New Home!

I'm sure it comes as no surprise to anyone, but moving is stressful!

To say that we "have moved" is certainly correct in the strictest interpretation of the word, but in reality we are a long long way from having "moved in."

I'm grateful to have a dedicated room for my sea glass and businesses that will eventually graduate to being called "my office." For the moment, it looks more like a bomb hit, with boxes, bags and packing materials everywhere.

The view from the deck of our new house

We love the house, however! We've moved from living seven blocks from the beach, to living two "rows" back from the waterfront. Previously, we couldn't actually see the water; now it's right in front of us! It gives me great comfort to be able to see the water, and I realized today that even though I have lived all over the world, I have rarely been more than a hop, skip and a jump from the beach.

In Denmark, when I was little, we were a five-minute walk from the beach. When I was little (also) our house in France was on a bay in the Mediterranean. In the UK, we were either a short walk from the Atlantic coast in Devon, or a short walk from the beach, in the Bournemouth/Poole area. As a teenager in Spain, I could see the sun set into the Mediterranean from our terrace, with the Rif mountains in Morocco as a backdrop.

The only time I did not live by the sea shore was during my years in Texas. However, there was lake (formed my a flood control dam on a creek) at the end of my yard-- for some time, "beach combing" was replaced by "fossil hunting." Although it wasn't perfect, I am almost as much of a "rockhound" as I am a beach comber, and I would make regular pilgrimages to the Texas Gulf coast to get on the beach.

It has been a long time since we last "owned our own piece of dirt." There is something very comforting about that... a sense of "permanence" you just can't get while you are renting.

Winter Sea Glass Collecting

First post of 2008. Happy New Year!

If you live in the northern hemisphere, collecting sea glass in the winter can be somewhat of a challenge. Not only are you dealing with a high likelihood of inclement weather, but the days are short and typically the highest tides are during daylight hours, and the low tides occur in the middle of the night.

I went to the beach exactly twice in December, and found very little of interest. Some of the better and more interesting items will end up on eBay, later this month.

Happily, there are some better days (tide-wise) coming up towards the middle of January, and I just hope the weather isn't completely horrible. Spending three hours on the beach with rain being driven into my face at 25mph, while the temperature is about 40 (4C) is really not my idea of a fun time.

End of Season Reflections

It has been a year, of sorts. Frankly, had anyone (in the past) told me that I would end up actually selling some of my seaglass to other collectors and to jewelry makers around the world, I would have looked at them like they were nuts. It surprises me a little, in a way, because I have been seeing jewelry made with seaglass for many years. I suppose I always figured that the jewelers got their own glass from personal trips to the beach.

Now that I think about it, that doesn't necessarily make sense-- some of them lived in locales 100s or even 1000s of miles from the nearest coastline. And, as one person at a street fair pointed out to me, earlier this year: "Making jewelry and going to fairs takes up all the time I have. I can't really afford to give up a bunch of days to go find my own glass, and then not be assured that I even get what I need, when I give up an entire day."

The thing I had "overlooked" is that a lot of artists live in financially precarious positions, and so the $100 they could save by doing their own beachcombing doesn't make up for losing three days of work. Apart from which being able to buy a batch of glass that has already been sorted by color, and selected for "jewelry quality" is a lot more reliable than depending on whatever turns up, on any given day at the beach.

Summer Beachcombing

Although I do try to make it to the beach pretty much year-round, summers are more fun. The tides are more favorable (most of the fall and winter, low tide occurs in the middle of the night), and the longer days make for more time to walk further and pick things up.

It seems to be a general rule that the further you are willing to walk, the better the pickings. When I say walk, I am referring to how far you walk from the nearest land access to the beach. Once you get much beyond three miles (or an hour+), the pickings start to get better, especially if part of the hike is difficult, over a beach that is mostly large round rocks, making footing rather treacherous.

I have been finding a few rarities, recently. I have a much better sense of why they are "rarities," now. Sea glass marbles seem to be getting scarcer every year, too... I guess it may be a product of modern times-- kids don't play with maerbles anymore.

Summer Solstice

It's hard to believe that it is already summer, and that we have rounded the longest day of the year. The extreme summer tides that make beach glass collecting so enjoyable are still here for a few more months, before the times start to become "unfriendly."

Since I have started selling glass on eBay, I have also started wondering how I will manage to have anything to offer during the winter months when tides are unfavorable. Ironically, those who make jewelry with sea glass probably have the greatest need before the Christmas holidays, and in early spring, before the spring and summer crafts fairs start up again.