I may take up knitting full time . . .

Yikes. Seriously, yikes.

The price of sterling silver is quickly approaching $30 per troy ounce which is about double what I last bought it at last summer and it makes a craftperson like me wonder how much longer she can afford to continue creating without having to restock a slowly dwindling supply of sterling silver. Yikes is right.

So while mulling this over standing at my bench and working to replenish the galleries for the Holidays, I

hit upon a stopgap solution and I feel like I'm doing some small part (in 'upcycle-speak') by creating without having to purchase more and more and more.

Sort of a 'duh' moment, I know, but I started digging into my scrap bucket which, at this point usually gets packaged up and returned to the place from whence it came to be reconstituted (or whatever happens to it) at the foundry (or whatever that place is called) so it can be rendered (or whatever the end result is) into flat silver sheet and wire once again.

As I'm digging around I come across little bits that can be made into odd-shaped bead caps and pieces that used to be something else that can now be - aha! - charms!

I dug and mixed and hammered and melted and didn't even TRY to match anything. What I ended up with was a cool collection of scrappy little silver charms that I switched and rearranged until I had a handful of earrings and charm necklaces that were far better than anything I could have planned.

All of them made

from scrap silver and orphan pieces of chalcedony and jade. I feel good. Not bad for a day.

Yeah, I'm a genius. Well, at least I feel a bit better about solving a problem with a little creativity.