Symbols Bracelet

Sterling silver, bronze and honey jade charms on plaited leather bracelet, featuring my favourite symbols

New Charm Bracelets with Beads and Chinese Characters

Blackened sterling silver with Murano glass beads, topaz bead, honey jade bead, rock crystal bead, dapped and engraved flower charm and Chinese character depicting "happiness" charm. 6.5" long.

Blackened sterling silver charm bracelet featuring Murano glass beads that I bought on a trip to Venice, topaz bead, honey jade bead, rock crystal bead, dapped and engraved flower charm and Chinese character depicting "longevity" charm. 6.5" long.

Garnet Bead Ring

Garnet Bead Ring, originally uploaded by AlphabettiSpaghetti.

New range for Christmas

Labradorite bead ring

Labradorite bead ring, originally uploaded by AlphabettiSpaghetti.

Some new bits and pieces I hope will sell for Christmas

Joshua Tree Pendants

Joshua Tree Pendants, originally uploaded by AlphabettiSpaghetti.

Custom order. Sterling silver and bronze pendant featuring pierced out Joshua tree.

Why cats should eat meat and not grain...

Fabulous new Feline Nutrition Site

I stumbled across this really informative and beautifully laid-out website by the Feline Nutrition Education Society, dedicated to the proper feeding of cats. I, and thousands of other cat owners and vets believe that a grain-based diet is not suitable for an obligate carnivore like the cat and therefore feed a raw meat based diet. This diet consists of as many parts of an animal as possible, so as well as muscle meat, cats are fed raw bone which helps to balance out the phosphorus in the muscle meat. Too much phosphorus is bad for renal health. Hearts are rich in taurine, something that cats cannot produce themselves but die without, so are fed as part of the muscle meat part of the diet. The rest of the diet is made up of various "innards" such as kidneys, livers, etc. Thousands of cat owners can testify to much healthier pets with renewed vitality. Raw meat is also a brilliant teeth cleaner. Oral health is something that is very important in the prevention of kidney disease and obviously healthy teeth mean a happy cat with that beautiful and impressive set of teeth that characterises this little predator!
I have an article that the owners of this site very kindly published, outlining my experiences of raw-feeding and how I get on with it in Italy.

Two new sparkly pieces

Sterling silver necklace with two 3mm aquamarines, two 3mm iolites and one 3mm dark blue sapphire
11mm claw-set champagne topaz on 1cm textured sterling silver band. Bling bling!!

Autumn Bangles

Two new bangles for the autumn collection. The top one features oak leaves and a 9k red gold acorn. The bottom one is a willow leaf. I have left this one unsoldered so it is in fact adjustable. The willow leaf bangle is made using 3mm round sterling wire and the oak bangle using 2mm.

New Work

I thought I'd have a bit of a change from my usual work and have made these cute spoons and a little fork. You can use them to scoop up your breakfast marmalade or honey!

Help me raise $1000 for cheetahs

Every donation made this month is being matched by CCF until the end of August. I've sold 2 cheetah cuffs, so that's $300. Please help me make it $1000 by the end of the month. The race is on!

SOLD!!

The cheetah cuff has now been sold but I will be making more to order and continuing to donate 50% to CCF.

Cheetah cuff for CCF

The Cheetah Conservation Fund do fabulous work in Namibia and Kenya, working to conserve and protect these beautiful, endangered cats. They have implemented a livestock guarding dog programme so that farmers can use specially trained dogs to protect their flocks from predation by cheetahs, and therefore protect the cheetahs from being trapped or shot. This project is particularly interesting to me because my Master's thesis is about a similar livestock guarding dog programme in Slovakia, this time protecting flocks from wolves, bears and lynx.

I will be donating 50% of the proceeds from the sale of this cuff to this organisation. I have personally met the founder, Dr Laurie Marker on a couple of occasions, so feel very close to this organisation. They do fantastic work. Please support them!

