Headed to Maine

We're headed to Maine for some much needed time away and messing about on the beach, sketching, kayaking and what have you.

I'll sneak just a bit of "work" in with a delivery to KoT Contemporary Craft in Ellsworth. I'm quite please they've chosen to include me as their jewelry selection is always top notch! Please do stop there if you're in that part of Maine (Ellsworth is the town on the mainland where you get off Rt. 1 to go out to Mount Desert Island). Highly recommended.

These are images from our 2016 trip staying at the same cottage in Friendship, Maine. That was the year I started my "found" jewelry pieces.

And to state the obvious perhaps, since I won't be here, I won't be able to ship anything.  If you happen make a purchase next week though, please know it will ship just as soon as I can June 24 or 25.

Change in course

While a re-charge was certainly in order after completing the anthropologie order earlier this year, I hadn't planned on one lasting months. Today in fact my family and I were suppose to arrive at the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean via royal mail ship, a trip we had been planning for well over a year. It was heart breaking to have to cancel the trip.

The view looking west across the South Atlantic when we were on Saint Helena in 2013.

But after an emergency trip to the hospital in March, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. And although I'm undergoing treatment, and the endocrinologist says she feels I'm in a good position to go into remission, the recovery time frame could very likely stretch into next March. And since I am still symptomatic (irregular heart rhythm, anxiety, muscle atrophy, sore joints) it was decided that the rigors of getting to Saint Helena (24 hr. flight to Cape Town followed by 5 days at sea), not to mention being on an isolated island without specialist doctors for 4 weeks, probably was not the best course of action. Clearly we are just not suppose to go this year but oh, how sad that makes me.

Hiking to distant cottage in 2013.

We had planned and planned. We were scheduled to volunteer at SHAPE; I was going to be helping develop new jewelry designs  and we were going to visit with friends we haven't seen since 2013. And now instead here I am, adjusting to the fact that, in all likelihood, I will be managing a disease for the rest of my life.

I'm currently working on beads made from recycled paper made at SHAPE. 

The decision was made that if stress reduction was an important part of me getting to remission, we'd do one of the things we knew had worked for all of us in the past - head to the Maine coast and stay for as long as we could. So we're packing up - painting supplies, kayaks, sailboat and all - and leaving this Saturday,  to "take the waters" as it were.

I'll be posting on Instagram if you're interested (@gwilliamson).

On a business note…the shop will stay open June 20-July 20 but orders will not ship until July 20, when we return. If you place an order by this Thursday it will ship Friday. It you've already placed an order it will ship Friday.

Summer holiday

My Etsy shop will be closed from June 17 through June 30 while my husband and the boys and I are in the UK. We're fortunate to have our daughter and my parents to man the fort, weed the garden, care for the dog, and each other, while we're away.

You can read about our multi-generation household in the most recent issue of Alphabet Family Journal as they've published a short, candid piece our daughter wrote about a year ago. Ema's writing is excellent, clean and pleasing and I can tell she genuinely appreciates how she's been raised.

I'll be blogging and posting to Facebook a bit while we're away, when internet allows. The rest of the time I'll be wading in tide pools and hiking Hadrian's wall, sketching castles and wandering the moors…or something like that.

Doubled shorter "cocoon bead" necklace…still working out a clasp. 

Another pair of convertible earrings - these are just two sided.  Waiting on my work table until I get home.