Fallalery

There was a question on Who Wants to be a Classic Millionaire the other night about costume jewellery (or jewelry, as the residents of the World's Greatest Nation insist on spelling it).

I hadn't realised that costume jewellery was a style of decoration that doesn't use real gems. (Wikipedia, for instance, says it has a variety of names, such as fashion jewelry, junk jewelry, fake jewelry, or fallalery - ain't that a great word?) And it's big business. Apparently it came into its own in the 1930s. At that time it was regarded as a cheap, disposable accessory meant to be worn with a specific outfit, would be fashionable for a short period of time, would then outdate itself, and then, presumably would be binned.

In spite of the idea that it might be 'junk' jewellery, it actually uses a lot of real stones. They're just of a lesser quality, in most cases, than 'real' jewels. I have a friend who has a lovely ring which someone in a fashion shop insisted she should get valued. If it had been the actual stone it was thought to be, the ring would have been worth something like $1200. But it was in the costume jewellery line, and consequently was worth something closer to $120.

Costume jewellery is made from rhinestones and lucite, amongst other lower class gems, and set in pewter, nickel and brass. This doesn't mean that the items don't have a classy look about them; it's just that their value in monetary terms is considerably less.

So there you go. That's what happens when you come upon a topic and decide to check it out a bit further!

Fallalery (or fallalary) is defined as: a bit of finery; a showy article of dress.

Updating the HitTail Top Ten

18 more posts to go before I hit the big 1000. The aim, as I said in an earlier post, is to do this before the end of 2008. I guess I could write a lot of idiotic, meaningless posts - one-liner posts, even - but I'm going to play fair and aim to keep up the extraordinarily high quality of my posts. (Did I hear someone say, Phooey?)
Anyway, it's a while since I checked out HitTail. For various reasons it's gone on the backburner in the last month, along with a few other things. (Partly because I've been more busy musically than I have through most of the year, and partly because of the prostate stuff which I've discussed in several posts on Workreport.net.)
I thought I'd see if there's been any change in the top ten search items that pick up on my site. And nope! They're pretty much the same as they've been in a long while. Here they are again:
1. Athlete's hand - the all time favourite; currently running at over 152 searches, but if we count all the variations on the theme, there'll be far more than that.
2. Mike Crowl. Well, there's a turn up for the books.
3. James Berardinelli. This film critic has been amongst the top for some time. Don't ask me why: I don't talk about him that much.
4. Brent Stavig. Another top name on the list. Extraordinary.
5. The Great Divorce notes. I have never listed any notes about C S Lewis' The Great Divorce. It's only the combination of having mentioned the book and having 'notes' in the title of my blog that brings this one up so regularly. Other books get the same treatment, but obviously not as often.
6. Shrinking shirts. Another one of those items that got mentioned in a post once and have kept this blog in the public eye ever since.
7. Nintendo jewellery. I sometimes suspect that I'm the only blogger to have ever mentioned Nintendo jewellery. I still have no idea what it is.
8. Karl Maugham. Due to my inability to spell Mr Maughan's name correctly, anyone else who spells it incorrectly finds my site.
9. Athlete's fingers. One of the other variations on number one in the list.
10. Chrissy Popadics. I mentioned Chrissy once many moons again - maybe mentioned her again briefly in a later post, and ever since then she's turned up trumps. Wierd.

Comparing this list with the previous one I did in August, there's only one change: The Great Divorce Notes don't appear there. Instead, my name comes up twice, the second time as Michael Crowl. Scary.

More on Nintendo jewellery

A few other times I've mentioned Nintendo jewellery without really knowing what it is. Well, I've just discovered a whole swag of photos on Flickr.com which show Nintendo jewellery. Those who have been troubled by my lack of knowledge can now be assisted by the fact that a picture is worth a thousand words (so the much overused cliche goes) and check out this link.

Blogging and other things

Why blog?

Because I have nothing else to do.

Because my life is empty and blogging fills in some time.

Because I have to write and blogging does the trick.

Because I think I can write.

Because I’m trying to communicate with a world beyond my immediate sphere.

Because I want my family and friends to hear my opinion on everything.

Because my wife has had enough of hearing my opinion on everything.

Because I’ve committed myself to blogging at least once a day.

Because I believe in blogging.

Because I want to make lots of money from having a blog.

Because when I first heard about blogging several years ago I couldn’t see the point and now I can.

Because there are people out there just waiting to hear from me.

Because I want to know whether anyone reading this understands irony or not.

Because.

Because it gives me a chance to tell you why guys wear engagement rings.

Or what a smidgen is.

Or discuss the Hitchcock auteur theory.

Or admire nintendo jewellery - if you can tell me what the nintendo side of this kind of jewellery is, I'm be interested. Here's a pendant with the name Nintendo attached to it, anyway.

Consider why athlete's might have athlete's hand rather than athlete's foot.