Delilah... Stolen...

For more on this, please go to my new blog at www.mukkatours.blogspot.com

Meet Delilah...

So, if someone had told me that I would be a biker chick one day, I wouldn't have believed them! I've always been a bit of a "petrol head" with an interest in cars, but never, never bikes. Too noisy, too dangerous, ridden by greasy people...

Just about everyone in Italy has a scooter of one dimension or another, and we were lucky in having a fairly big one that we used to nip about on. We did the odd longer trip, and it was fun, but we were a bit restricted on how far we could go because of the comfort factor. The engine wasn't huge and used to struggle with two a little bit.

The "madness" really started last year on holiday in Corsica when we saw how many people were there on scooters and motorbikes. The first pangs of envy started to creep in and we started tentatively talking about getting a Yamaha TMax, which is a sort of hybrid between a scooter and a motorbike. We visited a few showrooms but never went as far as a test-drive. Now, I don't really know how it all got started, but at some point, my other half, C expressed an up to now latent passion for motorbikes, the BMW R1200GS in particular. I wasn't really interested in all this boy talk and didn't pay much attention, until we went to the showroom for a look... Well, first of all there's the smell. I've always liked the smell of new cars, but new motorbikes smell even better. Then I came face to face with "The Beast". This GS machine was a work of art. A beautiful, big, shiny, powerful, metal beast that unleashed something deep inside...

So, away we went, talking about maybe getting one next year, and we'd see... These conversations became a daily occurrence, as did drive-bys of the showroom, until C decided to take a test drive. Could he be thinking of buying one sooner than next year? I think the test drive clinched the decision. Unfortunately the bloke in the showroom didn't seem that enthusiastic about selling us a bike, so we decided to try another dealer that had been recommended to us. After an hour talking to the salesman and his lovely elderly mother who also worked there ("that's a beautiful bike you're thinking of buying there, kids"), we'd come away with an offer to give us more for our trusty scooter than we ever could have imagined, and a financial deal that was obviously aimed at giving you no choice whatsoever on whether or not to buy the bike. It was a really good deal put together by BMW. Off we went to "think about it". A week later we were in the showroom signing the papers. A week after that and the bike was ready for collection.

And so arrived the lovely Delilah, over 200kg of heavenly beast! I let C go to work on her and build up confidence before insisting I hopped on the back. With our sparkly new biker gear, I finally got the opportunity to go "two-up" this weekend. I always enjoyed riding on the back of the scooter, but a motorbike gives you a certain kudos, and what with the other bikers lifting an acknowledging hand in greeting as they passed, there is nothing, nothing like it. I asked C what it was that made travelling by motorbike as opposed to car that more attractive. He voiced my own feelings on it. You're outside in the fresh air, you can see everything around you, the colours are brighter, it's open and you don't feel claustrophobic... so many things. It lifts my spirits being on the back of the bike. I love it. I never thought I would.

So, we're off to Corsica on her at the end of June, a dream fulfilled. We now have to decide what we can take in two panniers and a topcase! No support vehicle for us! Trips we have planned in the future are North Cape and Morocco, and we're currently debating whether to drive her up to the UK in August... We're thinking of starting a dedicated blog, so I'll keep you posted!

Puzzle rings

A new line in puzzle rings.

Bruno Bianco

The lovely, cleaned-up version!

Introducing... Bruno!

This little fella was waiting for us when we got back home on Monday night. He jumped into my arms like a long lost pal. Tuesday morning he was outside in the garden miaowing. He's now the newest member of our family. Little Bruno's about 3 months old, with a classic Van pattern to his coat, so he's all white except for a grey and black stripy tail and a grey patch on his head. He has a very pale grey mark near the base of his tail. What a cutey!!!

My Big Fat January Sale

Huge reductions and free shipping on non-sale items. Shop early for Christmas... Sale ends 31 January (or when I can re-edit the shop...)