It's Just The Wine Talking

I really don't drink. But I'm sitting here with a glass of .... something with a long name .... and decided that I really need a slightly more upbeat blog. The past I-Don't-Know-How-Many have been uncharacteristically unpleasant!

I've been shopping. You see, it was my birthday, and any excuse is a good excuse, and a birthday is a better-than-average excuse! What did I buy? JEWELRY! What else? It's my all-time favourite thing to buy, followed closely by shoes and purses, and then clothing. I guess if I could buy cars and houses with any sort of regularity, they'd be on the list as well, but you know how that is.

I was researching amethysts for a friend of mine who was getting anally raped by a jeweler who was charging her nearly $2000 for a large lab-created stone in a platinum setting. Now I recognize that platinum is "THE" setting of settings, and the stone was huge, but even so, this entire fiasco was making me nuts. One of my hobbies is researching high-quality diamonds, and precious and semi-precious gemstones; I recognize when a jeweler is hosing a customer who's completely clueless! He had this poor girl convinced this was a "purple diamond", man-made, because the "real thing" would be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Uh, folks? This is an amethyst~~not a precious stone, even~~but a semi-precious stone, and man-made, at that. The only thing costing any money was the setting.

Anyway, at her request, I began looking into amethysts, and wowza, what a bonanza of sizes, shapes, colours, cuts and clarities! Me being me, I hate the kitschy things like heart-shaped cuts or very dark colours. Give me cuts and colours that show the beauty of the damned stone!

So anyway, I began looking in very typical BPD fashion (for those of you who are new readers, you're going to have to go back to the beginning of the blog). I hit the internet for about six hours a day, and malls for about five days. Over the course of about three weeks, I learned everything I needed to know about this gorgeous purple stone, and reported back to the young woman in question. And during this endeavour, discovered that I must, must, MUST have some of this
jewelry for myself!

I'm a fan of bidding sites; away I went to Bidz.com and eBay; I found lovely rings on eBay, but waited too long to bid and lost both the rings I wanted. Then I changed my mind and decided I wanted to make my OWN ring, and went to sites that sold loose amethyst stones. Cheap, cheap, cheap. A nice stone, 6 mm x 8 mm, can be had for as little as $10. Of course you can go obscenely large, and get an eye-clean, 16mm x 12 mm mid-colour amethyst, beautifully clear, for around $160. If you had something like that set into a simple gold band, it would look lovely! But alas, too many of them are channel-set or pressure-set, which means you can't see light through the cut of the stone. It just dies there, and you have a purple stone. Whoopy.

ANYWAY, I went back and forth between Bidz.com and a ring I found in a jewelry store; my fear was that even though the description sounded lovely, once I got the ring off the internet, I would be dissatisfied with the diamonds it featured. It's the one thing you can't get around when you're buying from a discount jeweler. So I decided to buy what I could see and try on, and picked up a large, medium-coloured stone, about 12 mm x 8 mm (the equivalent of appx 5 cts), with two small diamonds channel set on each side. The ring also has a thin, independent band of gold that comes up off the original band to the top of the ring on each side, just to make things unique, and those bands are in white gold, instead of yellow. It's very different, and I like it. I'll post a picture of it if I ever figure out how to post one.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!
It was April 17

This was from my husband, who knew I was looking. He tries each year to find something that will be a surprise, but is gradually giving up on it ever happening.

Anyway, after the ring, I started looking at pendants. I was looking at one on Bidz.com, and it said "sale: $79". I clicked it, because I wanted to see what the terms were. It said no sales available for the item and to check back later. I tried again in a few minutes, and then again later. Well, you can imagine my surprise when I discovered THREE emails that said CONGRATULATIONS...YOU HAVE PURCHASED THIS AMETHYST AND DIAMOND PENDANT FOR $79.00!!, not once, but THREE TIMES! Off I went to the Powers-That-Be to explain what's happened, and of course it's my fault, and I'm slapped on the wrist and told to be more careful, and pay for one. BLAH. I do, however, find some really cute earrings to match. My husband has told me to cease and desist (hmph).

Anyway, I'm waiting with barely-concealed excitement for the new stuff! I love the ring, and have decided that I don't care that amethysts are cheap stones. They're damned pretty! And I'm currently wearing a big new honkin' chunk of stone on my hand, and that always makes me happy.

As a postscript, my mother-in-law gave me an American Express gift card for my birthday, and I went looking for diamond studs yesterday. I found a lovely pair and got to do one of my favourite things, and my husband's LEAST favourite things: talk the jeweler down in price. I kept saying I wasn't sure, and wanted to go to this other place. The young man called his manager, who of COURSE told me that the other place would give me no guarantee, and a much lower quality of diamond, and if it would help, she would lower her price a bit more. My dear husband was behind me, saying, "If you're not sure, we can go and tomorrow you can try the other place". I was desperately trying to whisper to him ... "Honey, I'm working here!!!!!"

I need a career in gemology. Life would be good and I'd sparkle from top to bottom!