Gifts from the soil -- job benefits and slow jewellery

As I've mentioned on a couple of occasions before, one of the job benefits my sis and I enjoy when working in the potato fields is collecting stones and especially flints. The other day, when removing some of the fiberweb (the white sheets the early potato fields are covered in during spring) I made my best find yet. A flintstone arrow head! It really made my day, I was just so thrilled about it!

Since beginning to collect/hoard flintstones as a kid I've dreamed of finding something like the one and a half axes grandpa found in his fields, but so far I've just found stone and nuggets that, as a layman, I could just guess might've been partially formed by a human hand. This is the first piece I've found that I'm 100 % sure has been formed by man. It was pretty exciting to find, especially since I found it while being busy working and I was so close to not picking it up. Luckily, the unusual rectangular shape and light colour made it stand out and tempt my eyes. I was just pure luck that the edge of the fiberweb stopped just there and that the plowing and digging had unearthed the piece just in time for me to find it.

Now you might say "well, have you reported the find?" I'm very well aware -- and very proud -- of the laws protecting our cultural history, but generally flint items are so common länsstyrelsen in Skåne isn't that interested in single finds like this (I asked them once because of the beautiful stone age axe my grandpa gave me so I'm not just going by hearsay on this). Though I would be interested in contacting someone to learn about the age, use etc of my find. I've seen similar arrow heads that's been dated to the end of the ice age, ca 11-12 000 years old. That's as far back as you can go with artefacts in these areas that used to be covered by the ice sheet.

It isn't a big piece either. I didn't have a ruler nearby so I took a photo of it next to an AA battery for a size comparison:

In other news, I just sowed some jewellery making supplies. Another gift from the soil that I expect later in summer.

No, I'm not being barmy: what I'm talking about is sowing flowers to dry for making cute jewellery. Like this:

(Screen shot of an Etsy treasury I made. Many pieces are sold,
but you can still find what's left of the treasury here.)

I know you can buy dried flowers, but not always the ones you want and buying from a florist or what few commercial cultivators of everlasting flowers there are in the 21st century can be a tad expensive. So I thought I might as well try to sow a few seeds. I'm not useless at gardening, but I'm no expert either. It was dad that was the expert, lovingly caring for an expanding garden -- and teaching us kids the art and craft of it. I haven't cared that much for gardens in years, mainly because I haven't had one of my own where I could do what I wanted.

But this year, I was so inspired by the poetic mori-style jewellery I couldn't keep myself from buying some seeds. Fingers crossed I've got green fingers (or green thumb as some of you say) and there'll be at least a couple of flowers to harvest.

You've heard about slow food and even slow cities, well, I guess this is slow jewellery! I'll take me months to make a simple pendant if counting from yesterday when I sowed the seeds.

If any flowers do seem to be popping up, I'll keep you updated.

And if you wonder about the fiberweb, it's not to keep the soil and seeds warm or anything -- it's mainly an attempt to keep the cats from thinking the newly weeded and raked soil is a big new litter box... Think it'll keep them out? Well, perhaps as long as they don't realise how warm it can be under a sheet like this, or indeed on it. Then they might want to sleep on it instead, something the plants won't like either. Gardening with cats isn't always easy.

Job's tears and flint

Sometimes I'm a prolific blogger, other times I'm not. Right now I feel rather prolific. Perhaps becasue I got the inspiration to bead again? Anyway, I just wanted to write about this pic before I prepare for tonight's handball (it's Sweden vs. Argentina today).

I'm planning to write about Job's tears/adlai/croixseed/pearl barley on my other blog so I got out this thriftstore find for a photo session. Doing so, I passed by the heap of tumbled flint my sis has laying around as we can't decide whether to keep it matte and smooth or go through the next couple of steps in the tumbling process to give them a high polish. And I thought: that flint matches the adlai beads. So I took a pic of them together.

Not sure I'll actually make something using this combination of materials, but I like the soft stone against the silvery white of the adlai. You can't see it in the pic, but several of the flintstones have white patches that even more so make them blend in with the seeds.

Flint for jewellery

As a kid, I used to collect flintstones. We don't have that much flint on our land, but the clay soil further South are packed with them. That meant I could find so many lovely stones when visiting my grandparents in Vejby. Often, when going home, I'd filled the floor of the car beneath my seat with chunky stones. My granddad once ploughed up a flint axe, which he gave to me as I was so fond of flint. After that he found half an axe, which I also got. Can you imagine what a treasure a stone age flint axe is to a small child?

These last few years, I've taken up flint collecting again. Now I do it with a vague idea to use the pebbles and shards in my jewellery. I no longer look to find the biggest chunks, now I prefer smaller pieces more suitable for pendants and I'm also pickier, discarding stones that don't have an interesting shape or colour. Luckily, fields that are ideal for potatoes are also rich in flint around here. So we -- my sis and I -- simply search for pretty stones during the breaks while we set or pick potatoes.

The stones above are some that I singled out from my new and old collection as my sis planned to tumble a new lot. Ever since the first lot, we've said the next one (after the glass tumbling) wouold be flint. So right now these stones and tumbling in a rubber drum along with a bunch of flints my sis has found.

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Wondering what the first lot of tumbled stones look like? I haven't got any pics yet, eventhough it was weeks ago since they were finished. The reason is mostly that we've done other things and then it's been about deciding which beads we want to keep matte and which ones we want to give more of a high polish. Besides, it was our first try so the stones aren't perfect in any way.

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PS! The flint pendant you found in this post isn't made by me or anything like that. The flint does however come from my grandparents' fields and has been cut and polished by a lapidary hobbyist nearby.