What I thought would be an average Saturday of garage sale shopping, turned into an awesome morning for my jewelry studio and my jewelry creative spirit! So this is what happened…
I swear it was by fate that God led me down the path I found myself on this morning! Today was our little town’s annual “City-Wide Garage Sale”. Everyone in the town who wants to have a garage sale puts out all their items and shoppers dive in to get the best deals as quick as they can. Believe me – it’s ruthless.
Now this morning, when I was awaken at 4am by my lovely 11 month old little girl (also known as the screaming teether!), I had no intentions of leaving the house. I had planned that once she got back to sleep, so would I! Well, 7:30 rolled around and finally she went back out. I figured I’d go ahead and get ready for the day… and so my hubby and I, with our little screaming teether in tow, set out to drive the streets of our little town to see if we could come across any good deals.
And OH BOY did we ever!
Loooong story short, my husband found a little garage sale tucked away where someone was selling jewelry displays. Being the wonderful (and now very skillful hunter for anything jewelry haha) he brought me over and we met a lovely couple holding up shop in their driveway. Come to find out, the man, Steve, was a jeweler for over 30 some years here in our little town, and he had just retired and closed up his jewelry shop on Main Street a few months back.
As soon as I heard this, I turned into a little giddy girl, asking how this tool worked, and what that tool did… I’m sure everyone thought “wow what a geek”… but I was so excited to meet this man! So many years of experience, and so many tools full of hard work and jewelry stories! We talked for a bit and then I asked if he had anything else jewelry related I could look at. Now this was about noon when all this went down, so I was just sure that all the good stuff was long gone by then.
THEN he took me around back of his house where he lifted up a dirty old tarp covered in grandaddy longlegs… and there sat his old jewelers bench… over 30 years of scuffs and nicks and bumps and hard work sitting there, drawers broken and hanging out. And then Steve said “you want it, take it.” Simple as that. I was floored. I said “are you sure?” My husband looked at me like… “what?! that’s a pile!” And we exchanged the typical husband and wife unspoken glances of “can I have it?” – “oh geez, my wife is a nut-job” – “I really want it” – “…. ahh alright.”
And so that’s how I met a jewelry legend and my new jewelers bench came to me today (as well as many other awesome jewelry tools I didn’t even know existed). I’ll be cleaning and polishing it up over the next few days, probably weeks, but I’ll work on it as quickly as I can! I’m so excited to put this piece of jewelry making history in my studio! Maybe I’ll learn some new jewelry techniques directly from the desk by osmosis ;)
Here’s a pic of one of the new jewelry making tools, that Steve used to work on daily…
And here’s a pic of where tool and stones will rest while I’m not working!
I hope you’re having a beautiful day where ever you are! Now I gotta go get dirty cleaning up my new tools and get to work on restoring my new jewelers bench!
Smiles ;)
Laura