it's because he's eating eleventeen meecies every single night, in the bewitching hours, when we can't see him.

WHISKER TWITCH

WHISKER TWITCH

This is all to say, if you have an outdoor cat that sometimes lives in YOUR laundry room during the day, have a little faith in the fellow when it comes to the rodenticide. Just because he's not bringing his dinner in for you to see, every single night, it doesn't mean he's not slicing and dicing with his killer claws under the grapevines or over in the raspberry patch.

Happy Saturday to all!

We're getting a Christmas tree today and you know what THAT means!!!!

That's right. I'm gearing up for the second annual Christmas Tree Photo Contest right here at The Life and Times! Get your cameras out and start taking a few photos of your Tannenbaum!

To entice the few of you who are photographically lazy, I'll let you know

in advance that the individual with the winning photo

will get a superfluously lovely care package from

Mister Plume and I! You can never tell who might win! It depends entirely

on how the vote goes...which could be in any old direction!

OFFICIAL CONTEST RULES TO COME, ON MONDAY!

Fa la la la la,

THE NOISY PLUME

I just entered three pieces in 500 Silver Jewelry Designs!

Wish me luck!!!

And thank you to the four ladies who took the time to send

me links to this contest over the past month! I appreciate you very much

and can't really convey how thankful I am that you were willing

to help me out with the entire experience! It took a bit of extra time to prepare this submission so thanks for sticking with me during periods of low activity!

I DON'T ALWAYS SHARE

THE BEHIND THE SCENES DETAILS OF LIFE AND

YOU ARE WONDERFUL TO BE SO GRACIOUS.

ALL THE TIME.

Gros bisous,

The Noisy Plume

Feeling Iffy about Tiffy?

Feel iffy no more!

Dear Tiffany Stone of Utah,

How I love thee.

No other stone looks like you or feels like you. You are velvet smooth and your

coloration and brecciation make me feel like I'm made up of a flock of sparrows.

It's true.

You make the world a better place.

I'm so glad you were created in some sort of molecularly, mishmashical,

last gasp reaction and then pushed up into the crust of the earth during a bit of tectonic heaving and then harvested out of the ground by someone wearing a headlamp. Make your way to me and I'll always make sure you look extra pretty in a silver setting. This is my pledge to you.

With abiding affection,

Jillian

Some days just pass on by.

[after running]

They don't stop for anything;

a smooth sweep, a true path, a direct flight from my toes on up

until they've whirled away through a blue sky into a night, star studded and whisky thick.

I had plans for today, big plans.

I woke up late.

I barely met up with Sue for breakfast. Fortunately, she lives right across the street and it's hard for us to miss each other. She's great. We ordered our eggs and toast and coffee at a local diner and shot the breeze together. She talked about isolating flight genes in bugs. I talked about the bends and curves in things.

I ran errands.

I was trimmed up at the salon.

I did a bit of shopping.

I returned home and helped RW and Sam hang insulation in the crawl space under our spare room (which is currently being gutted). Originally, RW was simply going to tear up three layers of carpet and one hideous layer of linoleum (don't worry, I took pictures) but then we decided he should even out our heart pine flooring which sloops towards the front yard since it's old veranda and then while half the floor was ripped up, he decided he should insulate the crawl space between the floor and the foundation (we don't have a basement, just a root cellar).

SNOWBALL.

Good thing he's the handiest man I know.

I ran 9 fast miles in freezing cold air. But the sun was bright. I was numb when I walked back into my house and my cheeks felt wind-punched-red.

My nose started hurting -- I'm a very rare gal who gets a cold sore INSIDE her nose every six years or so. It's kind of one of the most painful things that can happen to a person's face.

I planned to go out to the studio and work a bit but then felt a bit of a sore throat coming on so I slammed 4 EmergenC packets in two hours and then allowed RW to take me out to Italian on a dinner date.

Now I'm fresh out of a hot bath and about to clamber into bed.

Up in my hills, the creek has frozen over;

a pale white strip of skin drifting

steadily down the mountain sides.

Death frozen over.

Don't despair.

The trees, in their simple nudity,

reach bare arms out

over the quiet space

and stare into the distance.

Under the freeze.

Under the white.

Under the quiet.

In the cold.

I listen closely.

Through the silence descending

I hear the water moving.

ALL IN ALL A GOOD DAY!

NO REGRETS!

GOOD NIGHT.

JSL

Farmer Robert

Tonight whilst we were strolling the canines around town, RW stopped in his tracks, under a a breeze laced with snowflakes, and said quite seriously, "Jillian, I need to talk to you about something."

I tried to remember if I've purchased a new houseplant or a pair of shoes this week...I haven't...so I said, "Oh. What is it?"

He replied, "I think I know what I want to do when I grow up."

I smiled, "What?" But I already knew the answer. I've known it for a long time.

He spoke, "I want to be a farmer. I want to make a living off working the earth. I want a diverse ranch, about 1200 acres. Don't worry. I know how we can do it."

I laughed out loud, "Robert! We've been discussing this for ages! Of course you're going to be a farmer!"

Farmer Robert.

I'm so glad he finally knows what he wants to do when he grows up.

And now you do too.

*NOTE: I told him to pose like that. He's so compliant. SOMETIMES.

I cannot wait.

[STERLING SILVER & PEARL]

[HOLLOW FORMED STERLING SILVER & PEACOCK PEARL]

The fact of the matter is:

I like unconventional things.

I had a sister try on a necklace recently, crafted in drop choker style. The chain portion that dropped down from the choker portion of the necklace measured a foot in length. She said that it was a little bit too long. I replied:

BUT IF IT WAS SHORTER IT WOULD BE ORDINARY.

WHAT'S THE POINT OF WEARING ANYTHING ORDINARY.

I'M INTERESTED IN THE EXTRAORDINARY.

I realize that some of you are conventional ladies and I make sure to supply you with designs

that are slightly tamed down but STILL very extraordinary, in my mind at least, whether it's

because of the stones used or a small detail that pushes the design out of the norm

and into an extra special space we shall now call THE BLESSED UNIQUE.

I can get itchy when things start to look exactly the same.

TO CLARIFY, I GET THE URGE TO DREAM BIGGER.

I PERUSE MY SOLD SECTION, AT THE NOISY PLUME, AND THINK TO MYSELF,

"IT'S TIME TO GROW A NEW BRANCH. I'M TIRED OF THESE."

So I push things a little bit further.

I draw a little deeper from my inspirations. I add a wonky twist or two to my ideas. And sometimes I wind up making things like these rings

-- WHICH I ADORE BY THE WAY --

for the following reasons:

1. The shapes of the hollow forms are so aesthetically pleasing to me. When I see angular shapes

I think of saltine crackers, men, Land Rovers, diamonds, mountains, the Northern Great Plains as seen when flying over them in an airplane, beehives and windows

(all these things please me, in case you were wondering).

2. The rough, masculine, irregularly faceted shapes of the hollow forms are

dressed up and softened by pearls. It's like a girl, with a great case of bed head, wearing her man's button down dress shirt in the morning while eating

granola at the breakfast table.

Unexpectedly sexy.

Kind of irresistible.

3. I like the juxtaposition of:

fixed, secure, sturdy

AGAINST

precarious, tippy, balancing

I like that a lot. And when I look at these rings, and all of the rings I have made within the context of this design concept, I think those words to myself over and over again.

THIS ALSO PLEASES ME:

The association of verbs, feelings and thoughts with objects.

On an utterly unrelated topic, RW and I were running through the University grounds yesterday evening and as I trotted past the fine arts buildling, I felt a little thrill. I can't wait for school to begin in January.

I cannot wait.

I cannot wait.