so... what IS wabi sabi?

Once I got the best compliment I ever had. This compliment was for my ring shown here, the instructions which I had bought online, and followed the pattern for. I made it and I even named it. I titled it "Folly". Maybe you remember this ring. I put it up once before. I actually wear it. It looks gorgeous and ritzy to me. HAHAH. Jean's "Folly" ring. You need to know Victorian era things to know what a Folly is.

So: about this ring: it is like this: it is AS IF IT HAS A REAL RUBY AND A REAL EMERALD (and a real little pearl) ON IT. The coin pearl, at least, is real. And it supposedly has diamonds!

Anyway, this is a look into my brain, to a depth I rarely reveal. I have a pretty heavy fantasy world going on here, don't I?

I made this last year in the winter, having made other items which I had either purchased the pattern for, or gotten a free class for, from the famous, fabulous Eni Oken's website. I find everything she makes and designs incredibly fascinating. Here is her site: http://enioken.com/

I love love love this site. When I get an email from her with news from her site (Jean suggests: sign up for this email!), I get all

ex-SITE-d. ha, ha, I made a pun. Elizabeth http://www.fourleafpress.com/ , please note. Elizabeth is giving a talk at Barnes and Noble right now, but maybe she will read this tomorrow. THAT IS CORRECT I HAVE FAMOUS FRIENDS and some of them like puns

back to the subject at hand (oh no! another pun! ha ha)

The nice thing about Eni is she isn't too "cool" to respond when people email her stuff, pictures and things ( "digital pictures"??? help help I can't stop with the puns!) like I did, after I made this ring. You have to understand that this ring doesn't look ANYTHING LIKE THE ONE I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE MAKING. If I had been the teacher, I might possibly have been slightly horrified at how demented this ring appears: it is that different from what it is supposed to look like.

Eni, cool person that she is, was unfazed. I was delighted when I heard promptly from her. That was when I got the best compliment I have ever gotten from anyone (other than those compliments I get from my husband Jim when I force him to say something if my vanity is under a 5 on the scale from one to ten--thank you Jim, you always come through: "Your hair looks fine! Is it time for dinner?" etc. ).

Eni wrote me and said, "your ring is so wabi sabi"!

So that was my best compliment. When I am feeling low, I think about that shining moment. BECAUSE I LOVE BEING WABI SABI. I have taken the compliment concerning the ring and co-opted it to become the whole concept.

Granted, I had to look it up (at first it sounded a lot like that hot Japanese mustard you eat with sushi--it's green, that mustard, and comes on a piece of surreal darker green plastic tropical leafy stuff as a plate decoration... oh lord, on second thought, you don't suppose Eni actually meant that hot mustard instead??? How embarrassing for me) OK, anyway... and then I had to brand the words into my brain in order to remember it permanently. But for a woman who grew up next to the ocean, and watched the tides go in and out, and had a brain where the world's changes would spin like one of those toys we all had as children, which sat on your fingertip, spinning along like our planet does, tipped at an angle--a gyro thingie? A gyroscope! wabi sabi has a lot of meaning. For me. I want all of me to be wabi sabi. All of the time.

In fact, I am going to Eni Oken's great site as soon as I finish this, to see what is new!

jean