Or to answer such queries as: what music does the aquaggaswack play? (I didn't believe I'd ever written about such an instrument until I checked back on my blog just now! Crikey, you'd think you'd remember something like that.) Here's some information about it, according to the Oddmusic site: The first version of the Aquaggaswack, built in 1996, only had about 18 pot lids and was narrower (It didn't have the outer sections). This second version, revamped in 1998, has 29 pot lids representing a majority of the notes in an octave, plus some quarter-tones. The center lids have mostly "bell"-like tones and the outer sets have a more "gong"-like tone. All the lids were obtained from thrift stores and friends. At various times both versions of the Aquaggaswack also included a cymbal, jingle bells, a cowbell with clacker and a mine cylinder.
Any the wiser? There's a picture of the aquaggaswack on that site as well, if you think that a picture's better than a thousand words (or even the 94 in the paragraph above).

Exclusive Malls

When we were in London the other night we came across two long malls - of the old-fashioned kind, where there are little shops along both sides of a long covered alleyway. These malls have probably been there since the days when they weren’t covered in and there were hawkers working down both sides. These days, of course, they have nothing but exclusive shops, the sorts of places where only those with plenty of moolah go. There were even commissionaires (black gentlemen, in this instance) dressed up in uniforms with top hats.
The shops sell all sorts of luxury items: expensive ties, waistcoats, cufflinks (starting at £100 a pair), things like a pearl necklace with dozens of pearls, the sort that hangs so long the wearer has to tie it up in a knot. The longer the better, no doubt. There was a shop just focusing on clothes for playing polo (with a marvellous statuette of a horse and rider), there were shops with jewellery that you knew contained several dozen diamonds and probably a variety of other lesser jewels.
I kept expecting to see some famous movie star wandering down there, but was disappointed. Maybe it was the wrong time of day.

Nintendo Jewellery

While checking out another HitTail search phrase – sorry to inflict so many of these on you in a row, but needs must – I came across this quote from another blog, called Wiifanboy.

We've wasted our lives. What have we been doing all these years, while we could have been learning to work with gold, silver and platinum jewelry, and sharing handmade Nintendo jewelry with our friends and loved ones? Oh, right, going to school and having jobs. And also actually playing games.

That learning to work with gold, silver and platinum makes a nice contrast with the Nintendo jewellery. I’m not sure what Nintendo jewllery is, but the site also has Star Wars done with Lego men, so Nintendo jewellery could mean anything!

Wiifanboy, which appears to have been going a good long time, and is concerned not just with Wii (which has only been round a while) but with a number of other computer gaming areas. Check out the photo of the D-pad necklace. It’s rather cool. (Even I, as a person of the middle-age, think so.)

The Penny Factory

While we were at the Royal Norfolk Show, we kept an eye out for some cufflinks, as we always do at this sort of thing. I don’t usually buy new cufflinks, as they’re often a bit above the budget, but once in a while it’s nice to get a pair that hasn’t arrived in my house via a secondhand shop.

Anyway, we came across the stall for the Penny Factory. (This isn’t an ad, by the way – I just think what this guy is doing is great!). The craftsman in this instance takes old and newish coins and turns them into a variety of decorative apparel, such as cufflinks, brooches, belt clasps, pendants, and the like. But what makes them so special is that he colour enamels each coin to bring out the original texture. And in so doing, turns each item into a miniature work of art.

You can see some examples on his website, though unfortunately they don’t have quite the lustre in the photographs as they do in reality. Still it will give you an idea. Just imagine them as being much more colourful than they appear here and you’ll get the idea. (From what the artist told me, his website is being updated, so if you have any problems, contact him at thepennyfactory@btinternet.com

I could have taken home any number of the items on display, but had to settle on just one pair of links: a couple of 1945 farthings, which glisten with enamel blues and reds and other subtle hues. Why 1945? It's the year of my birth, and at that stage, farthings were still worth something! I reckon these items make wonderful gifts or collector’s items.

The year of the amethyst

This year we celebrated our 33rd wedding anniversary. The traditional stone for this anniversary is an amethyst, but since we were spending a lot of money going to England, the amethyst rather got sidetracked. We haven’t been much good at celebrating anniversaries with the traditional gifts, though the kids managed to find pearls (including pearl cufflinks) for our thirtieth. Last year the traditional gift was a conveyance. A conveyance! Well, the mind boggles at the possibilities – it’s certainly a lot more ambiguous a possibility than an amethyst. Anyway, my wife has gone on about buying a campervan for years, and we’ve never come to agreement about the value of getting one. So last year I managed to find, with some difficulty, a model campervan, and presented it on our anniversary. She took the joke with delight, and it’s still sitting on her computer at work.
I checked out amethysts on the Net just now, to see what sort of things are available. Unfortunately, my wife isn’t much into rings these days. Maybe I should think more in terms of a necklace, if it isn’t too late to celebrate!
By the way, why do Americans spell jewellery as jewelry and jewellers and jewelers? I can understand the second spelling, perhaps, although the full pronunciation of the word must surely be: jew-el-lers, with a degree of doubling of the letter ‘l’. But jewelry? It smacks of a lack of delight in the sound of words. But I suspect I’m going to be banging my head against a wall on this one.