glowing embers

The last five days have pushed me physically to my limits. A friend of mine is staying in hospital with serious eczema and we visited him for lunch on Sunday. We found a funky café in Newtown and had hot chocolate, chai and milkshakes over fig biscuits as we shared our wildest, most ambitious ideas for how we could combine our passions. He’s recently returned to school to study pastry-making and we gushed over the idea of investing in an emporium someday where my perfumes, jewellery and goodness-knows-what-else line the shelves as he serves up freshly baked cake and sweets over organic free trade coffee.

Earlier in the semester, I eagerly agreed to help a colleague take over her two classes over two weeks on Monday when she travels to Germany for a conference. I regretted it when I rolled out of bed at 7:30am and discovered it was freezing cold and grey outside. Over the next few days, I would return home from a tutoring with frozen fingers, sore legs and an exhaustion that threatened to put me into a coma if I ever stayed still for more than 10 minutes. However, I could never really drift off to sleep because ideas for my store would be doing a merry jig on my consciousness.

Some wonderful things happened during these hazy three days. I received my trade with Alison of Rumplefeltskin in the mail. I thought her creations were very generously priced to begin with so I offered to send her all seven of my sample perfume scents for one of her adorable pink bell blossoms stuffed with rose petals. When I opened up the gorgeous pink gift box however, I discovered she had made me a pink sweet heart brooch as well! I’m in awe of her immaculate stitch work and so happy to have made a new friend.

A few weeks back, Billie found me via an old Twitter account. She remembered my jewellery store by name but when she discovered I had closed it, contacted me about buying some of my pieces anyway. I can’t tell you how insanely flattered I felt that someone after all these months could remember my store. I uploaded what images I had lying around on my laptop to Flickr so she could take a look at what I could make. I asked her to list all the pieces she liked and then sent her everything that had not been sold. Billie doesn’t sell her crafts, but instead, maintains an informative craft blog where she shares her journey as a self-taught paper crafter and bookbinder. On Tuesday, I received a parcel from her containing a gorgeous ACEO I had admired on her blog, and two mini notebooks that will be perfect for me to throw into a handbag and jot down ideas and inspirations while I’m on the go!

Yesterday, we visited our friend in hospital again who just had his stay extended. On our way back home, I saw an email from Alison who had received my perfume samples. Her reviews of them were so heart-warming that I teared up when I read them aloud to The Cat. To meet people like Alison and Billie and find out what pleasure my perfumes and jewellery can provide for them, it’s all worth the restless nights and the leap of faith I took when I opened Faunfare.