Nose growing competition

Karl Linger bigpave@cox.net was supposed to start this thread, but
I’m betting he was just too shy? Or mebee he just wanted to forget
all about it for another year or so?

(Directed at professional bench curmudgeons) How many promised
pieces of jewelry have you NOT gotten done for your spouse,
companion, or loved ones in the past 12 months? Come on - 'fess up!
Don’t lie! Remember Pinnochio A nd what were your excuses? (Hopefully
original:) Who has promised a piece to a spouse or companion for the
longest? (Answer i n decades please:)

Why is it that we cannot (as a group) seem to fulfill our dearest
one’s desires?

Should we perhaps farm this stuff out to each other, with due dates?
Just so it finally gets done?

Brian

I’m sorry to say this thread rings a cord with me on more than one
occasion. I can’t mention the wedding ring I didn’t make although we
did use one I had made some time before. I still have a tourmaline I
purchased back in 1986 that was supposed to be a birthday present and
it is still sitting in the safe at work. I could go on but it is
making me feel guilty :slight_smile:

Chris

In deep shame I must admit that once I actually had some earrings
made for her by a befriended goldsmith.

Glad to hear that I am not the only one who is always putting it in
a drawer with a lot of promises.

Alain

Well, I don’t know about the rest of you but I haven’t missed one of
my wife’s four big holidays (birthday, anniversary, Christmas and
Valentine’s Day) in the 15 years we’ve been married. I can’t tell
you that she’s liked everything I’ve made but the first versions have
all been on time.

Daniel R. Spirer, GG
Spirer Somes Jewelers
1794 Massachusetts Ave
Cambridge, MA 02140
617-491-6000
@spirersomes
www.spirersomes.com

I must confess…I have been promising my husband a ring for the
past year. As a beginner, I wanted to wait until I felt more
comfortable with the whole process before starting. I started a ring
last January and ended up melting part of it! I think I’ll shoot for
Christmas to have something done, but I can’t make any promises!

Tammy

Oh Brian, you really know how to find the sore spots and poke them
in just the right place. Ouch! You know the phrase, “the cobbler’s
children have no shoes”? Well, how about the goldsmith’s wives have
no jewelry! The last time I made jewelry for myself or my wife was
for our wedding over 10 years ago. Four years ago my daughter
flushed my wife’s engagement ring down the toilet (she was only a
toddler then). I have been promising her a new engagement ring
since. The only compromise I have been able to make is that when I
give her jewelry it is my freinds work. That way I can’t take it
and sell it off her body, and neither can she!

Larry

My wife puts fake names on job envelopes, and schedules her own
items to me, and writes notes of ‘bizarre’ methods of payment upon
completion.It works.Ed

  Should we perhaps farm this stuff out to each other, with due
dates? Just so it finally gets done?                              

Great idea, Brian! It’s so crazy, it just might work!

I can only think of two, though I have that hazy feeling that there
are others I’ve just blocked out. If you include repairs, the figure
climbs a bit… maybe another three of those. I really hate repairs,
especially on things I didn’t make.

P.S.-- How many of you out there are receiving my signature as
something besides N-o-e-l with two horizontal dots (a dierisis, in
English) over the “e”? Thanks. Getting it to “travel” is pretty
hopeless, I guess.

–No�l

Brian, Your comment regarding not doing work for your loved ones
appears to be typical, regardless of the occupation. Have you ever
heard the expression, “the cobbler’s children go without shoes”.

David

      I try to look at this thread in respect to all things being
relative. 

The painters’ house always needs painted. The carpenters’ house is
always in need of repair, and in days before the shoemakers kids
probably went with holy soles In my case and more than likely the
above mentioned, its all about paying the bills. I quit showing my
wife the custom items that I make as I could always expect the same
response, when do I get one like that? Considering she looks like a
gypsy now, after 14 years of marriage, I think she can do without
one on occassion. As far as my nose getting longer, I don’t make
promises I can’t keep especially with the one I sleep with. Chuck

About a year and half ago, a client asked me to make a Silver
Cockroach with Ruby eyes as a pin for his wife. I researched it by
visiting a woman at the Museum of Natural History (in NY) who had
several small tanks on her desk that were full of large, live
cockroaches crawling all over each other and the food that was in
there. I promptly decided that I didn’t want to handle one, but she
kindly took one out and allowed me to look it over carefully to see
how it was built. I left with a preserved specimen floating in a
jar of alcohol, which then served as my model. and which I
subsequently spread and framed and hung on the wall. It turned out
to be the most difficult bug I ever made, and took me five times
longer to make it than I had anticipated.

Now, I had long been encouraging my husband to wear one of my
creations and I offered tie tacks, cuff links, lapel pins, etc., all
to no avail. His birthday was coming up and he said he would like a
small gold cockroach pin which he would wear on his jacket. I was
delighted and promised that I would make it.

Well, the reality of making another one soon set in, and so I kept
postponing it, until, now, I think I have lost my enthusiasm for
cockroaches. I still feel badly that I promised it and didn’t come
through, but I gave him a 'horsefly pin, which he does wear. It’s
not as exciting, I suppose, but al least we’re not talking cockroaches
anymore. Sandra B. Elegant Insects

I too am a bit of a beginner and taking casting this semester. Last
year my absent minded husband threw his wedding ring into the trash
at Baja Fresh. It was silver with ebony and we had bought it at a
gallery. Sixteen years ago I admired artist designed jewelry but it
never occurred to me that someday I could actually make something
like that ring. Last night I presented my husband with his new ring
and it’s even better than the one he lost. Instead of ebony I used
Wenge wood which has a lovely grain. This experience gives me a kind
of confidence about other things in the world as well - that much
more is possible than I ever dreamed.

Beverly

        My wife puts fake names on job envelopes, and schedules
her own items to me, and writes notes of 'bizarre' methods of
payment upon completion. It works. 

I think if my wife could offer “bizarre” methods of payment, I might
be a little bit more forthcoming in getting around to her work. :slight_smile:

David L. Huffman

Some years ago, I purchased a beautiful Aqua for our 25th wedding
anniversary. I finally set it for our 35th. Now we are coming up on
our 45th and my wife has learned that she must be ascertive if she is
going to see anything new in the near timeframe. SO, she devised a
plan to have me reset all her important stones, her original
engagement stone, her mother’s engagement stone, another diamond the
family picked up, etc, etc. Believe it or not, I have actually
gotten all but one done in the past couple of months…only one more
to go and the accent stones are on their way as I write this! And
our anniversary is still a month away! Soon she will be draped in
jewelry I have made for her!

Cheers from Don at The Charles Belle Studio in SOFL where simple
elegance IS fine jewelry! @coralnut2

Regards J Morley Coyote Ridge Studio My wife is hard on everything I
make her. She wore her wedding ring out and I have had it since last
year in my safe. I gave her the engagement ring diamond in a box
before I ever made the ring (on my knee) I did pull through six
months later. I have boxes of stones in there also all bought to make
her things. I have rough and stones I bought in the 70’s never made
into pieces. I used to make my daughter pieces now she makes her own.
After reading some of the recent threads on jewelers lives it amazes
me we have not died out with burnout, no lives and barely time to
breed. Mates with no jewelry. By the way my wife read this thread
and I imagine I WILL be getting an envelope with a fictitious name on
it. Regards J Morley /Goldsmith/Laserwelding