Once again a big search!!!!

When we were in Germany in April I bought a lovely pendant from a street vendor and after we got home I ordered some beads from recycled glass on Etsy.  We have a couple events coming up and I wanted to assemble this necklace.  A small project...an hour or two..  But I can't find them and I have looked and looked.  What I have found is all this:

 
 

Everywhere I looked I found more jewelry parts.  I haven't done any work with jewelry for about 10 years but that hasn't stopped me from continually buying jewelry bits and parts over the years.  One thing  that I always feel the need to rescue are old brooches from the 40s and 50s.  Nobody wears a brooch any more.  I like to incorporate them into necklaces and must have at least thirty or forty waiting.  A few are missing stones and need repair but most are just lovely.  When I was in London recently the Victoria and Albert Museum had a breathtaking display of reconstructed jewelry..  I was so inspired by it...so inspired I may soon get around to doing it. 
What I found amazing is that I have this massive amount of turquoise beads and jewelry.  I do not own ONE piece of clothing that is turquoise.  How did this happen?

What I do wear is a lot of purple and have very little purple jewelry.  On this whole table I had one small plate with a pansy brooch and coordinating beads. 

At first I thought since I had it all divided into colors that I should sort it into smaller projects.  But the more I thought about it, it was overwhelming and so I will bag the color groups and put it all aside until winter.  In the meantime I will continue to search for the pendant I bought in Germany.

At this time I need to be painting buttons...not doing jewelry. The small table will be done this week.

The tiny Bewick wrens that were nesting in this basket in the entry have fledged.

So I took the basket down and carefully pulled out the pansy arrangement.  The nest was entirely of small twigs and only about 2 I/2 inches across in the hollow of the nest... a very small bird.  It was amazing she could even build a nest in such a small space and right next to all the traffic in and out of the house.

This last note fall under "miracles I love and shall appreciate"  For 25 years I had one massive clump of asparagus that we fed off of every spring.  Weeds had grown up around it and one day about 4 years ago in haste I accidentally sprayed it with weed killer.  I was just devastated.  But asparagus have a strong deep root system and I just kept praying it would send up a new shoot one day...  And sure enough it finally did... 3 tiny shoots which I will guard with my life and build a fence around it as well.