Yesterday, I was struggling with anger at a person over a perceived injustice. I was feeling all self-righteous and puffed up and angry. I’d been struggling with being angry at this person on and off for months, and really was getting tired of feeling angry.  I’d tried just avoiding them and ignoring them. Didn’t work at all: I still felt angry. And yesterday, their name kept coming up and I kept getting angrier and angrier. At my wits’ end, I grabbed my new KJV Bible that I’d gotten myself specifically for the red letters of the words of Jesus, and popped it open to the first red letters I could see.  What did I see?

Matthew 5:38-39 Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:  39 But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on they right cheek, turn to him the other cheek also.

That took the anger right out of me. Here I’d been just making more negative energy and wanting some sort of "payment" for this perceived injustice instead of just letting it go and making peace. And WHAP! here comes the Universe with a message straight to the heart of the matter. I can be awfully dense sometimes, but I couldn’t miss this message. I felt very humbled, and pretty silly to have held on to my anger so long. I went and sent off a nice note to the person who I felt had unjustly treated me, who after all, has her own huge set of problems and issues, and likely enough didn’t mean to "do" anything to me anyway. Even if she did, so what? My creating more negativity surely wasn’t adding anything positive to the world.

Today, I still feel humbled. And grateful to the Universe, God, the Divine by whatever name, for the message and the lessons: Forgive, Create Peace

[tags]forgiveness, create peace[/tags] 

Yep, I almost missed it. Eni Oken has another new tutorial out there. This one is for an ethnic style ring. Go get this one, too. Why? See my previous post on her tutorials for the answer.

[tags]jewelry tutorial, tutorials, ring tutorial[/tags] 

Due to repeated times where CrystalsAndJewelry.com is inaccessible lately, I’m forced to move to a new webhost. Actually, I’m moving CrystalsAndJewelry.com back to my old webhost Lunarpages because they almost never go down.  I had thought to save some money by combining all my sites under a different host, but boy that was a mistake! I guess the old saying "you get what you pay for" counts with web hosting for sure.  And the joke on me is that Lunarpages isn’t even expensive! I must have had a bad brain day when I moved from their hosting. If you have a website, I highly recommend Lunarpages who I’m moving back to. I shouldn’t have left in the first place.

The move should be transparent to you, but there’s a slight chance things will work funny while the domain name CrystalsAndJewelry.com is pointed to the new and better host. If you get caught in a funny thing, try reloading or refreshing, and if you want, let me know it’s giving you trouble. 

The road trip was great. I enjoyed the drive, and adore hanging out with that many crystals and stones and beads. Oh my! I picked up beads I needed for various designs like worry beads, plus restocked on some favorites, like the tumbled stone mixes. I also got some new goodies. Woo hoo! We’ll be getting them out there for you as quickly as possible. 

I’m running out of some of the crystals and beads that I use, so I’m going to a road trip today to one of my favorite suppliers. I’m looking forward to it, except for getting up so early to go! hehehe  I will be back tonight, though, so I’ll be back at the email and phone and everything in the morning.

Extra! Extra!  Eni Oken has a new jewelry tutorial up that you can buy online. Go Get It Now!
It’s the Basket Weave Bezel in the Advanced Tutorials section.  It’s only a few measly bucks, so there’s no excuse not to get it if you want to learn more about doing wire work.

It may sound a little odd for me to be pimping someone else’s jewely tutorials, but there’s a good reason. Eni does great tutorials. Period. And I’ve learned so much from her tutorials over the last couple of years that I’m more than happy to send you over there. Maybe she’ll make more if she sells more of the ones she’s done, and I’d love that!

Many of her tutorials, as with this Basket Weave Bezel tutorial, are for designs or techniques similar to ones that I have already figured out or come up with myself, but it’s well worth the couple of dollars to me because there’s always something more I learn from her tutorials. It may be a on that technique, or a seemingly small tip on wire work in general, but I always get something worthwhile from her tutorials.  Those seemingly small tips can add up to dozens of hours saved, or headsful of hair not pulled out, over the course of a year.  I highly recommend buying every single tutorial she has. And of course, grab the free ones too!

And while I’m talking about Eni’s tutorials, let me add this about all tutorials you get… Don’t share them or give them away, please! And for goodness sake, don’t go sell them yourself. Eni and the others who write tutorials for us and charge such small prices do a huge amount of work on them, and deserve to get paid for every single use of their tutorials. If you find yourself in a situation where you just have to share a tutorial, turn right around and go pay Eni for it. I’ve done that before, when I gave a friend who didn’t have net access a printed copy of one of Eni’s tutorials. It’s only fair. If we abuse their hard work and generosity in making tutorials for items we can sell once we learn the techniques, it’s bad karma and will eventually cause them to either stop doing it or start having to charge much higher prices.  Respect your tutorial-makers, please.

The Wren’s Nest is the shop of some friends human and feline, who live in Michigan. Well now they have an online store too! You can get all sorts of cool gifty things, from herbal soaps, to books, to CD’s. Go by and check it out online, and if you’re in the area, stop in and say hi to Morgen, and Jazper the shop cat.

[tags]gift shop, online, Wren’s Nest[/tags] 

If the above link doesn’t work for you, try this: http://www.wrenshop.com/servlet/StoreFront 

Chuck may growl for a week if I tell how old he is(n’t). But I wanted to wish him a big

Happy

Birthday

Chuck!

And many more :) 

and

Happy Birthday

to the

Cat in the Hat

who turned 50 today!
(You don’t look a day over 6, my dear! hehehe)