Random Saturday - Purple and green

If you expect something about color coordination in art or fashion, you're wrong, sorry. This is just another post about memories which is inspired by a post written by Nicole from Huisvlijt, "Kringloop Tristesse".
I don't speak Dutch, but from the Firefox translation I get it's about a water can that a school class gave to a teacher and it ended up in a thrift shop still with that tag on.
No idea how it is in other countries, but in my time gifts for teachers were not a big thing, at least not in my school. So I asked a teacher I know how it is today, and he too said that it happens, but not often.

We had one teacher, however, who got several gifts from part of the class, and that was a running joke.
One of my classmates loved the color purple and wore it a lot and said teacher didn't like purple. I don't know what the exact reason was, but he once told my classmate jokingly that purple wasn't a color, but a punishment.
So of course our whole row decided to give him something purple. My friend was a former baker's daughter and good at baking herself - how I loved her Christmas cookies! - and suggested a marble cake, but with purple and pink food dye. It was a big hit (I have no idea if our teacher ate any of it, though).
Anyhow, from then on, he always got something purple at the end of the school year. Nothing big of course, just to keep the joke alive, and we always tried to make it something useful or consumable, so it wouldn't take up unnecessary space.

One year, another teacher said jokingly how much we "spoiled" him (they had become a couple although we didn't know it yet at the time) and another friend of mine told her to pick a color. She said green. That friend did macrame and knitted socks like crazy - it was the 80s and a lot of pupils knitted in class - so she made a beautiful pair of green socks as a Christmas gift, much to our teacher's surprise but also delight.
So from then on we had to get something purple and something green.

Picture by Konevi via pxhere

I even kept the tradition running for several years after leaving school. A lot of my school friends left town to work elsewhere or study, but I lived at home during training as a librarian and my teachers didn't live far from me.
One time, my teacher handed me a little parcel saying "ok, so sometimes purple can be beautiful if it's on the right thing".
It was a framed picture of a purple Porsche (he had a vintage one himself, not purple but red). I don't know if I still have that picture somewhere, but I remember it really made me laugh back then.

Picture by Alex Ifti via Unsplash

So yeah, that's my little story of an "apple for the teacher".
Is it common for children to give their teachers a gift where you are?

Oldies but Goodies - We love purple!

Last time purple was the topic for the challenge in 2016, it was inspired by the song Purple Haze.
I don't know about this time, but I do know that we have some real beauties in the Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge - purple beauties.
Now I have to confess something. Purple confuses me. Not the color or maybe it is the color because ... what is purple? What is the difference between purple and violet and lilac (in German we translate purple into Lila, but we do have a color called Purpur, see my problem?)?
It's not the first time I have been wondering about that, it has been going on since I was a child. Finally I decided from what I heard that purple was more blue and violet was more red. Yeah, no. I guess. I don't know. If you go out there into internetland, you'll find all kinds of explanations and opinions, and it seemed to me that they even differed depending on if I searched the German or the English words.
What do you think it is?
Here's a link that might help you. I thought it helped me, but then I found the next one and the next one, and I'm as confused as before.
What I'm not confused about is that at JAC we thankfully are quite open about the rules, so I didn't have to worry about entering something wrong, neither did my fellow members :-) Here you go.

1 MC Stoneworks
2 Jewelry Art by Dawn
3 Cat's Wire
4 Bijou Bead Boutique
5 Togan
6 The Crafty Chimp
7 RioRita

Oldies but Goodies - Purple Haze

Once again Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge was inspired by a song, this time Purple Haze written by Jimi Hendrix.
Yes, we did have amethysts before, but this time we have all kinds of purple, glass beads, crystals, stone, clay, such a great mix.
It's funny, purple still makes me think how badly I wanted purple jeans in the early 80s. For some strange reason it stayed a dream. Please excuse me while I go and browse purple jeans. I hope you will have fun browsing my selections from the challenge for this week.

