Turquoise day!

Another full day shopping, walking miles and leaning over tables and getting nasty stuff under the fingernails.  We don’t just say “give us three strands of these,” we dig through all of the strands of that size/shape and pick out the best ones.  We look for stones that match, even at other vendors.  We dig through mounds of strands, sometimes 6 inches deep, looking for the best stuff.  At worst, I elbow other shoppers to get to those last two hanks first, so we can pick out what we want. 

And the tents are either too warm or too cold, it seems.  Tents?  Big tents.  Like this one:

Actually, that’s only about 2/3 of the tent, and it’s wide.  Very wide.  This show has two of them.  Tomorrow’s show has three. 

So what did we buy?  Some great base metal big accent beads, and fun Chinese glass, including really nifty dice.  Several dark-sparkly black spinel strands, and some big faceted quartz pendants with big wow factors.  Lots of rhodochrosite with marvelous markings.

And turquoise, lots of turquoise.  Even a strand from the Bisbee mine, with that lovely blue. We got several large strands, and some smaller graduated strands, new carved pendants.  Like these:

That big round stone with the purple tassle?  That’s the teaser for this year’s Big Kahuna honkin’ turquoise strand.  The whole strand weighs over a pound.  And it’s all the same color. 

Thanks for the comments!  Now that I have Internet again, they show up for everyone to read.  And it’s nearly 11, so I think I’m going to have a nice collapse and rub my feet for awhile.