1 MC Stoneworks
2 The Crafty Chimp
3 Cat's Wire
4 RioRita
5 Jewelry Art by Dawn
6 Violetmoon's Corner

Oldies but goodies - Amethyst again

This post is for my Latin teacher. He didn't like the color purple. He detested it. He said purple was not a color, but a catastrophe.
Too bad that one of my friends loved purple and didn't hesitate to wear it no matter what remarks she got from him. A small group of our class decided we had to give him something purple. It started out with a cake in purple and pink (which was good, no doubt, because said friend's father used to be a baker and passed the talent on to her) and turned into a tradition on Christmas and at the end of the school year. Purple ties, socks, flowers, plates, mugs, I can't even remember everything. When we were out of school, I kept up the tradition for quite a few years. To this day I think "oh, that would be a good one" if I see something purple. For me the color will be connected to him forever.

Of course the topic "Amethyst" wasn't chosen for the Jewelry Artisans Community Oldies but Goodies Challenge because of my Latin teacher, though. Amethyst is the birthstone for February and of course it was still February when the challenge started.
Please enjoy some of our members' beautiful entries.

1 MC Stoneworks
2 Jewelry Art by Dawn
3 Cat's Wire
4 RioRita
5 Violetmoon's Corner

Oldies but goodies - Amethyst colors

This week the JAC Oldies but Goodies Challenge was about amethysts. Not everyone of us works with stones like that, but our rules are not that strict, so we changed that to colors of the amethyst.
English Wikipedia tells me that "according to surveys in Europe and the U.S., purple is the color most often associated with royalty, magic, mystery and piety".
It also tells me that the name amethyst comes from the Greek meaning "not intoxicated" which reminded me of the story our Latin teacher told us about amethyst embellished goblets being used in the olden days because people thought that way they wouldn't get drunk from wine.
I don't drink wine myself, but somehow I have the feeling that doesn't really work ;-)

Judge yourself about what these entries remind you of and make sure to check out the original thread for more pictures!

 
1 Studio 9665
2 Violetmoon's Corner
3 Cat's Wire
4 MC Stoneworks
5 Jewelry Art by Dawn
6 The Crafty Chimp

They couldn't be more different

I am talking about the two necklaces I listed on Zibbet today.
It was an impulsive decision to join Zibbet, but now that I am there I try to fill up the shop a little and as I still had a few things around that only needed to be woken up from their hibernation (although it was summer and fall, but that's ok, you know what I mean), I found I like the setup.

Today I listed this "old" piece, from my early days. The colors and the beads are so bright and bold that I thought a simple design would work best.
It's from two twisted strands of crocheted copper wire and the beads are glass that is "filled" with color and glitter (now am I a glass expert or what? *lol*)
Looking at it gives you a summery feeling which is not too bad now that the days are very dark here.


The other necklace is a new one. When I got these frosted Brazilian amethysts, they made me think of frozen berries right away. Only they didn't stick together.
Compared to the other necklace this is a very feminine design. Classic understatement with a twist.


Why don't you check out my Zibbet shop?

Hmmm, those brown tigereyes on my desk .... I must have some brown wire somewhere ....

Care for a dance with the vampire?

I am still not done with my knitting spool. Not at all. Although so many ideas haunt my poor old brain, sometimes the crochet hook has to go to sleep and give up its place to the spool.
The other day I bought some cheap boxes with beads that were on sale. One of them contained a black mix, the other one a purple mix and both of them contained big seed beads of which the purple ones are silver-lined. Suddenly I just happened to have my black and metallic purple wire in reach (even true, there was no planning whatsoever involved at first).
So the beads went onto the wires and row for row the necklace was growing. Take a closer look to find out what exactly I did ;-)
The result looks really best in the dark, I found, just with a little light on (shhh, I still got one of the old light bulbs in my lamp, but don't tell the EU). I tried to take a picture to show you the effect, but I am not a good enough photographer (yet *lol*) to take good enough night photographs. You'll just have to believe me that the light makes for a dark, mysterious sparkle.
Black and purple makes me think of Victorian times, but also of a kind of classic understatement that seems dark and dull one moment and suddenly gets lightened up to reveal the subtle colors. It doesn't always have to be black and red to get into the right mood ...
Imagine a gorgeous dress swishing across the stone floor when you go to meet the handsome vampire and have a dance with him, this necklace sparkling on your white throat.


P.S.
For your information ;-) No, I haven't read or seen any of the "new" vampire books or movies, but I have to admit I still think I could fall for the vampire Lestat, prince of the darkness - and I'm not talking the guy in the movie I don't even want to mention! And by the way, you'll find this necklace in my DaWanda shop ...